NRNP 6645 Week 7 Assignment Humanistic-Existential Therapy

Humanistic-existential psychotherapy with other approaches to therapy The humanistic approach believes that humans are inherently good, can maintain healthy and meaningful relationships, and make good choices for themselves and others. The existential approach believes that people have the ability for self-awareness and choice. The humanistic therapist focuses on the well-being of the person, not the symptoms, so the therapies foster creativity, growth, and free will to help the person to develop a stronger sense of self and create meaning in life. The sessions emphasize a person's positive traits and behaviors and develop their ability to use instincts to find wisdom, growth, healing, and fulfillment. The existential therapist focuses on not eliminating the client's symptoms or problems but helping the client to make positive choices to live a whole and happy life and accept that life can be challenging at times. Humanistic psychotherapy emphasizes human creativity, growth, and adaptation, while existential psychotherapy asserts a holistic view of human beings, validating the nature of emotions, thoughts, behavior, and choices. (Farber, 2010). The existential approaches differ from humanism in emphasizing the person's free will, choice, self-determination, and the search for meaning and purpose. The second type of approach I selected is psychoanalytic therapy. Psychoanalytic therapy focuses on how adult problems can be traced back to childhood. How early experiences shape the person's feelings, emotions, and ways of being in the world as an adult. Psychanalytic also focus on behaviors and how they are affected by belief systems. Also, psychoanalytic emphasizes the unconscious or suppressed feelings hidden from trauma or horrible experience and percolates that into the conscious. So, in psychoanalytic treatment, nothing occurs but an interchange of words between the patient and the therapist. (Lorenzer, 2016). The patient talks about past experiences, the therapist listens, tries to direct the patient's thought processes, exhorts, and forces his attention in specific directions, and observes the reactions in the patient. The therapy lOMoAR cPSD| 3 aims to release repressed emotions and memories to lead the patient to heal. The psychoanalytic technique has four essentials: interpretation, transference analysis, technical neutrality, and countertransference analysis. (Kernberg, 2016). The interpretation is that unconscious conflict emerges as the patient communicates with the therapist. Transference analysis refers to how the patient unconsciously redirects certain feelings, expectations, or desires onto someone else and tries to recreate a past relationship that conflicts, trauma, or difficulties, especially in childhood. Technical neutrality in psychoanalytic is the commitment made by the analyst to the client to remain neutral to avoid taking sides in the client's internal conflicts. Countertransference analysis in psychoanalytic is the attempt made by the analysts to analyze their reactions toward the client. Three differences between Humanistic and existential therapies and Psychoanalytic Therapy The difference between humanistic and existential is that the humanistic approach with the idea that humans are constantly striving to be the best version of themselves, while the existential approach view that people are searching for the meaning of life is central. The difference between humanistic compared to psychoanalytic is that humanistic therapeutic methods include perception-focused, behavioral analysis, and equal therapist/client relationship. In contrast, psychoanalytic focuses on emotions, exploration of past experienced, interpersonal relationships, and free-flowing, which allow patients to talk freely about fears, fantasies, desires, and dreams. Psychoanalytic therapy can be an intense process that stirs up emotional responses and uneasiness, but it helps the patient to understand the unconscious forces that influence the current behaviors. Lastly, the difference between existential therapy compares to humanistic and psychoanalytic is that it helps people find meaning and purpose in their lives. In existential therapy, the therapist works with the client's struggle to make sense of their lives and encourages the clients to use their capacity to make choices and develop their lives to maximize their lOMoAR cPSD| 4 existence. (Overend, 2021). Each psychotherapy has a different goal. For example, the goal of psychoanalytic therapy is to uncover unconscious feelings. In contrast, the goal of humanistic therapy is to empower the client to reach their full potential, and the goal of existential therapy is to help patients embrace their choices and plans with an eye toward the possibilities, not the past. All psychotherapies have benefits, plus, and minus, so it is essential to find the best for the client. Live Case Study of James Bugental In the live case study, humanistic-existential psychotherapy was used with the patient in the video. The client reports that she had been in therapy 2 years ago and got in touch with some of her anger. In the video therapy session, the client reported that she still does not understand the difficult time and that she still feels constricted in her life. (PsychotherapyNet, 2009). Humanistic-existential psychotherapy is the appropriate choice for this client because the therapist in the video does not give advice or provide interpretations; he listens to the client and helps the client to identify conflicts and hidden feelings and take control of her life to overcome life's challenges. The therapist's role was a mutual, supportive, encouraging, collaborative, and explorative dialogue between the client and the therapist. This method works for the client in this case because as she talks with the therapist about her constricted feelings, she slowly gets in touch with her constricted feelings. If the psychoanalytic approach used in this case and the free-flowing feature used on this client in this video, that outcome will be like the humanistic-existential psychotherapy. Free- flowing psychoanalytic therapy allows the client to explore freely, and the client is free to talk about fears, fantasies, desires, and dreams. By talking freely, the client explores the full range of emotions that the client is experiencing. The client, in this case, does not understand the difficult time in the past and feels constricted in her life. The psychoanalytic therapy approach can help her to explore her past and shed the bonds of experience to live more fully in the present.