Picturing Existential Psychodynamics
I realize that to those who aren’t therapy nerds like myself, the title of this blog may sound like a bunch of jargon-y nonsense. So let’s start by making the language more understandable.
“Psychodynamics” is talking about the dynamics of our psyche. There, does that help? No? Ok, a step further.
The word “dynamic” means that we’re talking about forces that have power and are in motion. So, in other words “psycho-dynamics” means that we’re talking about the powerful forces that are in motion in our psychology.
“Psychodynamics” also happens to be the name given to the approach to therapy developed by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), who believed that the forces at play in our psychology were mainly our instinctual drives toward aggression and sexuality. Freud was interested in how these powerful conflicting drives created anxiety in us, as well as defense mechanisms to cope with that anxiety.
In other words:
Now let’s throw back in my favorite word: “existential”.
According to existential psychotherapist Irvin Yalom (b. 1931), who literally wrote the book on Existential Psychotherapy, the fundamental conflicting forces in our psychology are our confrontations with the givens of existence. He identifies these givens as Death, Freedom, Isolation, and Meaninglessness. Confronting these fundamental aspects of existence leads to anxiety, as well as defense mechanisms to cope with that anxiety.
In other words:
For folks who are visual thinkers like myself, it might help to have an image like this in mind to better picture what it means when we refer to Existential Psychotherapy. Basically, it is understanding a person’s experience of these three things: 1) our confrontation with the givens of existence, 2) the anxiety that confrontation creates, and 3) the defense mechanisms we develop to cope with that anxiety.
That picture is what Irvin Yalom calls “Existential Psychodynamics”. (For the therapy nerds out there, I 100% recommend his book Existential Psychotherapy, where these images come from.)
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