Existential Models
Existential Models focus on taking responsibility, personal freedom,
authenticity, anxiety, meaning and death. Existential Models essentially
view mental illness occurring when a person loses contact with his or her
essential humanness and is unable to establish human relationships with others
based on honesty. Basically the person is living a lie and their meaning of
life centers around the anxiety needed to maintain an inauthentic way of being.
These persons suffer from feelings of intense isolation from others and a
chronic sense of emptiness. They have lost their faith in themselves and have
difficulty learning from and accepting the natural limits of their
circumstance. Taking personal responsibility is the key to the existential therapy
approach. The existential therapist would argue against a specific set of
therapeutic approaches preferring to instead develop a meaningful relationship
in which the participants are both fully present in the immediacy of the
moment.
Examples of Existential
Theorists are Viktor Franki and William Glasser. William Glasser, a
psychiatrist developed the model of reality therapy. He believed that
"unhappiness is the result and not the cause of irresponsibility" R/T
is a highly pragmatic model that focuses on the here and now as the only
reality to be considered. Her believes there is no way a person past can be
rewritten, so it is fruitless to consider it. Blaming personal failures on
external circumstances, lack of opportunity, poor family relationships, or
virtually any other circumstances is not accepted. Instead the reality
therapist encourages the pt. to develop plans based on personal responsibility
and self-discipline needed for a different outcome. The therapist is the
therapeutic ally, but it is ultimately the patient who must develop a
functional understanding of his or her own particular reality. Strategies are
on what the parent does not what the patient feels. Persistent refocusing on
progress, taking the next step, solves the practical issues. The therapist
always conveys the attitude that the patient can always influence his or her
feelings and can develop their own unique plan for more successful pattern of
living. Pp. 111 Mental Health Nursing
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