An Existential Approach to Human Development: Philosophical and Therapeutic Perspectives

Description

This textbook reviews for the first time the thinking of six major existential philosophers; Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Simone de Beauvoir with respect to their ideas about human development. Martin Adams presents a philosophical and psychological analysis, and critically evaluates the different ways that existential philosophy can illuminate the way we all strive for meaning and purpose in life. Written in a detailed, well-structured manner, this text offers a fundamentally different way to understand not only life in general but the practice of psychotherapy in particular.

Martin Adams is a Psychotherapist, Supervisor and Lecturer at the New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling in London.

This is an extraordinary book on human development. It is both original and creative in drawing on existential philosophies to sketch an alternative theory of the human challenges of coming to life, evolving, learning and dying. It should be required reading for psychotherapists and psychologists, as it will help them think anew about human change and transformation. * Professor Emmy van Deurzen, Existential Academy * Martin Adams practices what he preaches and his practice expertly informs his theories. He endorses that a psychology based on philosophy and phenomenology achieves far deeper insight into the human condition than one based on empirical science. This is an exhaustive yet accessible and entertaining book, and a must read for actual and would-be existentialists and existential therapists everywhere. * Gary Cox PhD, author of How to Be an Existentialist and the Existentialist's Guide *