Recommended E-H Event—Practising Existential Therapy: Ernesto Spinelli

Existential therapy places pivotal significance upon the inter-relational aspects of human experience. From this perspective, the presenting symptoms and disorders brought to therapy are disclosed as direct expressions and outcomes of the client’s overall ‘way of being’ rather than as isolated and disruptive impediments. How these responses impact upon, maintain, and disturb the client’s overall worldview is explored from a predominantly descriptively-attuned focus.

At the same time, existential therapy places critical significance upon the actual ‘being with’ that emerges between therapist and client and argues that it is via the contrast and comparison of this lived experience that clients can find the means to reconsider and reconstruct their worldviews or life narratives. In general, existential therapy challenges the emphasis typically placed on directed and directive change, preconceived outcomes, and professional detachment as set by the majority of contemporary psychotherapists.

The workshop is derived from Ernesto’s textbook Practising Existential Psychotherapy: The Relational World 2nd edition (Sage, 2015). Its aim is to provide participants with the unique opportunity to develop their initial understanding of the practice of existential therapy as viewed from the perspective of 3 inter-related phases:

Phase 1: The Existential Therapist as Idiot – Working with the client’s presenting worldview;

Phase 2: The Existential Therapist as Fool – Working in ‘the between’;

Phase 3: The Existential Therapist as Executioner – Endings: possibilities and disappointments.

This workshop will be hosted on the Zoom meeting platform where we will use our camera and microphones to interact with each other as a group.

To support practitioners in this time of extraordinary circumstances we are offering access to this group for a self-select fee.

The self-select fee is a radical inclusion policy to open learning for all colleagues. The guide price for this event is £20.00, however, we appreciate that income varies greatly in different locations and circumstances. Please contribute what you can to help us maintain inclusive professional training.

Professor Ernesto Spinelli

Professor Ernesto Spinelli was Chair of the Society for Existential Analysis between 1993 and 1999 and is a Life Member of the Society. His writings, lectures and seminars focus on the application of existential phenomenology to the arenas of therapy, psychology, and executive coaching. He is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society (BPS) as well as an APECS accredited executive coach and coaching supervisor. In 1999, Ernesto was awarded a Personal Chair as Professor of psychotherapy, counselling and counselling psychology. In 2000, he was the Recipient of BPS Division of Counselling Psychology Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Profession. And in 2019, Ernesto received the BPS Award for Distinguished Contribution to Practice. His most recent book, Practising Existential Therapy: The Relational World 2nd edition (Sage, 2015) has been widely praised as a major contribution to the advancement of existential theory and practice. His previous books include: The Interpreted World: an introduction to phenomenological psychology, 2nd ed (Sage, 2005); Demystifying Therapy (PCCS, 2006); Tales of Un-knowing (PCCS, 2006); and The Mirror and The Hammer: challenging therapeutic orthodoxies (Sage, 2001). Living up to the existential dictum that life is absurd, Ernesto is also the author of an on-going series of Private Eye novels, the first two of which are Scorpio’s Children (2019) and Cruel Love Ways (2020).