Author(s): Maria Pleşca / Language(s): Romanian
Issue: 40/2025
In this paper, we propose one of the possible options for building the conceptual foundations of existential counseling. The first question that arises along this path is whether existential counseling and psychotherapy can be considered as a special type of counseling alongside psychoanalytic, cognitive-behavioral, etc.? Or can any counseling become existential counseling if the client proposes an appropriate content for discussion - issues related to life and death, loneliness, love, guilt, etc.? Or is any kind of counseling existential in its inner essence, because, in principle, it can always be raised to existential phenomena that have as their background the field of the client's awareness of his or her problems? The issue can be addressed even more broadly: can psychological counseling as such not be existential at all, because it is, to some extent, an intervention by the psychologist in someone else's life and is capable of changing the trajectory of the client's life path, even if the counselor has not specifically motivated the client to do so? Determining the counselor's position on this issue is important not only theoretically but also practically, because understanding the client's request as existential changes the focus, level, and scope of his or her discussion, in particular, it shifts the emphasis from overcoming the current disadvantage to seeking essential changes in one's life. The specificity of existential counseling is to help the individual to see behind the daily struggles, conflicts, doubts, etc. the source of the disadvantage experienced, the reason that makes it difficult to get in touch with one's own life as a whole, i.e. to discover those limiting attitudes that prevent the individual from building his being in the desired way, which prevents the realization of "self-care" as the ability to build oneself and one's own life according to one's project.
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