Existential Concerns and Cognitive-Behavioral Procedures

Clients enter therapy grappling with a range of difficulties. They don't speak in diagnostic terms, but instead focus on the everyday problems that confront them. Their struggles may include isolation, loneliness, anxiety, guilt and regret, and problems making decisions in a world that offers seemingly endless choice. In contrast, the cognitive-behavior therapist is trained in the language of conditioning and extinction, avoidance and safety behaviors, behavioral activation and attentional biases. This book explores the ideas of the existentialist philosophers as a bridge between the suffering client and technically trained clinician. The volume is not a rejection of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), but seeks to place CBT in the broader context of the most popular philosophic tradition of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Part 1: Introductory Issues.- Chapter 1: Existentialism and the problems of being.- Chapter 2: Existentialism and its place in contemporary cognitive-behavior therapy.- Part 2: Death.- Chapter 3: Death awareness and terror management theory.- Chapter 4: Fears of death and their relationship to mental health.- Chapter 5: Creative approaches to treating the dread of death.- Part 3: Isolation.- Chapter 6: Existential Isolation: Theory, Empirical Findings, and Clinical Considerations.- Chapter 7: Isolation, loneliness and mental health.- Chapter 8: Social prescribing: A review of the literature.- Part 4: Identity.- Chapter 9: Identity and the Courage to Be: From Kierkegaard to Covid-19.- Chapter 10: Yet you may see the meaning of within: The role of identity concerns and the self in psychopathology.- Chapter 11: Clarifying identity and the self in a CBT context.- Part 5: Freedom.- Chapter 12: Freedom, responsibility and guilt.- Chapter 13: Failed potentialities, regret and their link to depression and related disorders.- Chapter 14: Reframing the past and the treatment of existential guilt and regret.- Part 6. Meaning.- Chapter 15: On the need for meaning.- Chapter 16: Meaninglessness, depression and suicidality: A review of the evidence.- Chapter 17: Letting go, creating meaning: The role of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in helping people confront existential concerns and lead a vital life.