Reaction Paper 3

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School

Texas Tech University *

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Course

3306

Subject

Philosophy

Date

Oct 30, 2023

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pdf

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Uploaded by sarahxsherwood

First off I want to start by saying that Viktor Frankl would absolutely be best friends in my personal opinion. Between being Jews (my great grandparents escaped the Holocaust), and using humor as a coping mechanism (more or less), I just know he and I would be absolute besties if I had gotten to meet him. In all seriousness though, I’ve never really had an interest in existential thinking, much less in a therapy setting, because I am a very strong in my Christian faith, and with that as a foundation I don’t ever really question the typical existential things like isolation, life meaning, freedom & responsibility & death. I know that sounds awful, and like I don’t want that security for others, but for me, I’ve always thought of that existential security being in Jesus (and that’s a big part of why I want to go into Christian counseling, so I can openly share that with my clientele). With that being said, however, Frankl’s perspective on the matter did make me broaden my thinking when it comes to these concepts, and how they impact ALL people, with faith or without it. While it did make it more clear to me that we all need these 4 things to function well as human beings, that also made me realize just how much people need Jesus (from a faith standpoint), as he provides all these things, undeniably. I know this is a controversial opinion on the matter, but I figured I’d just be honest about my views on it anyway, considering that’s how the material spurred me to think about it. On another note, one of the actual therapy techniques that I thought was really impactful was the “Here and Now” approach. Obviously, forming a good client-counselor relationship is always important no matter the therapeutic approach being used, however, I had never thought about how that relationship can actually translate to other relationships outside of therapy and help the person heal their other relationships. In the YouTube video with Irvin Yalom, I appreciated how he related his work on his relationship with his clients to how the clients are in other relationships. I think his point that we “don’t often talk about how the relationship is

going” in most of our relationships is scarily accurate. I say scarily, because I think it is something we should be talking about more in our relationships with family and friends and significant others. By incorporating “Here and Now” into sessions with a client, I believe this “practice run” of sorts can help the client feel more comfortable assessing their day-to-day relationships and kindly confronting the other person when something isn’t working. I would say this technique could be beneficial for many situations, but the first thought in my mind is the drastic impact it could have on marriage and family relationships. Speaking of marriage and family relationships, who doesn’t love cracking a joke with your closest friends and family? While this kind of joking may not be the point of paradoxical intention, I absolutely LOVE how Frankl was able to turn one of my personal favorite coping mechanisms into an actually healthy coping strategy. I am a firm believer that laughter is one of the best medicines you can come by, and in the case of paradoxical intention, I think Frankl would agree with me. Circling back to my faith and how that kind of comes into this existential stuff, one of the biggest things that I’ve grown to believe is that intention matters more than action (to an extent). While some people may disagree with this, I believe it is proven true by paradoxical intention. Being able to take a step back from your anxieties, laugh with yourself about them, and then slowly change your intention behind them is such a genius way to use humor as a weapon against fear and worry. Most importantly, in changing the intention, you WILL change the outcome. Like the YouTube video said, if you intend to succeed on a test versus intending not to fail on said test, you will have less stress, and therefore do better on the test when not worrying about failing, and only concerning yourself with succeeding. In conclusion, I think it’s clear that this existential “meaning of life” stuff matters more than I thought and definitely can be extremely useful in therapy.

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