Existential Psychology

Perhaps, the truth lies in the "Now". It is in the now one finds oneself. The now tells me who I am? What I am? Now is the conglamoration of all my history, all my feelings, all my make up. In the 'now' I can experience the qualities,relationships, events, thoughts, images, memories, fantasies, feelings, acts and so on. My perception of events, persons etc are coloured by what I am. We cannot get rid of that nasty subjectivism, no matter how hard onetries. This inter-connectedness of the subject and object is what is called INTENTIONALITY.

This leads to the big existentialist question: "Who I am?" To put it another way, "What is it to be human?"

The Essence of humanity - the thing that we all share and makes us distinct from everything in the world - is our lack of essence (!), "our no-thing-ness", our freedom. We cannot be captured by philosophical systems, or psychological theories; we cannot be reduced to physical and chemical process; our future cannot be predicted with social statistics. It is true that some of us are black, some of us
are white or brown; some come from this culture or that; some are rich, some are poor; some have one imperfection,some another - the "raw materials" differ dramatically. But it is how we choose to live that makes each of us what we are. We each create ourselves.

We are right in the middle of the universe that is not of our choosing. We are thrown into it. When we begin chooseing our lives, we begin with many choices made for us - genetics, environment, society, family ... etc.

Life is hard. Physical world can give us pain as well as pleasure; the social world can lead to heartbreak and loneliness as well as love and affection; and the personal world contains anxiety, guilt. These are inevitable realities of our life. In the midst of this we have the freedom to choose to be happy by finding meaning and purpose.

We are closely aware of our finality, our death. It is at the face of death perhaps we come to understand life. Aren't we (perhaps) the only creatures who understand our mortality? Face death we should. It is in facing death we face life. And in avoiding death we avoid life itself.

The existential realities should not be denied. For by denying we live inauthentic life. When we live inauthentically we are no longer becoming but only being. If life is a movement, then they have stopped.

To live authentically means to be aware of our freedm and duty to create ourselves of the inevitablity of anxiety, guilt, pain and death. It means to accept these in an act of self-affirmation. It means involvement, compassion, and commitment.