And ????

What do they do then ?

Despite the grandiosity of all this philosophy, the work  is fairly straightforward. Certainly there should be no mystique and anything is open to questioning. Basically, our exploration will be based on talking together through whatever means of communication - but there are other experts and modalities we can draw on if they are useful to you. We should stress the importance of your continually evaluating what is happening for you in this work. Although we are dealing with life issues, it is not the aim to make this process a life-long practice. Indeed, only in exceptional circumstances would we expect to continue longer than 12 months in regular meetings. Of course, this does not preclude clients from returning in the future if they feel the need to do so.

Practicalities 

There will be an initial introduction before sessions begin . This may be offered as 'no fee'.  You will be encouraged to ask questions on anything and everything that you feel is pertinent to your process.  After some agreement is reached on what is going to work for you, 

  

As stated elsewhere, fees are determined by client and respondant during the initial introduction.  There is room for negotiation. The discussion of fees is not an issue of worth but a necessary part of placing therapy in the context of the whole of a person's lived experience.

Existential Phenomenology allows for the client to be self-directed.  The purpose of the consultant is to present new ways of looking at old and present issues, whilst at the same time offering a variety of techniques and insights that facilitate self awareness and intentionality.

Existential therapists or consult services, as a group, have not identified themselves with a distinct clinical procedure, rather the movement has provided a growing pool of concepts and techniques which have been effective in helping ordinary people who do not self-define as in need of counseling, to recognize and fulfill their highest potential. In this process encounter has been noted as playing an important role. This encounter may be brief or enduring, may take place within an exploring professional relationship as well as outside of it. The result: a dramatic transformation of personality in which the moderator or facilitator operates as a catalytic influence rather than as a model with whom the person identifies or on whom transference is established .

An existential approach to life exploration or therapy is appropriate with clients who confront some boundary situation (i.e.., a confrontation with death, the facing of some irreversible decision, a sudden thrust into isolation, the move from childhood to adolescence). The desire to work with existential crisis will depend on the attitudes and perceptivity of the facilitator as well as the clients willingness to deal on the level of the "givens" of existence. 

But there does not have to be a crisis for existential movement to take place.  It is enough that we are born ..... we live ...... and then we face the unknowing of Death to provoke enquiry into the manner of our existence!

We are also Lacanian.  This means that we look at the language as well as the issues.  The words that we use often mirror the real meaning in ways that are more enlightening than any theory.  The individual continues to translate his/her lived experience into a language-based process. 

This language is what often separates us from what is the real underlying meaning of our existence, whilst (at the same time) revealing a felt presence, shared by all participants of the encounter - some unspoken, shared sense of reality, which lies just beyond verbalization. In our discussion of real self or experience we are able to admit  Lacan's view  that suggests that the self is not "...a singular, coherent, and bounded entity..." but is seen as "...a loose net of contextual, contradictory, and shifting identifications..." enveloping the absence of a discreet core (Loewenstein, 1994)This understand of self, as experienced in the world, facilitates true actualization ----- the facilitation of possibility into probability, and the vision into the real.  True actualization becomes possible.-- And we a realists!  We live in a world where every decision matters .... a world of reciprocal determinism.  It is the hope that each choice that we make in our life makes the big decisions both self and workable. That we exercise that right and obligation to choose in a manner that speaks to community rather than selfish individualism.  That we remain true to ourselves - in validation rather than affirmation of our self discovery.  Modalities are dependent on what is necessary to facilitate what the client feels is wanted to get the work done.  Implicit in the notion of "approach" is the active participation of the client and ourselves in the work within the healing and accepting relationship, in contrast to the expert who attempts to remain objective and outside the relationship, often imposing external explanations and answers. 
When necessary, and as directed by the work, clients will be encouraged to seek and work with appropriate professionals But these issues are self evident within the process of dialog.
The lack of definitive and authoritarian answers  is another of those existential dilemmas -- that we seek the security of meaning and certainty even where it does not exist. The phenomenological approach further stresses awareness of the client as he or she is rather than explaining behavior exclusively in terms of external labels whether medical, psychological , philosophical  or social. This is a recognition of the "infinity" of the human person.