| Abstract: | Describes the existential psychotherapy of phobic patients. The failure of much contemporary psychotherapy is based in an insufficient psychology of the phobic process. The phobic mechanism is intentional and derives from the focused awareness patients have of their own vulnerability in a certain situation and an attempt to preempt the situation by the creation of a mythology that permits a degree of control and a concomitant loss of awareness of the experience to be avoided. The psychotherapy of phobic patients is comprised of 5 stages. Patients must be assured as to the correctness, integrity, and limited effect of their anxiety. They then come to see the intentionality and integrity in their phobic structures and subsequently recognize their power over the process should they be willing to restructure their way of being in the world. The 4th step occurs with the reclamation of the specific knowledge and feelings that patients have attempted to render unconscious. The final stage is the constant attentiveness to the interpersonal process and the suffering and survival of the primary difficulty. (9 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
