Existential Therapy: Freedom
From Irvin Yalom’s Existential PsychoTherapy
Reflection Questions
Am I the responsible party for my own life?
In what ways to I tend to avoid responsibility?
Compulsivity - “I’m being controlled by someone/thing else.”
Displacement - “It’s someone else’s responsibility.”
Learned Helplessness - “I’m an innocent victim / have no power.”
Denial - “Everything’s fine / no decision needed.”
Procrastination - “I don’t have to choose yet / if I just wait it will resolve itself.”
I what ways to I struggle to make choices?
Inability to access feelings / wishes.
Fear of getting hurt by hope.
Lack of imagination for positive outcomes.
Fear of offending / disappointing someone.
Perfectionism.
Concept Overview
To what degree are we responsible for our own situations?
There is diversity of thought in the world of therapy around whether humans truly have free will or whether their actions are driven by unconscious forces (Freud’s determinism). There is also debate around whether people have power to shape their own lives or are at the mercy of external forces (internal vs. external locus of control). Existentialists like Yalom point out that awareness leads to responsibility. If I know I have a choice, then I’m on the hook for my response (or lack thereof).
This conscious ability to choose is what existentialists call “freedom”. But it comes with its own terror. Kierkegaard famously said, “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” Why? Because, as Yalom points out, “decisions are expensive.” Making choices narrows possibilities and exposes us to potential guilt or regret. As a result, we often resist living as the responsible party in our own lives.
But according to Yalom, the guilt we might feel for the choices we’ve made or the choices we refuse to make can actually serve as a “lighthouse”, guiding us back to our values, desires, and potential. The only thing we can do is make conscious choices that align with our values moving forward.
Deep Dive
Yalom argues that if there’s no such thing as freedom of the will and no conscious seat from which a person makes choices then we can’t reasonably hold anyone accountable. He states, “Unless the individual is free to constitute the world in any of a number of ways, then the concept of responsibility has no meaning.”
Yalom’s position is in contrast to Freud, who argued free will is an illusion. Freud leaned toward “psychic determinism”, the idea that all behaviors are the result of unconscious forces. Albert Bandura offers a theory of "reciprocal determinism” that posits that all behaviors are the result of a dynamic interaction between personal factors (like beliefs, thoughts, and self-efficacy), external environmental influences, and the behavior itself.
For existentialists like Yalom, authenticity and self-authorship are key to a meaningful life. Yalom states, “Responsibility means authorship. To be aware of responsibility is to be aware of creating one’s own self, destiny, life predicament, feelings and, if such be the case, one’s own suffering.” Throughout the writings of Existentialist thinkers one can find reflection on the sin of betraying oneself. Essentially, avoiding one’s own self-actualization out of refusal to take responsibility for it.
Yalom quotes Paul Tillich, “Man’s being is not only given to him but also demanded of him. He is responsible for it; literally, he is required to answer, if he is asked, what he has made of himself. He who asks him is his judge, namely he himself. The situation produces the anxiety which in relative terms is the anxiety of guilt, in absolute terms the anxiety of self-rejection or condemnation. Man is asked to make of himself what he is supposed to become, to fulfill his destiny. In every act of moral, self-affirmation man contributes to the fulfillment of his destiny, to the actualization of what he potentially is.”
Another example: “The same point is made by the Hasidic rabbi, Susya, who shortly before his death said, “When I get to heaven they will not ask me, ‘Why were you not Moses?’ Instead they will ask ‘Why were you not Susya? Why did you not become what only you could become?”
Yalom argues that guilt can be helpful, pinging us with a message that something’s wrong. He states, “But how is one to find one’s potential? How does one recognize it when one meets it? How does one know when one has lost one’s way? Heidegger, Tillich, Maslow, and May would all answer in unison: “Through Guilt! Through Anxiety! Through the call of conscience!” There is general consensus among them that existential guilt is a positive constructive force, a guide calling oneself back to oneself.”
What do we do with this guilt? We can only move forward. Yalom states, “Responsibility is a two-edged sword: if one accepts responsibility for one’s life situation and makes the decision to change, the implication is that one alone is responsible for the past wreckage of one’s life and could have changed long ago … The best way—perhaps the only way—of dealing with guilt—guilt from violation either of another or of oneself—is through atonement. One cannot will backward. One can atone for the past only by altering the future.”
Yalom argues that our sense of responsibility must then be accompanied by the willing of a new future. And the first part of that is a “wish”. “Willing is not only power and resolve but potentiality that is intimately bound up with the future. Through the will we project ourselves into the future, and the wish is the beginning of that process. The wish is “an admission that we want the future to be such and such; it is a capacity to reach down deep into ourselves and preoccupy ourselves with a longing to change the future.”
Of course wishing or envisioning the future we want is not enough. It must be accompanied by concrete choice and action. “Awareness of responsibility in itself is not synonymous with change; it is only the first step in the process of change. That was what I meant when, in the last chapter, I said that the patient who becomes aware of responsibility enters the vestibule of change … In order to change, one must first assume responsibility: one must commit oneself to some action. The word “responsibility” itself denotes that capability: “response” + “ability”—that is the ability to respond. Change is the business of psychotherapy, and therapeutic change must be expressed in action—not in knowing, intending, or dreaming.”
Yalom repeatedly references the end of the Samuel Beckett play Waiting for Godot to emphasize the importance of action. The play is about the absurdity of life and the cyclical nature of suffering. He points out, “The characters think, plan, procrastinate, and resolve, but they do not decide. The play ends with this sequence:
Vladimir: Shall we go?
Estragon: Let’s go.
[Stage directions:] No one moves.