I agree with the existential psychotherapists Rollo May that “the purpose of psychotherapy is to set people free”. That sounds like an ambitious goal so what does it really mean?
Well, to me there are several levels to this. First and foremost, the goal is to set people free from the difficulty that has brought them to therapy in the first place (in psych jargon: the presenting problem). This difficulty is most often some form of anxiety or depression or for some unlucky ones a mixture of both. Getting symptom relief from anxiety or depression is generally not that hard and often makes a significant difference in the life quality of the person. Some people decide to end therapy at this point and, once we have considered some relapse prevention strategies in case the problem comes back in the future, I’m fine with that.
For other clients symptom reduction is only the beginning of their work with me. At this stage of therapy, we focus on a more fundamental (or existential) sense of freedom and explore how to live life as authentically as possible. This often includes looking at how dysfunctional patterns of thought and behaviour from the past has continued to influence the present and to work out how to prevent this from occurring.
So, therapy is for me about helping to set people free – either from distressing symptoms and/or from past difficulties that keeps intruding in the present so that people have the freedom to get on with their lives and make real choices as opposed to “pseudo-choices”. Pseudo-choice is a term I have made up (so if you haven’t come across it anywhere else that’s why) describing what on the surface may look like a “real choice” but really isn’t because it is driven by fear and avoidance. An example would be someone who decides not to date because he had bad break-ups in the past and he is afraid of getting rejected again. His choice not to date is not really a choice but a pseudo-choice because he is driven by fear of rejection (and human beings will go to great lengths to avoid the uncomfortable feeling of fear). On the other hand, if this man is not dating because he is currently concentrating on his career and he hasn’t met someone he is really attracted to, that is a real choice. So, from the outside the behaviour can look exactly the same (the guy is not dating) and so to determine whether this is a real choice or a pseudo-choice we need to look at the motivation behind the behaviour. Existential freedom, for me, is about being able to make real choices in life.