Existential Therapy and Jungian Analysis

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Psychology
Stephen A. Diamond1
Abstract
Existential therapy and Jungian analysis share much in common. The early
Jung, with his self-professed scientific study and “empirical” description
of the human psyche focused strictly on “observed facts,” fancied himself
a phenomenologist of sorts, loosely using a philosophical method first
described in detail by Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) at the start of the
20th century. In this article, the author, a clinical and forensic psychologist,
compares the contemporary practices of existential therapy and Jungian
analysis, citing essential similarities and differences, and proposing and
describing the complementary synthesis of these two penetrating and potent
theoretical orientations in a reimagined form of therapy he calls “existential
depth psychology.” He argues here that contemporary existential therapy’s
reflexively broad dismissal of depth psychology and its profound clinical
wisdom diminishes it immensely. And vice versa. Given the inherent bias
against such sagacious, depth-oriented counseling and psychotherapy in
today’s increasingly vapid mental health marketplace, Jungian analysis and
existential therapy, despite, or really due to, their differences, desperately
need each other to become more balanced, whole, efficacious, relevant, and
viable humanistic treatment approaches.
1Ryokan College, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Corresponding Author:
Stephen A. Diamond, 6535 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90048, USA.
Email: dr_sdiamond@hotmail.com
2 Journal of Humanistic Psychology 00(0)
Keywords
Jungian analysis, existential analysis, existential therapy, existential depth
psychology, phenomenology, analytical psychology, the daimonic, despair,
anxiety, anger, rage, violence, evil, creativity, spirituality, Carl Jung, Medard
Boss, Otto Rank, Rollo May, Viktor Frankl, Irvin Yalom
Introduction
Existential therapy and Jungian analysis share much in common. The early
Jung, with his self-professed scientific study and “empirical” description of
the human psyche focused strictly on “observed facts,” fancied himself a
phenomenologist of sorts, loosely using a philosophical method first
described in detail by philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) at the start
of the 20th century. The pivotal appearance of Husserl’s work closely coin-
cided with the at least equally revolutionary release of Freud’s first major
work, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900/2010), with its fateful influence on
the then 25-year-old apprentice psychiatrist Carl Jung’s embryonic career,
and the gestating psychoanalytic movement in general.
As noted in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2003), following in
the footsteps of his famed teacher, philosopher Franz Brentano, “Husserl
defined phenomenology as ‘the science of the essence of consciousness,’
centered on the defining trait of intentionality, we have approached explicitly
‘in the first person.’” Knowing of and attempting to apply this disciplined
phenomenological approach and attitude to his own field of study eventually
permitted Jung to put aside some of his prior indoctrination by traditional
canonical religion, reductionistic medical materialism, and orthodox Freudian
dogmatism, freeing him to explore—without excessive presupposition—
observe, and describe the personal and transpersonal phenomena of the
psyche precisely as they presented themselves to him and his patients. Indeed,
it could be argued that Jung’s phenomenologically informed approach to psy-
choanalysis is what later gave birth to his own distinctive Analytical
Psychology or Jungian analysis. (See, e.g., psychologist Roger Brooke’s
book on this subject, Jung and Phenomenology.)
Referring to Jung’s phenomenological, and therefore, essentially existen-
tial bent, Brooke (1991) comments that, “many of Jung’s own writings lead
beyond the confines of his theoretical thinking and indicate an understanding
of human being that lies at the heart of existential phenomenology” (p. 2).
Since what subsequently came to be known in Europe as “existential analy-
sis” (established by Binswanger, Boss, and Frankl), and a little later on,
“existential therapy” in America (established by May, Yalom, and Bugental)
are founded on this same phenomenological method, Jung can, as this article
Diamond 3
contends, be credited with being one of the forerunners of today’s existential

psychotherapy, and of humanistic psychology in general.
However, the fact is, as philosopher Walter Shelburne (1983) points out,
that, for the most part,
The ideas of Carl Jung are seldom mentioned in conjunction with existentialism.
Jung himself had almost nothing positive to say about existentialist thinkers. He
seems to have considered them to be dealing with psychological questions with
the inadequate and misleading tools of philosophical abstractions. . . . The
existentialists, on the other hand, seldom write of Jung or Jungian concepts. . . .
With the singular exception of Paul Tillich, who appreciated Jung and was
appreciated by him, there is no attempt by either Jung or any of the
existentialist[s] to probe common ground. (p. 58)
In this article, I compare the contemporary practices of existential therapy

and Jungian analysis, citing essential similarities and differences, and
describe the complementary synthesis of these two profound and powerful
theoretical orientations in a form of therapy I call “existential depth psychol-
ogy” (see Diamond, 1996, 1999). In choosing this specific designation to
describe my own therapeutic approach developed and refined over the past
four decades, I deliberately juxtapose the terms existential and depth psychol-
ogy, creating what for some seems an impossible and incompatible marriage
between the two, one which has been the subject of much controversy and
debate due, in part, to what most existential therapists consider their inherent
philosophical irreconcilability (see, e.g., Cohn, 1999; Hinton, in press).
Nonetheless, as C. G. Jung (1921/1971, p. 480) himself suggested with his
theory of the “transcendent function,” I propose here that even that which
may be initially perceived as irreconcilable polar opposites, whether within
the psyche or in the world, is at some level integrally and inextricably related,
and thus, subject to potential reunion. I conceive of existential depth psychol-
ogy as exactly such a symbolic coincidentia oppositorum or rapprochement,
transcending the customary tension of opposition, antagonism, and confusion
historically characterizing these two distinct but fundamentally closely
related orientations to psychotherapy (see also Minier, 1997). What I describe
here as existential depth psychology integrates and reconciles the pioneering
“depth psychology” of Freud, Adler, Rank, and particularly C. G. Jung, with
“existential analysis” or “existential therapy.” More generally, existential
depth psychology acknowledges and addresses the impressive and powerful
phenomenon of unconsciousness, the basic concern in depth psychology,
while striving simultaneously to conceptualize the classic psychoanalytic
notion of the “unconscious” and other core concepts central to traditional

depth psychology, less concretely, literally, reductively, disintegratively,
deterministically, and dogmatically. For, as I have elsewhere said regarding
psychotherapy, “Theorizing or mythologizing is not the devil; dogmatism is,
whether that dogmatism is doctrinaire or rabidly anti-doctrine” (Diamond,
1999a, p. 37).
Defining Depth Psychology and Existential Therapy

Let us begin by briefly defining these two different therapeutic approaches as
best we can. The term depth psychology is derived from the German word
Tiefenpsychologie, first used by psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler (once Jung’s
supervisor) to describe psychotherapeutic methods that, as a matter of course,
plumb and explore the darkest and most inaccessible “depths” of the psyche,
that is, the “unconscious,” foremost among them being Sigmund Freud’s psy-
choanalysis and C. G. Jung’s Analytical Psychology (see, for instance,
Ellenberger, 1970). Existential analysis arose during the 1930s as a radical
critique of and rebellion against both Freudianism and Jungianism, particu-
larly the problematically reified, divisive, fragmenting, and overly determin-
istic concept of “the unconscious.” Its iconoclastic founders, psychoanalysts
Ludwig Binswanger and Medard Boss, were deeply dissatisfied, frustrated,
and disillusioned with the perceived dogmatism and literalism of both
Freudian and Jungian analysis, which they felt prevented the analyst from
truly perceiving and knowing the patient or analysand as she or he actually
existed in the world. Drawing heavily upon European existential philoso-
phy—especially that of Husserl’s celebrated student, Martin Heidegger—to
critique and modify these traditional methods of psychotherapeutic treat-
ment, they asserted that it was the analyst’s tendency to see the patient
through the distorted lens of his or her own preexisting theoretical orienta-
tion, thus, forcing the person to fit onto a Procrustean bed comprised solely
of preconceived Freudian or Jungian notions and constructs. In other words,
both Binswanger and Boss felt that analysts were not truly encountering,
attending to, and accurately revealing or disclosing the living person in his or
her unique subjective and objective contextual reality, that is, being-in-
the-world (Dasein), but rather relating relatively superficially, rigidly, and
rotely to a reductionistic and distorted formulaic projection or predetermined
interpretation of the patient’s experience based primarily on the practitioner’s
particular Weltanschauung or worldview.
The fundamental method or technique of existential analysis or therapy is
phenomenology (see Diamond, 2016a; Längle & Klaassen, in press):
Diamond 5
For existential therapists, “phenomenology” refers to the disciplined philosophical

method by which these ultimate concerns or “givens” are addressed, and through
which the person’s basic experience of being-in-the-world can best be illuminated
or revealed, and thus, more accurately understood. This phenomenological
method begins by deliberately trying to set aside one’s presuppositions so as to
be more fully open and receptive to the exploration of another person’s subjective
reality. (World Confederation for Existential Therapy, 2016)
The primary purpose of the phenomenological method is to perceive the

patient’s subjective experience of reality as truly and directly as possible,
without excessive interpretation, valuation, distortion, or preconception, and
to carefully observe and describe rather than explain and interpret it, in an
effort to more empathically and accurately relate to the patient, and to permit
the person to more fully and deeply experience his or her own existence. “The
aim of [existential] therapy,” writes Rollo May (1983), “is that the patient
experience his existence as real [my emphasis]” (p. 162). May (1983, p. 99)
describes and exemplifies this existential epiphany as the “I am” experience:
I exist, I have awareness, I have agency, I have will, I have power, I have both
freedom and responsibility despite the deterministic forces of fate in my life.
“It is an experience of one’s self, one’s being, one’s existence as inextricably
and umbilically rooted in the cosmos, in Being . . .” (Diamond, 1996, p. 225).
This strongly experiential emphasis—in contrast to the predominantly
insight-oriented, cognitive, or behavioral focus of most contemporary psy-
chotherapy, including psychoanalysis—is a key characteristic of existential
therapy. Though existential therapy is rooted deeply in philosophy, rather
than being a morose, esoteric, and overly intellectualized interaction, it is in
actuality an exceedingly pragmatic, concrete, positive, experiential, “realisti-
cally hopeful, holistic, and fundamentally humanistic method of treatment”
(Diamond, 2016a, p. 324).
According to a formal definition collectively created by the recently estab-
lished World Confederation for Existential Therapy (2016), “Existential ther-
apy is a profoundly philosophical approach characterized in practice by an
emphasis on relatedness, spontaneity, flexibility, and freedom from rigid doc-
trine or dogma.” Not unlike Jungian analysis, existential therapy recognizes
the inherent human potential for both good and evil, the freedom to choose
who and how to be within the given limitations of fate and our personal
responsibility for those choices, as well as the innate need for meaning and
purpose in life, despite the sometimes seeming meaninglessness of existence.
For existential practitioners, the human relationship between patient or client
and counselor or therapist is paramount:
Existential therapy generally consists of a supportive and collaborative

exploration of patients’ or clients’ lives and experiences. . . . Existential
therapists see their practice as a mutual, collaborative, encouraging and
explorative dialogue between two struggling human beings—one of whom is
seeking assistance from the other who is professionally trained to provide it.
(World Confederation for Existential Therapy, 2016)
However, in distinction to Jungian analysis, and Freudian psychoanalysis

especially, the clinical focus of existential therapy is predominantly on the
present here-and-now circumstance and subjective experiences, both within
and without the consulting room, rather than exclusively on repressed early
formative, traumatic, and conflictual psychosexual influences from infancy,
childhood, and adolescence, or an archetypal analysis of personal and
transpersonal contents and images. Nonetheless, the profound influence of
past experience, and of the phenomenon of unconsciousness in general on the
present and yet-to-be realized future, are acknowledged in existential ther-
apy, and addressed to the extent that they manifest, emerge, or arise spontane-
ously in the present. Again, to cite the World Confederation for Existential
Therapy (2016),
In keeping with its strong philosophical foundation, existential therapy takes

the human condition itself—in all its myriad facets, from tragic to wondrous,
horrific to beautiful, material to spiritual—as its central focus. . . . In both its
theoretical orientation and practical approach, existential therapy emphasizes
and honors the perpetually emerging, unfolding, and paradoxical nature of
human experience, and brings an unquenchable curiosity to what it truly means
to be human.
As with Jungian analysis, the ultimate aim of existential therapy is not

merely to ameliorate painful psychiatric symptoms like anxiety, depression,
and psychosis, or to modify irrational, problematic cognitions, affects, and
behavior—though both approaches can certainly assist in doing so—but per-
haps most important, to help patients to accept, assert, and more freely
express and become authentically themselves in the world, to aid them in
discovering or creating and choosing their own personal philosophy, mythol-
ogy, or psychospiritual platform on which to stand in life, and to come to
terms psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually with, and bravely embrace,
both the banal and frequently brutal facts of existence.
Finally, as will be discussed in greater detail later, much like Jung’s
Analytical Psychology, existential therapy is generally far less focused on a
traditional medicalized process of diagnosing psychopathology and provid-
ing rapid symptom relief per se than most other current forms of counseling
Diamond 7
and psychotherapy. Instead, distressing “symptoms” such as anxiety, depres-

sion, anger, or rage are recognized as potentially meaningful and comprehen-
sible reactions to current circumstances, to personal, collective, and existential
contextual reality (see, e.g., Berra, in press). As such, existential therapy is
mainly concerned with fully experiencing and exploring these affective, cog-
nitive, or behavioral phenomena in depth, toward the goal of accepting or
tolerating rather than suppressing or curing them.
Jung’s Analytical Psychology and Existential

Analysis
My basic premise in this article is that despite very often valid and valuable
criticisms of Freudianism and Jungianism by the existential analysts, and of
existential analysis by Jung (see below), C. G. Jung was himself, in both
spirit and practice, remarkably existential and phenomenological in his atti-
tude and approach to the psyche and psychotherapy. For example, according
to Presbyterian minister William Clough (2013), “Kant declared things-
in-themselves unknowable, but Jung saw that we do experience at least one
thing itself directly: we experience our own existence [italics added].” Carl
Jung’s phenomenological leanings contributed significantly to his eventual
defection from Freud and Freudianism. More specifically, Jung’s phenome-
nological inclinations led, for instance, to his conception of libido as some-
thing more than mere sexual energy, but as a generic “life force” or elan vital;
and to his discovery and description of something beyond the “personal
unconscious,” namely, the transpersonal, archetypal, or impersonal collective
unconscious, the shadow, the anima and animus, the Self.
Phenomenology enabled Jung to understand symptoms, dreams, and cul-
tural phenomena not only reductively as wish-fulfillment resulting always from
repressed sexuality, aggression, trauma, or other denied instinctual desires, but
as symbolizing and speaking, both personally and collectively, directly to the
here-and-now, present-day situation, providing potentially precious compensa-
tory guidance from the unconscious toward becoming more balanced, authen-
tic, and whole (individuation). In this sense, it was Jung’s phenomenological or
existential orientation to psychoanalysis (depth psychology)—and toward his
own subjective experiences so courageously and creatively documented in The
Red Book (2009)—that ultimately became what we call Jungian analysis, with
its core emphasis on meaning, wholeness, and spirituality. There, in that color-
fully illustrated, hand-written journal documenting his prolonged and painful
yet transformative personal existential crisis, the explicitly existential sounding
Jung 2009) philosophically muses, “from being and nonbeing everything
emerged that was, is, and will be” (p. 523).
However, in fairness, I must note now that Jung was no fan of existential-
ism nor the early existential analysts! Certainly he had an appreciation of
Nietzsche, the preeminent existential philosopher, whose significant influ-
ence upon him can be clearly seen in both the style and substance of The Red
Book: “. . . I had studied Nietzsche . . . and there I saw an entirely different
psychology, a perfectly competent psychology, but all built upon the power
drive” (Jung, 1957/1977a, p. 280). Jung was also familiar with theistic Danish
existential philosopher Søren Kierkegaard’s work, but, despite arriving at
some similar insights, found it more reflective of his pathological failure to
live life fully, and, thus, considered Kierkegaard’s philosophy flawed and
fundamentally neurotic.
In any case, C. G. Jung did not see himself as an existentialist or existen-
tial analyst. Far from it. In a revealing series of letters to colleague and fellow
Swiss psychiatrist Medard Boss, Jung (1947) writes:
I have tried seriously to form some picture of your philosophical concepts from
your letter but found myself step by step entangled in contradictions. I am just
no philosopher. For example, I do not know the difference between “explaining”
and “interpreting”; nor can I recognize anything tangible in the “world-image”
of a patient. And. . . I never found out what you mean by an “existential-
analytic” way of looking at things. . . . You can grasp the extent of my non-
comprehension by the fact that I do not in the least understand why you ascribe
to me exist.-phil. assumptions. . . . I refer to this only to show how far our
concepts differ . . . (Jung, 1953/1976, pp. xliv-xlv)
And from the same clearly disclamatory letter:
Your “interpretations” in the light of existential philosophy are so entirely

different from Freud’s or my approach, which seeks only to “interpret” facts,
that I do not even understand what you mean by them. . . . I admit without
further ado that I do not comprehend your existential philosophy but will gladly
let myself be taught better if this can be done in a logical way and sustained by
facts. (Jung, 1953/1976, pp. xliii-xliv)
Addressing in this same remarkable correspondence the effort of existen-

tial analysis to supposedly transcend the cleavage between subject and object
in ways akin to Zen Buddhism, Jung cautions that “in spite of all existential
philosophy the opposition between ego and world, subject and object, is not
annulled. That would be too simple. Then we would need no further psycho-
therapeutic efforts” (Jung, 1953/1976, pp. xlii-xliii). And concerning
Heidegger and his disciples, Jung (1947) is even less sympathetic:
“Heidegger’s modus philosophandi is neurotic through and through and is
Diamond 9
ultimately rooted in his psychic crankiness. His kindred spirits, close or dis-
tant, are sitting in lunatic asylums, some as patients and some as psychiatrists
on a philosophical rampage” (Jung, 1973, p. 331).
So there are surely significant philosophical differences between Jungian
analysis and the existentialism of Heidegger as well as Sartre, some (but by
no means all) of which are summarized succinctly here by philosopher Walter
Shelburne (1983): “Jung is . . . in disagreement with Sartre in defending an
idea of a determinate human nature, describing the self in a developmental
way, and in not claiming that human freedom is absolute or unconditioned”
(p. 58). For instance, Sartre’s (in Kaufmann, 1946/1975) famous statement,
“existence precedes essence” (p. 349) seems to directly contradict Jung’s
essentialist theories of the nature of the collective unconscious, archetypes,
and psychological types (see Buffardi, in press; Hinton, in press).
But this raises the question of whether we should take Sartre’s emphasis
on existence (or being) over essence temporally, literally, and mutually exclu-
sively, or rather as an acknowledgment of the primacy of being despite
essence: for example, clearly, before one can have a “collective unconscious,”
“introverted” or “extraverted” temperament, or “shadow,” and be able to sub-
jectively experience it, one must, of course, first physically exist. To be born
and embodied without choosing to be, and thrown randomly into existence,
to sink or swim. And as a radical insistence that despite the undeniable influ-
ences of our essence, unfettered freedom is inherent to human existence,
which means we can and must responsibly choose how to relate to our essen-
tial nature and to the immutable existential facts of life, and cannot avoid
doing so: “For if indeed existence precedes essence, one will never be able to
explain one’s action by reference to a given and specific human nature; in
other words, there is no determinism—man is free, man is freedom” (Sartre,
in Kaufmann, 1946/1975, p. 353). Despite the undeniable forces of fate and
multitude of deterministic influences, there are ultimately no excuses for our
choices and actions. We cannot blame life’s givens or our human nature or
essence for what we are and what we become. Sounding distinctly Sartrean,
Jung purportedly somewhere proclaims, “I am not what happened to me. . . .
I am what I choose to become.” This strikingly resembles Sartre’s (1953/1962)
seminal existentialist statement: “I am my choices” (p. 5). “Nevertheless,”
notes Shelburne (1983) regarding the differences between Jung and Sartre,
“the Jungian concept of individuation is similar to Sartre’s ideal of authentic-
ity, in that both focus on the goal of achieving meaningful existence through
development of inner resources, creative exercise of freedom and overcom-
ing self-deception” (p. 58).
Moreover, notwithstanding his self-confessed consternation and exaspera-
tion with existential analysis, Jung nonetheless surprisingly comments: “We
must never forget that the world is, in the first place, a subjective phenome-
non [italics added]” (1961a, p. 177), and, “Existence is only real when it is
conscious to somebody” (Jung, 1952/1969f, p. 373). Here he evidently sym-
pathizes with existential therapy’s central emphasis on subjectivity, and how
each person experiences and attempts to make meaningful sense of his or her
own existence, on both the personal and archetypal levels. Yet despite this
seemingly phenomenological statement, Jung never solipsistically denies or
devalues objective, existential reality in favor of subjectivity. Indeed, having
experienced his own disorienting period of crisis and confusion between
inner and outer reality during midlife, Jung came to see that existential reality
does not consist only of the objective, outer world of space and time, but of
the timeless and limitless subjective inner world as well, each realm repre-
senting equally “real” polarities of an ultimately singular reality, in dialecti-
cal relationship with the other. (See Hinton, in press, on Jung’s privileging of
the timeless archetypal realm.) That what we collectively and consensually
agree to call “objective reality” is no more an important or pertinent part of
existence than our subjective experience, inner reality, or interiority. The
truth is, said Jung, we all live in two different but integrally related, insepa-
rable, and intertwined worlds: the world of objective reality and the world of
subjective reality, which, for Jung, would together form what he refers to
generally as the “personal unconscious,” as well as the transpersonal “collec-
tive unconscious” or “objective psyche” (1917/1966, p. 66). This unified ver-
sus dichotomous Cartesian view of human existence parallels that of
existential therapy, which, as May (1958) indicates, seeks, in its phenomeno-
logical, holistic, and contextual perception of being, to surmount, at least
momentarily, “the cleavage between subject and object which has bedeviled
Western thought and science since shortly after the Renaissance” (p. 11).
On Myth, Meaning, and Meaninglessness

Mythology is, of course, a central focus in Jungian analysis. Both Jungian
and existential analysis stress the inherent human need for meaning.
Mythology serves the purpose of making meaning of the patient’s experience
and putting it into some greater archetypal perspective as part of the human
condition. If, for instance,
existence is inherently meaningless, as most existentialists contend, myths are

one way in which we create meaning from meaninglessness. . . . Myth may
admittedly serve the defensive purpose of buffering us from the harsh, raw
meaninglessness of life; but it also seems to be an archetypal psychic function.
(Diamond, 1999a, p. 34)
Diamond 11
Because myths encapsulate eternal truths about the human condition emerg-
ing from our shared collective history, they can make life more rich and
meaningful, and lessen or alleviate our sense of existential aloneness, alien-
ation, and isolation. As Jung knew well, myths reveal that our human experi-
ence, especially our existential suffering, is not merely personal but also
impersonal, transpersonal, or archetypal.
In his crowning work, The Cry for Myth (1991), Rollo May acknowledges
the vital importance of myths and mythology in both existential and depth
psychology, stating that “contemporary therapy is almost entirely concerned
. . . with the problem of the individual’s search for myths” (p. 9). He goes on
to say that,
A myth is a way of making sense in a senseless world. Myths are narrative

patterns that give significance to our existence. Whether the meaning of
existence is only what we put into life by our own individual fortitude, as Sartre
would hold, or whether there is meaning we need to discover, as Kierkegaard
would state, the result is the same: myths are our way of finding this meaning
and significance. (May, 1991, p. 15)
Myth is an essential method of making meaning: No myth, no meaning.

According to Viennese existential analyst and logotherapist Viktor Frankl
(1946/1967, 1946/1984), human beings are congenitally imbued with a pow-
erful “will to meaning,” which, when chronically thwarted or frustrated,
results in an “existential vacuum” eventuating in the appearance of patho-
logical symptoms. Yalom (1980, p. 448) cites a study indicating that 68% of
patients entering outpatient psychotherapy stated that their need for “increased
meaning in life” was an important motivation for seeking treatment. A longi-
tudinal study across the life span reported a significant correlation between
meaning and mortality, with those living more meaningfully tending to out-
live those lacking meaning and purpose in their lives (Hill & Turiano, 2014).
Presaging the existential analysts, Jung perceptively saw, based on his
own clinical work, that “. . . the lack of meaning in life is a soul-sickness
whose full extent and full import our age has not as yet begun to compre-
hend” (1934/1969c, p. 415). Anticipating Frankl’s focus on the instinctual
search for some sense of meaning and purpose, Jung writes, “I have observed
that a life directed to an aim is in general better, richer, and healthier than an
aimless one” (1930/1969a, pp. 401-402). Moreover, Jung (1961b) further
notes that “Meaninglessness inhibits fullness of life and is therefore equiva-
lent to illness” (p. 340). He unequivocally concludes 2 years before his death:
“Man cannot stand a meaningless life” (1959/1977c, p. 439). Reminiscent of
Nietzsche, and his oft-quoted assertion that one who has the why for his or her
existence will be able to tolerate almost any how, Jung, finally, in his mem-
oirs (1961b), declares: “Meaning makes a great many things endurable—per-
haps everything” (p. 340).
The quest for meaning, whether expressed explicitly or implicitly, directly
or indirectly in the form of neurotic or psychotic symptomatology, philo-
sophical nihilism, or spiritual crisis, is something both existential therapy and
Jungian analysis treat very seriously, though not necessarily in the same man-
ner. Like Kierkegaard, Jung intimates that there may be some fixed, objec-
tive, latent meaning in life for us to find: “The soul longs to discover its
meaning.” And he further suggests that, “A psychoneurosis must be under-
stood, ultimately, as the suffering of a soul which has not discovered its
meaning” (Jung, 1932/1969b, pp. 330-331). Seeming to completely contra-
dict himself, and sounding somewhat Sartrean, Jung elsewhere states:
Events signify nothing, they signify only in us. We create the meaning of events.
The meaning is and always was artificial. We make it. . . . That which you need
comes from yourself, namely the meaning of the event. . . . Events have no
meaning. The meaning of events is the way of salvation that you create. (2009,
p. 152)
And then there are these stunning and deeply dialectical existential state-
ments, also from Jung’s rather Nietzschean Red Book (2009): “So meaning is a
moment and a transition from absurdity to absurdity, and absurdity only a
moment and a transition from meaning to meaning” (p. 163); “As day requires
night and night requires day, so meaning requires absurdity and absurdity
requires meaning . . . reality is meaning and absurdity” (pp. 162-163); “The
highest truth is one and the same with the absurd” (p. 161). Existential therapy
recognizes the possibility that life may be basically meaningless, except to the
extent we bravely imbue it with meaning. That life holds no hidden intrinsic
meaning other than that which we choose to give it. But, as Freud insightfully
suggested regarding the psychology of religion in particular, without the coura-
geous capacity to tolerate life’s partial or perhaps total meaninglessness, we
humans are highly susceptible—to the point of developing a neurosis or psy-
chosis—to choosing to believe almost anything, no matter how far-fetched,
improbable or irrational, in an incessant effort to allay our existential anxiety
about the apparent meaninglessness of life and death, and to satisfy our insa-
tiable appetite and incessant search for significance.
For the clinician, this all begs the basic question: How to best deal thera-
peutically with the matter of meaning and meaninglessness? Jung’s first
impulse, as is well known, was to try to refer patients suffering from meaning-
lessness back to their priest, pastor, rabbi, cleric, minister, or monk, in hope of
Diamond 13
them rediscovering some spiritual meaning through the traditional structure

and rituals of organized religion. But Jung soon realized that for many, if not
most, of his patients, this return to religion was no longer psychologically or
spiritually possible, and that he would therefore need instead to aid them in
creating a more meaningful life for themselves outside and beyond conven-
tional religious systems. Jungian analysis does so, in part, by assisting patients
in discovering meaning in dreams, mythology, and archetypal patterns in life,
toward the ultimate goal of individuation or wholeness.
While some existential therapists (like Rollo May, for example) also make
use of mythology and interpretive dream analysis, most today radically resist,
seeking to preclude any and all forms of explanation or interpretation that
might, intentionally or unintentionally, provide patients with the therapist’s
theoretical meaning system rather than permitting them to find meaning,
whenever possible, through their own personal self-exploration and philo-
sophical reflection. For instance, it could be argued that
even the elementary psychoanalytic notion that dreams are meaningful

symbolic productions of the unconscious can be a dogmatic presupposition.
Some dreams may be meaningful and others not; some symbolic and others
literal; some personal and others archetypal or collective; some about the
present, others about the past or the future. In existential therapy, it is considered
crucial to hold all such possibilities in mind, to tolerate the tension of not
knowing, and to refrain from leaping to premature conclusions. (Diamond,
2016a, p. 337)
In either case, contemporary existential therapists such as Yalom (1980) sug-

gest that the best antidote to meaninglessness is total commitment to and
unequivocal engagement in life: “Engagement is the therapeutic answer to
meaninglessness regardless of the latter’s source” (p. 482). In other words,
we create or discover meaning by fully committing to, living, and experienc-
ing existence as deeply and passionately as possible, as opposed to merely
observing and reflecting on it intellectually, spiritually, psychologically, or
philosophically from some lofty and detached perspective. Last, in his auto-
biographical Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1961b), contemplating the
question of life’s ultimate meaning, a mature Jung muses,
The world into which we are born is brutal and cruel, and at the same time of
divine beauty. Which element we think outweighs the other, whether
meaninglessness or meaning, is a matter of temperament. . . . Probably as in all
metaphysical questions, both are true: Life is—or has—meaning and
meaninglessness. I cherish the anxious hope that meaning will preponderate
and win the battle. (pp. 358-359)
Jung (1961b) philosophically concludes, “The meaning of my existence is

that life has addressed a question to me” (p. 318), further speculating that,
“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a
light in the darkness of mere being” (p. 326). Here we are reminded of
Frankl’s (1946/1984) remarkably similar sentiment: “Ultimately, man should
not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he
who is asked” (p. 131).
On Suffering, Anxiety, and Mortality

Suffering is an inextricable part of human existence. An inescapable, existen-
tial fact of life. The sources of human suffering are legion: We suffer from
physical illnesses or injuries; from psychopathology; from painful emotional
reactions to rejection, loss, abandonment, isolation, loneliness, alienation,
lack of purpose or sense of significance; and from a broad spectrum of cir-
cumstantial stressors such as poverty, insecurity, starvation, neglect, abuse,
divorce, racism, sexism, ageism, cruelty, hostility, death, war, and natural
disasters. Though suffering is endemic to human existence, some is neurotic,
excessive and self-created; while some is completely natural and unavoid-
able. It is typically some sort of suffering that eventually motivates patients
to seek psychotherapy. This may frequently be pathological suffering. But it
may also be ordinary, natural, mundane existential suffering. (See, e.g.,
Berra’s, in press article on “existential depression.”) Essential to existential
therapy as well as Jungian analysis is the way in which one relates to and
understands suffering, that is to say, the conscious (and unconscious) attitude
taken toward it.
Two prime sources of suffering, and areas of special concern and clinical
focus for existential therapy that distinguish it from most other orientations, are
the experience of anxiety in general, and the more specific phenomenon of death
anxiety. For existential therapists, the anguish of anxiety (Angst) is an unavoid-
able concomitant to human freedom, choice, and responsibility. Existential
therapy recognizes the ubiquitous phenomenon of anxiety as a central feature in
psychopathology, while, at the same time, refraining from automatically pathol-
ogizing and suppressing it, rather perceiving anxiety as a potentially positive
indicator of inner conflict, “bad faith,” imbalance, avoidance, repressed potenti-
ality or daimonic passion, and a vital call for growth and change. This is reflected
in Kierkegaard’s supremely respectful attitude toward anxiety as being our best
teacher. And in his stunning (1844/1980) assertion that, “Whoever has learned
to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate” (p. 155).
This humanistic notion of the positive and creative side of symptoms such
as anxiety, and the dangers of chronically suppressing or avoiding them, can
Diamond 15
similarly be seen in Jungian analysis. Recounting one of his own cases, Jung
(1926/1954) writes:
As against Freud’s view that dreams are wish-fulfillment, my experience of

dreams leads me to think of them as functions of compensation. . . . I call
dreams compensatory because they contain ideas, feeling, and thoughts whose
absence from consciousness leaves a blank which is filled with fear instead of
with understanding. . . . by repressing disagreeable thoughts she created
something like a psychic vacuum [italics added] which . . . gradually became
filled with anxiety . . . anxiety . . . as a substitute for the absence of conscious
suffering. (pp. 100-101)
Or, as Jung (1938/1969d), speaking of psychiatric symptomatology in gen-

eral, more succinctly states it, “Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate
suffering” (p. 75). His profound point is that we create and perpetuate our
own neurotic symptoms because we choose (at some level) to avoid facing
and fully accepting life’s inevitable existential suffering. Note here also the
striking resemblance between Carl Jung’s “psychic vacuum” and Viktor
Frankl’s (1946/1984, pp. 128-130) concept of an “existential vacuum,” a void
of meaninglessness into which surges all manner of neurotic anxieties and
symptoms (not dissimilar to invading demons) in a desperate attempt to fill it
(see Berra, in press).
Referring specifically to the source of neurotic symptoms such as anxiety
and their therapeutic treatment, Jung (1934/1970a) asserts that
The patient has not to learn how to get rid of his neurosis, but how to bear it.
His illness is not a gratuitous and therefore meaningless burden; it is his own
self, the “other” whom, from childish laziness or fear, or some other reason, he
was always seeking to exclude from his life. In this way, as Freud rightly says,
we turn the ego into a “seat of anxiety” which it would never be if we did not
defend ourselves against ourselves. . . . We should not try to “get rid” of a
neurosis, but rather to experience what it means [italics added], what it has to
teach, what its purpose is. We should even learn to be thankful for it, otherwise
we pass it by and miss the opportunity of getting to know ourselves as we really
are. A neurosis is truly removed only when it has removed the false attitude of
the ego. We do not cure it—it cures us. A man is ill, but the illness is nature’s
attempt to heal him. (pp. 169-170)
Thus, in both Jungian analysis and existential therapy, the attitude taken
toward symptomatology and its significance is different from that of most
modern treatment approaches. “Existential therapy views anxiety as a signifi-
cant and potentially positive indicator of inner conflict and a critical call for
growth or change. Failure or refusal to heed this call can result in negative
consequences” (Diamond, 2016a, p. 325). The same may be said regarding
the principle source of existential or ontological anxiety, the existential crisis,
which is seen as both a perilous passage and precious opportunity for trans-
formation and individuation. An “existential crisis” consists of some subjec-
tive or objective stressor that threatens our basic sense of security, self-esteem,
identity, or survival, and can accompany normal developmental states (e.g.,
adolescence, midlife, and aging) or major transitions such as career entry or
change, marriage, parenthood, or retirement. Adverse life events like divorce,
sickness, financial hardship, unforeseen moral dilemmas, or spiritual
upheaval likewise can sometimes trigger an existential crisis (see Diamond,
2016a).
Carl Jung comprehended this potentially shattering phenomenon very
well, having experienced his own protracted and debilitating “midlife crisis”
in his late 30s, following the traumatic and alienating rupture with Freud and
the Freudians. Navigating this psychologically devastating and disorienting
event as best he could, Jung (1961b) gradually discovered some meaning in
his “constant state of tension” (p. 177), turbulent emotions, and mystifying,
often bizarre and frightening waking fantasies and dreams. By the time Jung
eventually began to emerge during his mid-40s from this “creative illness”
(Ellenberger, 1970) and from his self-created chrysalis of intensive introver-
sion and self-reflection, he had been psychologically transformed. Not neces-
sarily by the crisis itself, but by how he chose to confront and come to terms
with it as consciously, constructively, and authentically as he could. What
Jung learned about himself and the human psyche during this stormy yet
tremendously fruitful period became the “numinous beginning” (Jung, 2009,
p. vii), and the prima materia for his Analytical Psychology.
Death, that incomprehensible mysterium tremendum, tends to be a taboo
subject in Western culture, as anthropologist and existential philosopher
Ernest Becker brilliantly explains in The Denial of Death (1973). There, he
argues that almost everything we do (or don’t do) in life is subtly designed to
avoid consciously confronting the reality of mortality. Most modern psycho-
therapies unwittingly participate and collude in this universal evasion.
Moreover, to make matters worse, like some cosmic sword of Damocles, “the
ever-present possibility of death constantly threatens our very being”
(Diamond, 2016a, p. 325). We are, after all, “creatures of a day” as Yalom
(2015), citing Marcus Aurelius, notes, finite beings who know we will die,
but frenetically try to deny that frightening fact. As Sigmund Freud
(1915/1959), who apparently struggled with symptoms of his own repressed
death anxiety, keenly observed, “Our own death is indeed unimaginable,”
concluding that, “at bottom no one believes in his own death, or to put the
Diamond 17
same thing in another way, in the unconscious every one of us is convinced of

his own immortality [italics added]” (pp. 304-305). Indeed, it is one thing to
consider death from a distance, spiritually, intellectually, scientifically, psy-
chologically, or philosophically, but quite another to be brutally and shock-
ingly confronted with the existential reality of dying oneself, of no longer
being in the world, of having finally and irreversibly “shuffled off this mortal
coil” (Shakespeare, 1603/1934, p. 688), of being personally interred or cre-
mated, decaying, rotting, and becoming food for worms, of disappearing
from existence for all eternity (see Berra, in press).
When this bare existential reality and inevitability of our own death threat-
ens to become conscious, breaking through our usual defenses, we experi-
ence death anxiety. Indeed, ultimately, existential anxiety can be more
specifically seen as a form of death anxiety, which can include a “haunting
feeling of existential guilt regarding unfulfilled possibilities that can manifest
in neurosis or, at times, even psychosis” (Diamond, 2016a, p. 325). For exis-
tential therapists, death, though deeply anxiety provoking, must be con-
sciously confronted, accepted, and ultimately, embraced rather than avoided,
dreaded, and denied (see Becker, 1973). Only then can one fully live, for he
or she who cannot embrace finitude and death cannot fully appreciate and
embrace life in its totality. Neurotic fear of death amounts to neurotic fear of
life.
In his stark and moving meditation on mortality, Staring at the Sun, Irvin
Yalom (2009) remarks:
Freud believed that much psychopathology results from a person’s repression

of sexuality. I believe his view is far too narrow. In my clinical work, I have
come to understand that one may repress not just sexuality but one’s whole
creaturely self and especially its finite nature. (p. 7)
It can, at least sometimes, as Yalom notes, be understood to be inversely cor-

related with the degree to which one has successfully “self-actualized”
(Maslow, 1962/1998) or, as I would say, fulfilled his or her “destiny” (see
Diamond, 2016a). For Yalom, denied death anxiety underlies a multitude of
psychiatric symptoms, which can therefore be potentially mitigated by cou-
rageously acknowledging and coming to terms with it.
Undoubtedly, death holds immense symbolic significance in Jungian anal-
ysis, drawing upon the archetypal mythology and alchemical concepts of
death and rebirth, or, in the distinction between what Jungian analyst David
Rosen (1993) cleverly calls committing psychological “egocide” as opposed
to physical suicide. But symbolizing death dogmatically can be a way of
defensively avoiding its terrifying facticity and finality, and diminishing its
awful (awe-full) power, numinosity, and sobering reality. In existential ther-

apy, the patient or client is explicitly encouraged to confront the inevitability
of death, including the physical and psychological suffering that tends to
typically precede it. Death is an ever-present possibility and inevitability, and
can come in a thousand different ways. We usually do not know how we will
die, nor exactly when or where, but that we will die is a certainty. No one
truly knows for certain what happens once we die. Speculation on this sub-
ject—scientific, philosophical or religious—serves to try to assuage our
death anxiety. This is in accord with both Jung’s and existentially inclined
psychoanalyst Otto Rank’s stance regarding death, and the innate human
need for meaning in general: “We cannot look at death without blinking; we
need solace, meaning, purpose, affirmation” (Lieberman, 1993, p. 404).
Death is one of life’s greatest mysteries. It is an existential encounter with the
ultimate unknown. We human beings harbor a deep-seated, archetypal terror
and dread of the unknown. Yet paradoxically, courageously facing mortality
and life’s intrinsic transience and fragility can motivate us to live more fully,
authentically, passionately, meaningfully, and presently in the moment, and
to appreciate existence more deeply, while we still can.
Existential depth psychology—while recognizing the powerful symbolic,
psychological, and spiritual significance of the archetypal phenomenon of
death—takes physical mortality more literally and confronts it head on,
which requires soberly and consciously facing up to and coming to terms
with the existential truth of one’s own death and concomitant death anxiety,
without sugar-coating it. Drawing upon both existential therapy and Jungian
analysis, existential depth psychology (Diamond, 1996) endeavors to assist
patients to honestly and unflinchingly face the disturbing and inescapable
phenomena of anxiety, suffering, and death. As Freud (1927) famously pos-
tulated, neurotic anxiety is the indirect consequence of unresolved intrapsy-
chic conflict between ego or superego and the unconscious or id. Freud
deemed this alarming subjective sensing of unconscious contents threatening
to break through repression into conscious awareness “signal anxiety,” a
form of suffering which the psychoanalytic process recognizes, interprets,
and endeavors to more or less resolve. However, existential psychotherapy
concerns itself not only with such neurotic anxiety, but equally with what it
conceives of as normal “existential anxiety”:
Existential anxiety arises partially from the fact that human existence is
transient and tenuous. We desperately seek the illusion of security through
material possessions, spiritual or scientific certainty, relationships, power or
prestige, but this can be stripped away at any moment by a natural disaster, an
economic collapse, or a human act of evil, terror and violence. (Diamond,
2016a, p. 325)
Diamond 19
But how does one embrace, accept and come to terms with death, and,
especially, one’s own mortality? As Jung understood, human beings through-
out history have done so by trying to make it meaningful. In his essay “The
Soul and Death” (1934/1969a), Jung writes:
Like a projectile flying to its goal, life ends in death. Even its ascent and zenith
are only steps and means to this goal. . . . The birth of a human being is pregnant
with meaning, why not death? . . . But what is attained with death? One might
. . . say that the majority of religions are complicated systems of preparation for
death, so much so that life. . . . has no significance except as a preparation for
the ultimate goal of death. In both Christianity and Buddhism, the meaning of
existence is consummated in its end. (p. 408)
Indeed, religion can, as Freud controversially and rather existentially con-

tended, be fundamentally understood as a means to deal with the frightening
phenomenon of death. But whereas Freud rejected and demeaned religion as
a compulsive defense against death and death anxiety, other depth psycholo-
gists such as Otto Rank and C. G. Jung recognized religion’s psychological
benefits. Because of this and other reasons, Jung’s attitude toward religion
was decidedly different from that of Freud, appreciating that, from a psycho-
logical perspective, religion potentially serves the purpose of assuaging, at
least to some extent, both our life and death anxiety. Like Rank, Jung felt that
we need myths, spirituality, and religion to help us face up to and deal with
the harsh existential reality of death. For example, he notes that
I am convinced that it is hygienic—if I may use the word—to discover in death

a goal towards which one can strive, and that shrinking away from it is
something unhealthy and therefore abnormal which robs the second half of life
of its purpose. . . . From the standpoint of psychotherapy it would therefore be
desirable to think of death as only a transition, as part of a life process whose
extent and duration are beyond our knowledge. (1930/1969a, p. 402)
Here Jung refers to the potentially positive or therapeutic power of religion in

dealing with death anxiety. However, for most postmodern people, death is
seen as something to dread, deny, defeat, and avoid at all costs, rather than as
some meaningful life goal toward which to intentionally travel (see Diamond,
2007, 2012).
One way of defensively dealing with death and the existential anxiety and
despair it can evoke (see Berra, in press), is to choose a philosophical stance
of nihilism toward life. Nihilism—a desperate and dispirited loss of faith in
life in the face of an existence perceived as being ultimately defeated and
negated by death, a failure of courage in constructively expressing and
asserting oneself in the world despite death, and a resulting bitter rejection of
meaning, morals, ethics, or any possible sense of existential significance and
purpose—in some measure commonly underlies the myriad symptoms and
malaise of individuals seeking psychotherapy, though typically may not be
acknowledged or recognized as such. Contrary to what some mistakenly
believe, this morbidly nihilistic state of mind underlying the client or patient’s
symptomatology represents the starting point for existential therapy rather
than its end result. Nihilism is never the goal of existential therapy. But in
treating the clinical despair of nihilism, the perceived meaninglessness, insig-
nificance, and absurdity of life and death must be accepted and tolerated—at
least until some meaning and sense of purpose can be discovered or created.
Only then can existence, with all its wondrous beauty, tragedy, and mystery,
be fully lived and enjoyed. “Joy at the smallest things comes to you only
when you have accepted death” (Jung, 2009, p. 267).
On Freedom, Fate, Destiny, Despair,

Responsibility, and Authenticity
We are, as Sartre (1956) asserts, “condemned to be free” (p. 353). Both free-
dom and responsibility make existential anxiety unavoidable. To be free is to
be responsible for our actions, choices, and decisions, to accept the existen-
tial guilt and anxiety that always accompany the freedom to exercise one’s
will in the world. Freedom is like a muscle that must be developed and regu-
larly exercised, a blessing but also a burden. Søren Kierkegaard (1844/1980)
contends that anxiety (dread) is “the dizziness of freedom” (p. 61). A funda-
mental tenet of contemporary existential therapy is that neither fate nor free-
dom is absolute; there is no freedom without responsibility, and vice versa.
Existential depth psychology draws a distinction between destiny and fate.
Destiny is different from fate, which refers traditionally “to the existential giv-
ens of life, those aspects of existence over which we can exert little or no con-
trol” (Diamond, 2016a, p. 328). Destiny, on the other hand, connotes the idea of
destination. It refers to what we may become. Finding and fulfilling our destiny
entails discovering one’s sense of purpose in life, and accepting responsibility
for becoming, to whatever degree humanly possible, one’s true and authentic
self. “Destiny is not determined by fate, but by how we respond to fate (i.e., by
the degree to which we take responsibility for and passionately pursue our des-
tiny)” (Diamond, 2016a, p. 328). We are fully responsible for our destiny, but
not our fate. Yet as Rank, like Frankl (1946/1984), avers, we are responsible for
freely choosing the attitude we take toward fate: “For Rank, the creative person
comes to terms with the inevitable—the givens of life and death—by ‘willing
affirmation of the must’ [italics added]” (Lieberman, 1993, p. 356).
Diamond 21
Indeed, according to Frankl (1946/1967), “Existential analysis aims at

nothing more and nothing less than leading men [and women] to conscious-
ness of their responsibility” (p. 223). One of the most confounding issues
patients or clients bring to therapy, be it existential, Jungian or otherwise,
whether explicitly or not, is that of personal responsibility. We often make the
mistake of taking either too little or too much responsibility for past, present,
and future life events. In Jungian analysis, this acceptance of personal respon-
sibility entails recollecting or re-owning the projections of psyche onto others
and the world, especially of the shadow, anima or animus, and taking respon-
sibility for them and one’s own behaviors while under their spell. When we
habitually repudiate responsibility for problematic cognitions, emotions, and
behaviors and their adverse effects on ourselves and others, we experience
ourselves as passive victims of fate, and the power to creatively transform
one’s self, one’s relationships, and one’s destiny is drastically diminished.
Such chronic feelings of helplessness and powerlessness can lead to pro-
found states of depression or clinical despair: a deep discouragement and
loss of faith in one’s capacity to find meaning and create a satisfactory and
fulfilling future (see Diamond, 2011; also Berra, in press).
Ours is an age of anxiety, alienation, absurdity, rage, and despair (see Aho,
in press). Existential therapy recognizes the value of acknowledging and fac-
ing the despair that commonly accompanies confronting the unvarnished
existential realities of mortality, meaninglessness, suffering, fate, evil, and so
on (see Berra, in press). Indeed, in sharp contrast to mainstream therapies like
cognitive behavioral therapy and Positive Psychology, as well as most other
humanistic psychologies, “existential therapy can be more accurately
described as taking an attitude of ‘tragic optimism’ (Frankl, 1946/1984, p.
161) or redemptive despair (Diamond, 1996, 2011; May, 1981, 1991)” toward
existence (Diamond, 2016a, p. 345). The experience of existential despair is
a universal or archetypal human potentiality. Holocaust survivor Viktor
Frankl (2000) defined despair in the simplistic but powerful formula D = S
− M: despair equals suffering minus meaning (p. 133). Like existential ther-
apy, Jungian analysis, taking its lead from Jung himself, recognizes that the
meaningless suffering of despair can be transformed by helping patients cou-
rageously confront and discover some personal or transpersonal significance
in their suffering. However, doing so demands voluntary toleration and will-
ingness to fully submit to, rather than suppress or run from, disturbing sub-
jective phenomena such as despair, rage, grief, guilt, anxiety, and so on.
This courageous stance is dramatically depicted in the following synopsis
of a dream reported by one of Jung’s patients (Jaffé, 1989, p. 119). In that
case, the woman told Jung of a dream she had the previous night in which she
was buried up to her shoulders in a fiery pit of burning embers, while Jung
stood nonchalantly nearby. Pleading desperately with him to help extricate

her from this excruciating and terrifying predicament, Jung instead placed his
hand firmly on her exposed shoulder, gently but deliberately pushing her
down even deeper into the red-hot hellish inferno, while telling her: “Not out,
but through.”
This extraordinary dream expresses succinctly the basic attitude shared by
both Jungian analysis and existential therapy toward human suffering in gen-
eral: Not out, but through. But crucial to this therapeutic attitude, as so clearly
depicted by the dream, is the delicate balance of empathic caring and detached
objectivity, the vital importance of the immediate presence and supportive
proximity of the psychotherapist, and his or her compassionate yet firm
refusal to rescue patients from their painful existential fate. It is, in fact, the
psychotherapist’s ability to encourage clients to go more deeply into their
suffering—which must be distinguished from morbidly and obsessively
dwelling on it—rather than frantically looking for ways to avoid, drug, or
otherwise escape it, that, in the end, proves transformative.
This willingness to go more deeply into one’s subjective experience was
indeed Jung’s own personal path through and past the seemingly bottomless
pit of despair and confusion he fell into at midlife. During this profound and
prolonged existential crisis, Jung, who had, until then, lived a relatively
extraverted existence, was, in effect, unconsciously compelled to turn inten-
sively inward (introvert), question his own identity and sanity, and come to
terms with those repressed, dissociated, and undeveloped aspects of his per-
sonality he had previously avoided or denied. He was himself challenged by
life to individuate, as he termed it, to become more wholly his authentic self,
a daunting task he accepted and eventually answered creatively and admira-
bly. Ultimately, Jung rediscovered his “soul,” his essence, becoming more
authentically himself. A daimonic man (see Diamond, 1999b; Jung, 1961b).
And, in the painful and sometimes terrifying process of confronting his exis-
tential despair and disorientation, his unruly, irrational, and contradictory
“demons,” Jung gradually learned that he, like his patients and all of us to
some degree, suffered from being inauthentic, imbalanced, one-sided, incom-
plete, a precarious psychic condition expressed by symptomatology such as
anxiety, depression, despair, rage, and, for some, psychosis. It is our refusal
to accept and become more completely and authentically who we uniquely
are that typically culminates in a symptomatic state of existential despair. As
Kierkegaard (1849/1946), that quintessential connoisseur of despair, con-
cludes, despair results from “not willing to be oneself” (p. 361).
For Jung, such intense states of inner conflict and turmoil, and their mani-
fest symptomatology, can be correlated with his core conception of the com-
pensatory nature of the “unconscious”: the innate teleological tendency of
Diamond 23
the psyche toward wholeness and balance. The unconscious, according to

Jung, seeks autonomously to compensate for what consciousness lacks, and
the more resistance to it by ego-consciousness, the more forceful, intrusive,
and dangerous are its efforts. Existential therapy traditionally objects to the
convenient and deterministic Jungian notion of such “autonomous” action by
the “unconscious,” stressing rather the individual’s ultimate freedom, indivis-
ibility, and responsibility for opting for or against integration, “authentic
wholeness” (Minier, 1997), balance, and consciousness—and its conse-
quences. In other words, such “autonomous” compensation can be conceptu-
alized more existentially as the unconscious choice by the self to compensate
for what is lacking in his or her life or personality, and the person’s antitheti-
cal choice to resist such compensation. Existential depth psychology con-
cedes that both may be true: that the psyche can and does, phenomenologically
if not literally, sometimes seem to have a “mind of its own,” particularly
when parts of it have been chronically neglected, dissociated, or denied, and,
that we are responsible not only for having chosen at some level to neglect,
compartmentalize, or deny these parts of ourselves, but for the negative con-
sequences of these choices (e.g., symptoms), as well as for exercising our
potential freedom at any time to choose anew to honor and integrate these
rejected elements.
In Jungian terms, we might speak also about a process of “shrinking” the
ego down to appropriate proportion so as to authentically realize the compre-
hensive wholeness of the Self. During the successful course of Jungian analy-
sis, the ego, with which we tend to totally identify, becomes, at least to some
extent, subservient or subordinate to the much greater Self. This is often
experienced subjectively as a devastatingly painful and deflating process of
metaphorical death and rebirth, in which the nature of the relationship
between ego and Self (the so-called Ego-Self axis), and thus, the persona, as
an objective and subjective expression of the ego, is transformed. As Jung
(1970) himself expressed it, “the experience of the Self is always a defeat for
the ego” (1955, 1956/1970, p. 546). Yet this defeat, this narcissistic injury to
the grandiose ego, and the anxiety, rage, and despair that typically accom-
pany it, can give birth to a transcendence of the inner and outer sources of
symptomatology, a renewed and expanded sense of self, and a reinvigorated,
revitalized life. For Jung (1917/1966a, p. 171), the process of individuation,
like the goal of authenticity in existential therapy, “means becoming a single,
homogeneous being, and, in so far as ‘individuality’ embraces our innermost,
last, and incomparable uniqueness, it also implies becoming one’s own self.
We could therefore translate individuation as ‘coming to selfhood’ or ‘self-
realization’” (cited in Jung, 1961b, p. 383).
On Evil, the Shadow, and the Daimonic

As already noted, most existential therapists are philosophically uncomfort-
able with both Freud and Jung’s classic concepts of the “unconscious.” They
cite, for instance, criticisms of depth psychology articulated by Heidegger,
Sartre, Binswanger, Boss, and other phenomenological existentialists, regard-
ing the tendency to reify the notion of the unconscious, to concretize it, to
conceive of it as a literal place or entity, to artificially fragment and compart-
mentalize the individual’s intrinsically indivisible being, to assign autonomy
to it, and to undermine and excuse the sloughing off of freedom and personal
responsibility for one’s choices and actions, and so on.
Nonetheless, contemporary existential therapy is seriously mistaken in
rejecting outright depth psychology’s fundamental concern with the phenom-
enon of unconsciousness, and its immense influence on human behavior for
better and worse. Making an effort to bridge this seemingly irreconcilable
theoretical chasm without throwing out the proverbial baby with the bathwa-
ter, Rollo May (1983) offered a revised definition of “the unconscious,” not-
ing that it ought not merely “be thought of as a reservoir of impulses, thoughts,
wishes which are culturally unacceptable,” but rather far more broadly, “as
those potentialities for knowing and experiencing which the individual can-
not or will not actualize” (pp. 17, 18). May referred to this creatively reimag-
ined notion of “the unconscious” as “the daimonic.” Here, in this existential
redefining of “the unconscious,” May seeks to preserve the measure of free-
dom, choice, and personal responsibility involved in the creation and per-
petuation of unconsciousness, and, conversely, in willing the so-called
unconscious to become conscious. In other words, this somewhat radical
reconceptualization of the “unconscious” emphasizes the somewhat fluid
rather than absolute boundary between consciousness and the unconscious,
and the individual’s fundamental existential choice and responsibility for
denying, dissociating, repressing, suppressing, or disregarding certain emo-
tions, cognitions, memories, impulses, tendencies, passions, and potentiali-
ties, as well as for choosing to become more consciously aware of them.
Ultimately, the depth psychology of both Freud and Jung can be said to
share the same basic concern: better understanding and mitigating the enig-
matic problem of human evil, the source of which presumably stems from the
“unconscious.” Although most existential therapists today generally reject
preconceived Jungian constructs such as the personal and collective uncon-
scious, the shadow, the anima or animus, and so on, favoring instead what
they perceive as a purely phenomenological, unbiased, and, therefore, non-
theoretically or conceptually influenced approach to therapy, many recognize
the clinical value and utility of having some metaphorical or mythological
Diamond 25
means for making sense of and communicating about ubiquitous phenomena

like unconsciousness and the perennial problem of evil. However, rather than
dogmatically using Jung’s archetypal notion of “the shadow” per se, or, for
that matter, Freud’s more generic construct of “the unconscious”–—while at
the same time acknowledging the paradoxical destructive and creative poten-
tiality of human unconsciousness—some existential psychotherapists such as
myself prefer, when appropriate, to use a paradigm Rollo May (1969) referred
to as “the daimonic” in comprehending certain primal human experiences,
passions, and tendencies. While these two concepts are clearly related, they
differ in ways of particular relevance to existential therapy.
May’s sophisticated phenomenological model of the daimonic is central to
the theory and practice of his existential psychotherapy, and to my own exis-
tential depth psychology, and distinguishes these from most other humanistic
therapies (see Diamond, 1996). With his unique reconceptualization, reinter-
pretation, and reframing of the Freudian or Jungian “unconscious” as the
“daimonic,” May (1969) provides an existentially informed viable alternative
to Jung’s seminal notion of the “shadow,” with its much-needed emphasis on
the psychology of human evil. Like Jungian analysis, with its emphasis on
addressing the “shadow” or dark, reviled, disowned side of the psyche (see
Diamond, 1991, 1996, 2009), existential therapy shares this same ultimate
concern regarding the perennial problem of evil. Echoing Jung’s comments
on the precarious rise of evil in prewar Europe, Rollo May several decades
later similarly held that, “here in America, we still comprehend little of evil’s
true nature, and are thus pitifully ill prepared to deal with it” (Diamond, 2003,
p. 23).
In Sigmund Freud’s day, a century ago, repressed sexuality presumably
due partly to childhood trauma was considered to be the predominant compo-
nent of the daimonic or what Freud referred to as the “id.” It was only toward
the end of Freud’s life that he finally acknowledged the role of repressed
“aggression” as well. But today, here in Western culture, half-a-century since
the sexual revolution, it is, in my view, no longer denied sexual libido (nor,
for that matter, death anxiety, as Yalom asserts) that is the primary problem
affecting patients, but rather repressed rage or anger (see Diamond, 1996).
Or, in certain individuals, suppressed spirituality or religiosity, as Jung a little
later suggested. In either case, chronic denial or repression of the daimonic or
the shadow contributes significantly to the pervasive problem of psychopa-
thology, human destructiveness, and evil. We live in an age of escalating
rage, violence, and atrocious acts of evil. Mass shootings at schools and other
public places seem to be proliferating in both frequency and depravity. (At
the time of this writing there have already been more than 20 mass school
shootings here in the United States in mid-2018 alone, appallingly averaging
around one massacre per week.) Personally and collectively, the destructive
side of the daimonic (May) or shadow (Jung) is running amok in America.
And we all bear horrified witness to, and in some cases, become tragic vic-
tims of, this grotesque and terrifying sociological phenomenon.
Referring to the medieval concept of the daemonic, Carl Jung, almost 50
years before Rollo May, writes that
from the psychological point of view demons are nothing other than intruders
from the unconscious, spontaneous irruptions of unconscious complexes into
the continuity of the conscious process. Complexes are comparable to demons
which fitfully harass our thought and actions; hence in antiquity and the Middle
Ages acute neurotic disturbances were conceived as possession. (1921/1971,
p. 109)
Recognizing the psychologically symbolic rather than metaphysical nature of

concepts such as the “devil” or “demons,” Jung often described the so-called
unconscious shadow complex (and a “complex” in general) as a latent psy-
chic structure or entity exercising a relatively autonomous influence on the
personality and person’s actions. While acknowledging the bizarre phenom-
enological reality of the archetypal experience of being taken over or “pos-
sessed” and its sometimes strange, seemingly supernatural symptoms, May’s
existential model of the daimonic, on the other hand, explicitly and deliber-
ately integrates and emphasizes core existential themes of responsibility,
freedom, choice, integrity of the personality, and stresses the central role and
crucial participation of the self in the process of chronically repressing or
consciously assimilating these daimonic energies into daily life (see Diamond,
1996).
May (1969) defined the daimonic as “any natural function which has the
power to take over the whole person,” such as sex, anger, rage, fear, love, and
despair. As noted above, May’s concept was presaged and strongly influ-
enced by Jung, who previously had defined the shadow as being capable of
taking total “possession” of the personality when chronically repressed or
dissociated. (See Diamond, 1996, on what I refer to as the “possession syn-
drome”; also my chapter in Meeting the Shadow, 1991.) Much like the
shadow in Jungian analysis, the daimonic is, by definition, potentially both
destructive and creative, depending in part upon the attitude taken toward it.
Both, by definition, contain repressed or denied negative and positive quali-
ties, tendencies, passions, and potentialities, but are perceived by most to be
solely destructive. Though the concepts of the shadow and the daimonic can
sometimes be used interchangeably, there are, as already noted, subtle yet
significant differences between them, both theoretically and clinically (see
Diamond 27
Diamond, 1996). Indeed, May created and conveyed his theory of the dai-
monic to provide a more sophisticated way of understanding and discussing
the problem of human evil, one that is more philosophically, spiritually, and
psychologically consonant with the pragmatic practice of existential therapy;
yet at the same time, does not deny or diminish the impressive phenomenon
of unconsciousness at play in both evil and creativity:
I . . . want to state the problem of evil in such a way that psychologists will not
be able to derogate it simply as a lack of something, for example, a lack of
growth or as simply immaturity, or as a process that depends always on
something else, such as the doctrine of the shadow in Jungianism. (May, 1977,
cited in Diamond, 1996, p. 99).
Here, May makes a crucial distinction between what he critically calls “the
doctrine of the shadow” and his alternative model of the “daimonic” as they
conceptualize the problem of human evil, alluding to one of the fundamental
differences between his own existential psychology, Jungian dogma, and the
positivistic humanistic psychology of Maslow and Rogers in particular (see
Diamond, 1996; also May, 1982; and Hoffman, 2009). Indeed, as Jungian
psychotherapist Steven Herrmann (1999) astutely observes, “the daimonic
today is . . . the pursuing shadow of the human potential movement”
(pp. 55-56). In May’s existential psychology, human potentiality is always a
two-edged sword: “That is, constructiveness and destructiveness have the
same source in human personality. The source is simply human potential” (in
Diamond, 1996, p. xxi).
With his existentially informed paradigm of the daimonic, May seeks to
minimize the fragmenting evasion of integrity, freedom, and personal respon-
sibility permitted by the presumed deterministic “autonomy” of traditional
psychodynamic constructs like “complexes,” “archetypes,” the “unconscious”
or “shadow,” by acknowledging and explicitly retaining “a decisive element,
that is, the choice the self asserts to work for or against the integration of the
self” (in Diamond, 1996, p. 105). Thus, in May’s existential model of the dai-
monic, he makes it virtually impossible for us to avoid being free and respon-
sible for choosing to become and remain conscious or unconscious, for
knowing or not knowing ourselves and the world, for living with integrity and
authenticity or pretension and self-deception, and, for expressing the irre-
pressible power of the daimonic constructively or destructively. In the view of
existential depth psychology, chronic denial and dissociation of the daimonic
causes psychopathology and destructiveness, but, paradoxically, consciously
acknowledging, confronting, and integrating it into consciousness can cata-
lyze vitality and creativity (see Diamond, 1991, 1996, 2005, 2009).
It could be argued that the essential nature of Jung’s classic conception of

the archetypal “shadow” can best be described as daimonic (or daemonic) as
regards its capacity to take possession of the person entirely, as well as in its
being both potentially destructive and creative, depending partly on how we
relate to it. Commenting on the theoretical significance of May’s formulation
and my own study of the daimonic, prominent American Jungian analyst
Edward Edinger opined, “If current conventional psychotherapies can grasp
the notion of the ‘daimonic’ it might even provide a bridge to the understand-
ing of the deeper aspects of Jungian psychology” (personal communication,
December 9, 1996). To cite Jung directly on this subject,
If it has been believed hitherto that the human shadow was the source of all
evil, it can now be ascertained on closer investigation that the unconscious
man, that is, his shadow, does not consist only of morally reprehensible
tendencies, but also displays a number of good qualities, such as normal
instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic insights, creative impulses, etc.
(1951/1959, p. 266)
Creativity and the creative process is another ultimate concern in both

Jungian analysis and existential psychotherapy (see Diamond, 2016b). Both
therapies can themselves be understood to be creative processes, and recog-
nize and respect the therapeutic power of creative self-expression:
Creative endeavors can help constructively channel disturbing daimonic affects

(e.g., anger, anxiety, grief) that might otherwise manifest as pathology,
violence, and evil. . . . Through these creative projects, individuals can
transcend death and attain a type of immortality. In this sense, creativity is both
driven by and offers an effective countermeasure to death anxiety. . . . Creativity
thus provides a viable alternative to the negative expression of the daimonic
and to the perennial problem of evil. (Diamond, 2016a, pp. 326-327)
In this regard, both the process of Jungian analysis and existential therapy
involve consciously acknowledging, confronting, and coming to terms with
the shadow or daimonic, so as to make the individual less susceptible to their
destructive aspects and negative manifestations, and more receptive to their
nascent creative energies. An indispensable part of this process requires fac-
ing and coming to terms with the existential reality of evil, both in ourselves
and the world. This includes a recognition of the inherent potentiality for evil
in oneself and others. For, in the final analysis, dealing with the daimonic and
life in general can be said to come down to a fundamental and fateful existen-
tial choice—and consistent reaffirmation and reassertion of that choice—
between creativity or evil.
Diamond 29
The problem of evil—both the human capacity for evil as well as the
seemingly random occurrence of cosmic evil—is certainly another ultimate
concern in existential depth psychology. We all are confronted at some point
in our lives with evil, whether we recognize it as such or not. And we are
profoundly and permanently affected by this experience. That evil may be
subtle or gross, minor or major, a single or repeated event, occurring at home
or at school. For children, as well as adults, watching television or playing
violent video games can be an exposure to the reality of evil in the world. As
we know, witnessing or experiencing evil, directly or indirectly, can be
extremely traumatic. This is the trauma of evil, whether it be a disastrous “act
of god,” like hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, or cruel and sense-
less human acts such as mass shootings, terrorism, and war. As Jung (1951)
observes, “it is quite within the bounds of possibility for a man to recognize
the relative evil of his nature, but it is a rare and shattering experience for him
to gaze into the face of absolute evil” (1951/1959, p. 10).
An archetypal case of this shattering confrontation with evil is the person
suffering from what we now diagnostically term PTSD or posttraumatic
stress disorder (DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association, 2013). (I see
PTSD, like so many other mental disorders and psychopathology in general,
as archetypal, because human beings have likely been suffering from these
same or similar patterns or constellations of symptoms since time immemo-
rial. And that is because of the undeniable fact that, under certain traumatic
circumstances, we each have the inherent human capacity or potentiality for
experiencing this sort of suffering.) These individuals have been exposed in
extremis to the stark reality of evil, sometimes suddenly, prematurely, invol-
untarily, or repetitively in some form, such as being victimized by sexual
molestation or physical and emotional abuse, natural disasters, domestic vio-
lence, homicide, terrorism, or the horrifying atrocities of war. In some cases,
like combat, they may have additionally been forced to face and admit their
own capacity—and accompanying feelings of guilt and shame—for commit-
ting evil deeds. All PTSD sufferers have been somehow traumatized by evil,
and are unable to adequately process, accept, and make sense of it. In some
instances, they may be suffering not as much from the traumatic event itself,
but rather from the sudden loss of pseudoinnocence (May, 1972), a childish
naivete “that cannot come to terms with the destructiveness in oneself and
others” (pp. 49-50).
Thus, in contrast to mainstream trauma therapies today, the treatment of
trauma in general from an existential perspective is not a matter of forgetting
or suppressing its memory and resulting symptoms, nor of merely comforting
or consoling the victim, but requires confronting and consciously coming to
terms with the inescapable problem of evil. Real recovery requires coming to
terms—philosophically, spiritually, psychologically, and emotionally—with

the terrible and terrifying existential reality of evil. The tragic and evil ele-
ments of existence, and the suffering they engender, must (as previously
illustrated in Jung’s patient’s dream), be confronted directly and consciously
with the unswerving support, presence, accompaniment, and encouragement
of the therapist, rather than mutually minimized, denied, or sugar-coated. Or,
as May tersely put it, whether dealing with the reality of suffering and evil in
oneself, others, or the world, “I do not believe in toning down the daimonic.
This gives a sense of false comfort. The real comfort can come only in the
relationship of the therapist and the client or patient” (in Diamond, 1996,
p. xxii).
On Diagnosis, Etiology, and Treatment of

Psychopathology
Generally speaking, Jung’s Analytical Psychology considers the source of
psychopathology as coming mainly from a conflict or imbalance between con-
sciousness and the unconscious, persona and shadow, masculine and femi-
nine, ego and Self. Existential therapy sees psychiatric symptoms primarily as
an expression of the avoidance of, or involuntary confrontation with, or lack
of courage and integrity in dealing with, the existential “givens” (Yalom,
1980), like mortality, aloneness, anxiety, meaninglessness, freedom, finitude,
responsibility, and evil. Existential depth psychology embraces both of these
valuable perspectives, but basically (yet not dogmatically) conceives of psy-
chopathology and its symptomatology as deriving primarily from chronic
denial, avoidance, or repression of the daimonic (see Diamond, 1996).
This psychological, philosophical, and spiritual conceptualization of so-
called psychopathology is essentially shared by both existential therapy and
Jungian analysis, whether acknowledged or not. Moreover, some of the unify-
ing philosophical common ground between existential therapy and Jungian
analysis (and humanistic psychology in general) can clearly be seen in their
oppositional stance toward diagnosis and the “medical model” as applied to
psychotherapy. The vast majority of psychotherapies today take as their exclu-
sive aim the focused alleviation of symptoms, as quickly, efficaciously, and
cost-effectively as possible. Hence the enormous popularity of psychophar-
macological interventions and brief therapies such as cognitive behavioral
therapy, despite their serious and sometimes deleterious drawbacks and limi-
tations. Like humanistic psychology in general, Jungian analysis and existen-
tial therapy take an equally critical view of this pervasive hypermedicalization
and dehumanization of psychotherapy. Both orientations tend to take a more
Diamond 31
humanistic, holistic, psychological, philosophical, spiritual and systemic

approach toward symptomatology and psychotherapy, in contradistinction to
the dogmatically reductionistic, materialistic, neurophysiological paradigm
endorsed by contemporary biological psychiatry. (See, e.g., Jungian analyst
Andrew Samuels’s 1991 text, Psychopathology: Contemporary Jungian
Perspectives, and my own 1996 book, Anger, Madness, and the Daimonic.)
Indeed, in daily practice, most Jungian or existential therapists care little
about formally diagnosing patients, let alone hastening to suppress their ego-
dystonic symptoms psychopharmacologically and/or cognitively for the sake
of expediency, the decidedly prevalent approach to treating mental disorders
today. This is considered counterproductive. As existential therapist Rollo
May (1969) provocatively put it, “It is the failure of therapy rather than its
success, when it drugs the daimonic, tranquillizes it, or in other ways fails to
confront it head on” (p.175). Moreover, May (1970), metaphorically states,
“The task of the therapist is to conjure up the devils rather than put them to
sleep” (p. 201). Most Jungian analysts would align with May on this point, at
least in principle. As well as with May’s (1983) existential caution that focus-
ing exclusively on theoretical constructs such as drives, complexes or symp-
tom-centered psychodiagnosis is to lose sight of “the one to whom these
experiences happen, . . . the existing person himself” (p. 25). And, in the same
holistic, humanistic spirit, as Jung (1961b) perceptively states, “In therapy the
problem is always the whole person, never the symptom alone [italics added].
We must ask questions which challenge the whole personality” (p. 117).
Both Jungian analysis and existential therapy endeavor to address and
challenge the whole person in context, the struggling human being suffering
from his or her symptoms and from the exigencies of existence. In this sense,
existential therapy, like Jungian analysis, is “less focused on diagnosing psy-
chopathology and providing symptom relief per se than other forms of ther-
apy” (WCET, 2016). Rather, psychiatric symptoms and syndromes are seen
as significant expressions of existential or intrapsychic stress or imbalance,
which, like the existential crises that typically evoke symptomatology such as
anxiety and depression, contain the possibility of growth and transformation
when receptively respected and responded to rather than reflexively sup-
pressed. For Jungians, this traditional dismissal or denigration of the value of
diagnosis started with Jung himself, a physician, who, despite being an astute
student of psychopathology early in his psychiatric career, later rejected its
usefulness, opining in 1945, at the age of 70:
It is generally assumed in medical circles that the examination of the patient

should lead to the diagnosis of his illness, so far as this is possible at all, and
that with the establishment of the diagnosis an important decision has been
arrived at as regards prognosis and therapy. Psychotherapy forms a startling

exception to this rule: the diagnosis is a highly irrelevant affair since, apart
from affixing a more or less lucky label to a neurotic condition, nothing is
gained by it, least of all as regards prognosis and therapy. . . . Clinical diagnosis
is [for the psychotherapist] well-nigh meaningless. (1945/1966, pp. 85-87)
Most prominent existential therapists today, like Yalom (2009), concur

completely with Jung’s negative assessment of psychodiagnosis. But, having
said all this, and in direct contradiction to both Jung and Yalom, existential
depth psychology, as I define it, does not consider the process of diagnosing
patients to be so utterly useless. At least, that is, so long as the diagnostic
process and diagnosis itself are primarily existentially and psychologically
(or spiritually) rather than medically understood. May (1969), speaking on
this subject, tells us, “Diagnosis . . . may be thought of . . . as our modern form
of calling the name of the offending demon” (p. 172). Accurately naming the
source and archetypal experience of someone’s suffering can itself be benefi-
cial, contributing to the process of attributing or discovering some meaning
and possible significance to the patient’s state of dis-ease. Knowing the name
of what ails one, and that there is one, which indicates that there may be some
potential understanding and treatment of the disturbing symptoms, provides
an important first step on the path to therapeutic salvation. For example,
when a mental health professional diagnoses a patient’s symptoms or self-
defeating patterns of behavior, he or she, whether wittingly or not, has already
begun to create order from chaos, and proffer some way for the patient to
begin making meaning of his or her experience. This diagnostic process can
be truly helpful to the therapeutic task at hand, so long as it is not taken too
literally, dogmatically, or deterministically as regards matters like etiology
and prognosis.
From the standpoint of existential depth psychology, psychodiagnosis can
be best understood as a meaningful phenomenological description (rather than
dogmatic etiological explanation) and identification of archetypal patterns of
human experience, suffering, and aberrant behavior. Doing so accurately, cre-
atively, holistically, and compassionately can actually enhance and facilitate
the treatment process. Diagnosing so-called psychopathology need not be seen
merely as stigmatically and dehumanizingly labeling a person and pigeon-
holing him or her into some preconceived category of “mental disorder”—
deciding based on that diagnosis what type of psychiatric drug to prescribe—
but rather more as a way of initiating a therapeutic dialogue with the suffering
person, acknowledging the full extent of his or her symptoms, and striving to
help make some sense of them. Helping patients to see their suffering, self-
defeating behaviors, and various other symptoms as archetypal, universal,
Diamond 33
transpersonal, and existential—as opposed to being merely personal, idiosyn-

cratic, and pathological—can assist in making such symptoms more meaning-
ful and consistent with the human condition, thereby lessening the person’s
sense of isolation, aloneness, and alienation. Nevertheless, it is crucial to keep
in mind that, despite its potential clinical utility, “From an existential perspec-
tive, diagnosis is but a preliminary, tentative, and admittedly superficial step
toward understanding the person’s problems” (Diamond, 2016a, p. 340).
Both existential therapy and Jungian analysis seek to assist people in mak-
ing sense of their subjective existence, in sickness and in health, and to find
and fulfill their destiny. The process of existential and Jungian therapy con-
sists of a close collaborative relationship in which patients are encouraged to
become more conscious, whole, balanced, mindful, and honest with and
authentic to themselves. As Rollo May (1983) reminds us,
It is not the therapist’s function to “cure” the patient’s neurotic symptoms,

though this is the motive for which most people come for therapy. Indeed, the
fact that this is their motive reflects their problem. Therapy is concerned with
something more fundamental—namely, helping the person experience his
existence—and any cure of symptoms which will last must be a by-product of
that [italics added]. (p. 164)
On the Practice of Presence, Encounter, and

Technique in Therapy
For existential practitioners, perhaps the most precious quality for both thera-
pist and client to cultivate is that of empathic presence. As previously noted,
the phenomenological method facilitates such presence, which is essential to
creating and maintaining the therapeutic relationship or “working alliance,”
and promoting awareness and development in the patient. As May (1983)
explains, by presence,
we mean that the relationship of the therapist and patient is taken as a real one, the
therapist being not merely a shadowy reflector but an alive human being who
happens, at that hour, to be concerned not with his own problems but with
understanding and experiencing so far as possible the being of the patient. (p. 156)
Jungian analysis is similarly concerned about presence, along with the nature
and quality of the relationship between analyst and analysand, patient, or cli-
ent. For example, in reading Jung’s own descriptions of his work with
patients, which, unlike Freud’s use of the psychoanalytic couch, took place
face-to-face and “knee to knee,” one is left with the strong impression that
Jung practiced this art of presence, and clearly placed a high value on what
contemporary existential therapists call the encounter between client and
clinician.
Existential therapy has always placed primary importance on the healing
power of the empathic relationship between patient and therapist.
Contemporary studies of diverse styles of psychotherapy have now scientifi-
cally confirmed this relational emphasis. Research on the efficacy of various
forms of psychotherapy demonstrate that not only is therapy or analysis gen-
erally effective, but that the primary (albeit not only) healing factor is univer-
sally the therapeutic relationship itself (see, e.g., Wampold, 2001). As in
other ways, Jung (1933/2001) presaged the existential analysts in recogniz-
ing the healing power of the interpersonal relationship in psychotherapy,
writing: “The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical
substances: If there is any reaction, both are transformed” (pp. 49-50). This
empathic human encounter is key, as May (1983) explains:
Any therapist is existential to the extent that, with all his [or her] technical
training and . . . knowledge of transference and dynamisms, he [or she] is still
able to relate to the patient as “one existence communicating with another,” to
use Binswanger’s phrase. (p. 158)
Yalom and Josselson (2013) describe this crucial encounter in existential

therapy as occurring within a relationship which is, in large part, “always an
alternating sequence of interaction and reflection on that interaction” (p. 286).
In other words, a good deal of the ongoing conversation between therapist and
patient focuses on what is happening right now here in this relationship, but
may nonetheless include discussion of the recent past (e.g., what was said or
done during the prior session), present (e.g., what the patient and/or therapist
is experiencing at the moment), or future (e.g., what will happen to the rela-
tionship upon termination). To be clear, this is certainly not, nor normally
would be, the only matter discussed during the course of existential therapy.
But, whatever topic arises or emerges in the moment, the conversation is
always collaborative and interactive rather than unilateral and authoritarian,
though at times there may be protracted periods when the patient is speaking
of vitally important matters while the therapist passively (though not entirely
inertly or nonresponsively) listens with empathic care. In this sense, the exis-
tential therapist focuses at least as much on the process of what is going on
currently in the consulting room as on the content of what is being said per
se—attending to how something is being expressed (including nonverbal lan-
guage) as well as to what is tellingly not spoken—and on the intimate quality
of the interaction between two human beings actively engaged in this collab-
orative effort (see, e.g., Längle & Klaassen, in press).
Diamond 35
Endorsing this existential stance, Jungian analyst David Sedgwick (2001)

asserts that
What Jungian psychotherapy is really about is the therapeutic relationship

[italics added]. Many people think it is about dreams, or “archetypes,” but it’s
not, at least not primarily. It’s about psychotherapy in the context of a personal
emotional interchange. Jung’s statements give clear ideas of what Jungian
therapy is like, not only for the patient but for the therapist. If you are a
therapist, this is what Jung tells you in a nutshell: “Every psychotherapist not
only has his own method—he himself is that method. . . . The great healing
factor in psychotherapy is the doctor’s personality” (1945, p. 88). Because of
this personal factor, being a card-carrying Jungian per se is much less important
than the content and therapeutic quality of the clinician’s character. In an ironic
sense, to be a Jungian is not to be a Jungian. (pp. 2=3)
Here Sedgwick seems to allude to what Jung meant when, in a moment of

frustration, he quite existentially exclaimed, “Thank God, I am Jung, and not
a Jungian!” (Hannah, 1976, p. 78). The existential depth psychologist brings
to the task who he or she basically is, has become, and is becoming as a result
of the individuation process, coupled with what he or she has learned about
how to skillfully facilitate and support this transformative process in others.
As Jung himself expressed it: “Psychotherapy is at bottom a dialectical rela-
tionship between doctor and patient” (1939/1969h, p. 554), in which, “The
patient demands all the resources of the doctor’s personality and not technical
tricks” (Jung, 1934/1970a, p. 159).
But this begs the big question: What then does the existential therapist or
Jungian analyst actually do during these enigmatic close encounters of the
clinical kind? In existential therapy, for instance, there is no restriction or
rigid dogma regarding the methods used, because unlike most other contem-
porary treatment approaches, existential therapy does not define itself pri-
marily on the basis of any specific or particular techniques. Indeed, existential
therapists tend to eschew and avoid the use of techniques in general, fearing
that such artificial interactions tend to diminish the authentic quality of the
essentially human relationship between patient and practitioner. This radi-
cally antitechnical attitude differs somewhat from that of most Jungian ana-
lysts, who traditionally have used techniques such as controlled association,
amplification, active imagination, interpretation, and so on, though Jungian
analysis is certainly less technically reliant in its approach than other contem-
porary forms of therapy, including Freudian psychoanalysis and its psycho-
dynamic variants. To cite Jungian analyst Murray Stein (1995) on this subject:
“Jungian analysis, which takes place in a dialectical relationship between
analyst and analysand, has for its goal the analysand’s movement toward
psychological wholeness” (p. 33). It is within the context, confidentiality, and

containment of this transformative “dialectical relationship,” symbolized by
the alchemical retort or temenos, that traditional Jungian techniques are intro-
duced, along with sometimes less commonly employed methods of self-
expression such as journaling, painting, drawing, dancing, or playing with
figures in a sand tray.
One of the fundamental theoretical and technical differences and divisions
between existential therapy and Jungian analysis is the existential practitio-
ner’s emphasis on experience and description versus explanation or interpre-
tation. “Phenomenology,” writes Roger Brooke (1991),
is primarily and thoroughly descriptive. . . . Reality as it is present within lived

experience is the mistress to whom the phenomenologist promises to remain
faithful at all times. . . . Description is [however] not opposed to interpretation
. . ., but interpretation is required to remain intrinsically descriptive . . .
[Nonetheless,] Jung (1941) explicitly warns against looking too soon for
“explanations,” and says “In view of the enormous complexity of psychic
phenomena, a purely phenomenological view is, and will be for a long time, the
only one with any prospect of success (p. 182).” (pp. 31-32)
Existential therapy stresses the importance of immediate experience as an

essential counterbalance to the contemporary focus in psychoanalysis on
insight, which is considered insufficient for true therapeutic transformation.
A basic tenet in existential therapy is that intellectual insight alone is not
enough. But, as Brooke correctly points out, interpretation, sparingly
employed, is also part and parcel of the descriptive phenomenological
approach, and a key component of the meaning-making process. Moreover,
accurate interpretation precisely mirroring the person’s subjective experience
of being-in-the-world brings not only meaningful empathic understanding
but also can catalyze and facilitate cathartic and transformative emotional
experiences. In other words, even interpretation can be experiential when
done well. Existential depth psychology heeds Jung’s caution not to interpret
too soon or too often, and, especially, not too rotely or dogmatically. But, at
the same time, it recognizes the therapeutic power of offering well-timed and
psychologically (and sometimes mythologically) well-informed yet nonau-
thoritarian interpretation within the collaborative meaning-making process.
In existential therapy, the individual psychotherapist’s decision of what (if
any) intervention or methodology to use is based on a continual and conscious
choice in response to whatever is phenomenologically emerging or arising in
the present moment. Indeed, sometimes simple presence, merely “being there”
with the patient, staying as intently focused on the here-and-now encounter as
possible, precludes the need to apply any specific technique, a recognition
Diamond 37
leading to existential therapy’s enigmatic yet nonetheless effective technique

of no technique. However, pragmatically and realistically speaking, most con-
temporary existential therapists do make use of certain therapeutic techniques
of their own choosing, such as phenomenology, free association, active listen-
ing, goal-setting, cognitive restructuring, Socratic questioning, homework
assignments, psychoeducation, mindfulness, self-disclosure, abreaction or
catharsis, interpretation, and dream analysis.
But most fundamentally, existential therapists, rather than rigidly relying
on certain traditional, preconceived, or systematically manualized procedures
or methods are improvisational in their encounters with clients or patients.
Improvisation is, in fact, one of the main defining qualities of existential ther-
apy. The paradoxical notion of improvisation as a therapeutic technique is in
keeping with the emphasis on relationship, presence, creativity, timing, self-
expression, and other core clinical concepts in existential therapy. Otto Rank,
a long-time protege of Freud and one of Jung’s contemporaries credited as
being an underappreciated progenitor of existential therapy, is noted to have
practiced improvisation in his own innovative approach to psychotherapy.
According to Rank biographer, psychiatrist E. James Lieberman (1993),
he improvised. The root word means “not to foresee.” . . . Improvisation does

not imply caprice; but it requires a capacity to withstand anxiety in oneself and
the other. In therapy, as in music, improvisation requires a foundation in theory,
deeply imbedded skill, and a love of dynamic experience—that is, of life.
(p. 333)
Not only was Rank’s existentially inclined method of therapy improvisa-

tional, but phenomenological as well, a far cry from dogmatic Freudian
orthodoxy. For Rank, “each individual, as it were, has his own psychology
. . . . In every case of psychotherapy of neurosis I now develop a kind of ad
hoc technique. To each particular case I apply no general therapy or theory”
(Rank quoted in Lieberman, 1993, p. 282; see also Diamond, 1987). Though
never receiving nearly as much credit for his contributions to a more existen-
tial psychotherapy as Rank does today, the following exchange during a
filmed interview toward the end of his life, reveals a very similar sounding
stance from another former Freud protégé, C. G. Jung (1957/1977a):
A: . . . I always insist that even a chronic neurosis has its true cause in the
present moment—now [italics added]. . . . And so a neurosis can be
finished suddenly on a certain day in spite of all causes.
Q: So in working with a patient, you would not say it is absolutely impera-
tive to have to reformulate all of his past life in order to help him with
his present neurosis?
A: There is no system about it in therapy. In therapy you treat the patient

as he is in the present moment [italics added], irrespective of causes
and such things. That is all more or less theoretical. (pp. 317-318)
Note in this extraordinary exchange Jung’s assertion that, unlike in psy-

choanalysis, it may not always be necessary to extensively and dogmatically
revisit in detail the client or patient’s childhood history in every case. This
approach is more in keeping with that of existential therapy, which tends to
focus primarily on the present and future rather than on the past. There are
some cases in which a focus on the present and future rather than the past
may be appropriate and more therapeutic, especially in situations where time
is more or less limited. Nonetheless, even in existential therapy, it can be
extremely helpful to have a general understanding of and familiarity with the
patient or client’s past experiences and essential life story prior to the present
moment, so as to be able to see the person in the broad context of his or her
existence rather than as someone who has sprung fully formed like Athena
from the head of Zeus. In existential depth psychology, there is a recognition
that the past certainly influences (but does not necessarily determine) the
present and future, and thus, must be consciously acknowledged and come to
terms with in the present, so as to help patients become more fully and freely
themselves.
Another excellent example of Jung’s essentially existential attitude can be
seen in his phenomenological approach to dream analysis via “controlled
association” and “amplification.” In Jungian analysis, controlled or directed
association—a method derived and modified from Freud’s technique of “free
association,” and consisting of asking the patient for “spontaneous ideas
which proceed from a given dream situation and constantly relate to it” (Jung,
1961b, p. 381)—is a process of eliciting subjective responses centering
around specific dream images, motifs, or symbols. Amplification—defined as
“elaboration and clarification of a dream-image by means of directed asso-
ciation” (Jung, 1961b, p. 379)—encourages the patient to delve even more
deeply into these associations and dream material by systematically observ-
ing and sharing any additional archetypal or mythological links, associations,
feelings, images, or other reactions to the dream. These separate but related
methods seek to explore and discover the subjective significance of dream
images by eliciting and honoring the dreamer’s own personal experience of
them, rather than dogmatically or rotely interpreting them.
Following in the pioneering spirit of Jung, Rank, and existentially
informed Gestalt therapy founder Fritz Perls (1971), Yalom (1980) concurs
that “in accord with the dictum that one must invent a different therapy for
each patient, there are appropriate times for a therapist to develop some
Diamond 39
exercise that fits the needs of a particular patient” (p. 181). Yalom refers to
these improvisational interventions as “throw ins” that make each course of
treatment unique. For instance, in Love’s Executioner (1989), Yalom recounts
a case in which he spontaneously invites an elderly and depressed widow to
empty the entire contents of her oversized handbag onto his desk so that they
could explore them together, in what turned into a playful exploratory pro-
cess that brought them much closer as patient and therapist, simultaneously
ameliorating some of her sadness, isolation, and loneliness.
We can also find this willingness to improvise and its efficacy in Jung’s
clinical work. Consider, for example, this fascinating anecdotal case report
by Jung (1959/1977b) from the formative days of psychoanalysis:
The doctor of a small town . . . had sent me a young patient who suffered from
incurable insomnia. She was pining away from lack of sleep and narcotics. He
could think of no way to help her except hypnotism or this new psychoanalysis
that they were beginning to talk about.
But she came to me. She was a teacher, twenty-five years old, of a very simple
family, who had successfully completed her studies, but who lived in constant
fear of making a mistake, of not being worthy of her position. She had gotten
into an unbearable state of spasmodic tension. Clearly, what she needed was
psychic relaxation. But we did not know much about all those ideas then. There
was no one in the locality where she lived who could handle her case, and she
could not come to Zürich for treatment. I had to do, as best I could, whatever
was possible in an hour. I tried to explain to her that relaxation was necessary,
that I, for example, found relaxation by sailing on the lake, by letting myself go
with the wind; that this was good for one, necessary for everybody. But I could
see by her eyes that she didn’t understand. She got it intellectually, that’s as far
as it went, though. Reason had no effect. Then, as I talked of sailing and of the
wind, I heard the voice of my mother singing a lullaby to my little sister as she
used to do when I was eight or nine, a story of a little girl in a little boat, on the
Rhine, with little fishes. And I began, almost without doing it on purpose, to
hum what I was telling her about the wind, the waves, the sailing, and
relaxation, to the tune of the little lullaby. I hummed those sensations, and I
could see that she was “enchanted.”
But the hour came to an end, and I had to send her away brusquely. I knew
nothing more about her. I had forgotten her name and that of her physician. But
it was a story that haunted me. Years later, at a congress, a stranger introduced
himself to me as the [referring] doctor . . . and reminded me of the story of the
young girl. “Certainly I remember the case,” I said. “I should have liked so
much to know what became of her.” “But,” he replied in surprise, “she came
back cured, as you know, and I was the one who always wanted to know what
you had done. Because all she could tell me was some story about sailing and
wind, and I never could get her to tell me what you really did. I think she
doesn’t remember. Of course, I know it’s impossible that you only hummed her
a story about a boat.”
How was I to explain to him that I had simply listened to something within
myself? I had been quite at sea. How was I to tell him that I had sung her a
lullaby with my mother’s voice? Enchantment like that is the oldest form of
medicine. But it all happened outside of my reason: it was not until later that I
thought about it rationally and tried to arrive at the laws behind it.
(pp. 417-419)
Here, Jung, then a young alienist, as psychiatrists were referred to at that

time (see Diamond, 2018), had the courage to listen to, trust, honor, and dis-
close what came up within himself during this one-off encounter, and to intui-
tively use it improvisationally during the session (see Längle & Klaassen, in
press). Similarly, in existential depth psychology, each encounter between
patient and therapist is considered crucial, since it is recognized as possibly
being the final session. There can never be a certainty of the next session given
the very tenuous nature of our existence. Each meeting (like each day) may be
the last. Presence, caring, and encounter—quality not quantity or frequency of
sessions—is absolutely essential. Existential depth psychology is not defined
by its duration: it may take 10 years or 10 minutes, since awakening to exis-
tence, to one’s self and to one’s freedom, is not intrinsically determined by the
length of time taken in therapy, but by the choice, in each moment, to truly be
or not to be in the world, to be unconscious or to become conscious, to accept
one’s self and circumstances or change, right here and now.
What follows is another remarkable and now famous case recollection
from Jung (1952/1969e) involving a golden scarab beetle:
A young woman I was treating had, at a critical moment, a dream in which she
was given a golden scarab. While she was telling me the dream, I sat with my
back to the closed window. Suddenly I heard a noise behind me, like a gentle
tapping. I turned round and saw a flying insect knocking against the window-
pane from the outside. I opened the window and caught the creature in the air
as it flew in. It was the nearest analogy to a golden scarab one finds in our
latitudes, a scarabeid beetle, the common rose-chafer (Cetonia aurata), which,
contrary to its usual habits had evidently felt the urge to get into a dark room
at this particular moment. I must admit that nothing like it ever happened to me
before or since. (p. 438)
Jung took full advantage of this wholly unanticipated synchronistic event:

He spontaneously and unhesitatingly reached out and gently caught the living
Diamond 41
insect in his hand, showing it to the startled and deeply impressed patient:
“Here is your scarab!” Pure presence, intuition, and complete improvisation,
but with a specific (though not necessarily fully conscious) therapeutic pur-
pose in mind: to demonstrate dramatically the possibility of “meaningful
coincidence” (synchronicity), and the truth that, as Shakespeare’s Hamlet
suggests,
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. (Act 1, Scene 5, 1603/1934, p. 679)
This uncanny, unexpected, powerful shared synchronistic experience

between analyst and analysand succeeded, said Jung, in breaking through the
patient’s rigid, defensive, restrictive, one-sided rationality and hyperintellec-
tualism, opening her up to the reality of the unconscious, and further indi-
viduation during analysis. As Otto Rank once remarked regarding reaching
such overly rationalistic individuals in therapy: “This type already suffers
from too much introspection, and I do not think we can help these patients by
making them more aware of their mechanisms. They need something else.
They need an emotional experience [italics added]” (Rank quoted in
Lieberman, 1993, p. 282).
But what of those whose development may be lopsided in the opposite
direction, that is, individuals whose psyches and lives are predominantly
governed not by rationality, logic, circumspection, and intellect, but by affec-
tivity, intuition, impulsivity, and the irrational, that is, what Jung frequently
referred to as the “feminine principle”? (see Diamond, 1996). Existential
depth psychology recognizes that such patients or clients may require and
benefit from a primarily cognitive, intellectual, or insight-oriented approach
in therapy, one which compensatorily fosters and facilitates a more rational,
so-called “masculine” mode of being in the world. Any truly existential
approach to psychotherapy has the depth, breadth, and flexibility, both theo-
retically and technically, to understand, respect, and appropriately respond to
the person’s present need for compensation, balance, and wholeness—what-
ever responsible methods that may require.
Indeed, for serious practitioners of existential therapy, dogmatism is, by
far, the most dangerous pitfall of all. As I have elsewhere written, “Theorizing
or mythologizing is not the devil; dogmatism is, whether that dogmatism is
doctrinaire or rabidly anti-doctrine” (Diamond, 1999a, p. 37). Allowing one-
self to be tempted or seduced by this devil of dogmatism, or deceived and
complacently comforted by it, is totally antithetical to practicing existential
therapy. To the extent Jungian analysis—or any other form of treatment,
including contemporary existential therapy—succumbs to this subtle seduc-

tion of dogmatism, it has forfeited and lost its true existential vitality, power,
and potency.
For instance, existential analyst Medard Boss shares the following anec-
dotal description, as summarized by Rollo May (1983), of his work with
a physician suffering from washing, cleaning compulsions, [who] had gone

through both Freudian and Jungian analyses. He had for some time a recurrent
dream involving church steeples which had been interpreted in the Freudian
analysis in terms of phallic symbols and in the Jungian in terms of religious
archetypes. The patient could discuss these interpretations intelligently and at
length, but his neurotic compulsive behavior, after temporary abeyance,
continued as crippling as ever. During the first months of his analysis with
Boss, the patient reported a recurrent dream in which he could approach a
lavatory door which would always be locked. Boss confined himself to asking
each time only why the door needed to be locked—to “rattling the doorknob,”
as he put it. Finally the patient had a dream in which he went through the door
and found himself inside a church, waist deep in feces and being tugged by a
rope wrapped around his waist leading up to the bell tower. The patient was
suspended in such tension that he thought he would be pulled to pieces. He then
went through a psychotic episode of four days during which Boss remained by
his bedside, after which the analysis continued with an eventual very successful
outcome. (pp. 112, 113)
As our closing illustration of clinical improvisation, let us consider a con-

troversial case recounted by Rollo May himself in Power and Innocence
(1972), and discussed in Anger, Madness, and the Daimonic (Diamond,
1996):
May’s patient was a thirty-two-year-old . . . woman, Mercedes, who, among

other problems, suffered from an inability to carry a pregnancy through to full
term, and massive passivity in general. She had been previously rejected as a
patient by several other psychotherapists, who pronounced her—prejudicially
and, as it turns out, prematurely—“unanalyzable.” After many sessions marked
by her intractable submissiveness and feelings of utter helplessness, May, in
response to a dream Mercedes reported, resorted to raging for his maddeningly
obsequious patient: “Some rage had to be expressed,” writes May, “and I was
the only other person in the room. . . . I was giving vent to the rage the girl had
never dared express herself. I was allying myself with that faint autonomous
element which we must assume is in every human being, although in Mercedes
it was practically nonexistent to start with.” He is, however, quick to point out
that this unpremeditated “technique”—or more aptly, countertransference
reaction—was something spontaneous, instinctive, and extraordinary, justified
Diamond 43
only by what he felt to be a matter of life or death for the unborn fetus of his
pregnant patient. May’s sensitive “clinical instincts” and response-ability—his
willingness and flexibility to improvise (like Rank) and relate authentically
rather than dispassionately to his patient—turned out to be curative in this case:
Mercedes successfully carried her child to full term for the first time. . . . May
was thus able to make good use of his “countertransference,” sensing the
daimonic emotions denied by his patient—not to mention his own mounting
frustration—and converting this rage into a therapeutic response. (pp. 234,
235)
May’s improvised, unpremeditated, empathic, and highly unorthodox inter-

vention, like the other case examples cited here, was certainly not traditional,
conventional, nor rational, but rather an impulsive, spontaneous, heartfelt,
compassionate, caring, and fully human response in the here-and-now to a
fellow human being struggling desperately to be free. A young woman of
color fighting for her own life, and that of her unborn child. Striving to redis-
cover, reclaim, and defend her fundamental right to exist. To authentically be
in the world. It was, it seems to me, the authenticity, empathic caring, com-
passion (com-passion = feeling with), and genuine humanity of Rollo’s reac-
tion that evidently made a profound and pivotal therapeutic impact on his
then pregnant (in more ways than one) patient, who went on, we are told, to
successfully give birth to her first baby, finally fulfilling her dream of becom-
ing a parent, and to create a new life and identity for herself as a woman and
mother—which is exactly what she was seeking from psychotherapy from
the start.
Conclusion: Toward an Existential Depth

Psychology
Notwithstanding the significant theoretical and philosophical chasm tradition-
ally separating Jungian analysis and existential therapy, I submit that these
two robust therapeutic approaches are essentially more similar than different.
Like so many of Jung’s seminal concepts, “Since its inception almost a cen-
tury ago, many of the fundamental philosophical and methodological princi-
ples of existential therapy have been subtly assimilated into mainstream theory
and therapeutic practice” (Diamond, 2016a, p. 346). Most current psychother-
apies, particularly, the inherently humanistic approaches of Jung’s depth psy-
chology and existential therapy, are integrally related, having profoundly
influenced each other and their myriad derivatives over the past century. But
existential therapy and Jungian analysis stand most strongly united in their
divergence from the superficial, suppressive, reductionistic, medicalized,
dehumanizing, manualized, mechanistic, robotic, and technical trends domi-

nating psychotherapy today.
It is true that, generally speaking, existential therapy vigorously rejects
the depth psychologist’s preconceived theories of the psyche—for instance,
of “archetypes” (see Hinton, in press) or even of the “unconscious”—con-
sidering such dogmatic conceptualizations and interpretations on the part of
the analyst as forced, fabricated, fantastic, and fundamentally nonphenom-
enological. But I have argued here that it does so despite the fact that such
hard-won and faithful descriptions of impressive archetypal or universal
phenomena like the collective unconscious, shadow, persona, Self, anima/
animus, stem from Jung’s informal and intuitive phenomenological and sci-
entifically empirical approach to the psyche in the first place: “[The arche-
type] is not a theory but pure observation of facts” (Jung, 1947/1976, p.
xlv). These descriptive, metaphorical, symbolic concepts cogently and cre-
atively represent Jung’s own empirical observations, and have been phe-
nomenologically observed, verified, and corroborated by the clinical
experience of generations of psychotherapists (see Buffardi, in press).
At the end of the day, contemporary existential therapy’s reflexive dis-
missal of depth psychology and its penetrating clinical wisdom diminishes it
immensely. And vice versa. If truth be told, depth psychology and existential
therapy, despite, or really due to, their differences, desperately need each
other today to become more balanced, whole, and viable treatment approaches,
especially given the rabid bias against such depth-oriented humanistic psy-
chotherapy in the current mental health environment. Existential depth psy-
chology—a proposed synthesis of existential and Jungian analysis—seeks to
rectify this regrettable situation, and to reconcile what to some seems inher-
ently irreconcilable. It recognizes and accepts that there exists an inextricably
related dialectical relationship between Jung’s depth psychology and existen-
tial therapy, and that these two clinical orientations can, in fact, complement
and enhance each other, combining to create a more efficacious form of psy-
chotherapy. As I have elsewhere written:
Contemporary existential therapy provides a disciplined, phenomenological

method, technical improvisation, and empathic humanism, whereas depth
psychology provides a dynamic richness, archetypal myths, and accrued
clinical wisdom in dealing with the “unconscious.” Both of these perspectives
are essential to the current and future practice and survival of psychotherapy,
not only as they complement each other, but also as they compensate for the
limited scope and depth of pharmacologic and cognitive behavioral symptom-
focused interventions. (Diamond, 2016a, p. 345)
Diamond 45
Beyond these basic commonalities, both Jungian analysis and existential

therapy recognize and respect the innate human “need to ponder life’s awe-
some mysteries,” and strive to provide an opportunity “for patients to grapple
with these profound spiritual and existential questions that, not coinciden-
tally, tend to correspond closely to their presenting problems” (Diamond,
2016a, p. 346). As May (1985), who could just as well have been speaking of
existential therapy or Jungian analysis, so succinctly stated, “no topics could
be more important than beauty, God, death” (p. 22). In clinical practice, be it
existential, Jungian, Freudian, person-centered, or cognitive-behavioral,
these “ultimate concerns” (Tillich, 1952), including the problem of evil and
the daimonic, eventually arise in some form or another, whether recognized
and addressed by the therapist or not. For example, as Rollo May (1994)
remarks,
I think there is just as much daimonic wrath in any kind of psychotherapy—

except as it is avoided by the therapist. In terms of technique, those clinicians
who are aware of the daimonic normally confront violence and rage no
differently from the Freudians, Jungians, or other kinds of psychodynamically
based therapies; the crucial difference is that they can get at the anger and rage
more constructively, because they can recognize its valuable aspects. (in
Diamond, 1996, pp. xxi-xxii)
Indeed, this is another way of defining and thinking about the fundamental
meaning of the term depth in both Freud and Jung’s depth psychology and
existential therapy: In this context, depth refers not only to working directly
with the phenomenological manifestations of the “unconscious,” “shadow,”
or the “daimonic,” or to Freud’s fastidious focus on the patient’s earliest and,
therefore, presumably most remote, repressed, “deepest” traumatic childhood
experiences but also to the willingness to look and see more deeply, penetrat-
ingly, intently, unflinchingly, openly, mindfully, and unassumingly, at the
bare existential facts of life and life’s ultimate concerns, and to encourage
clients or patients to more deeply or intensely experience the truth of their
own subjective being-in-the-world in the present moment (see Berra, in
press; Längle & Klaassen, in press)
This accurately describes the purpose of what I call existential depth psy-
chology: enhancement and deepening of the subjective experience of oneself
and of life, of one’s sense of freedom and responsibility, of one’s capacity to
feel love, rage, sadness, compassion, and of one’s willingness to accept, tol-
erate, and embrace the inevitable existential realities of meaninglessness,
loss, aloneness, suffering, freedom, finitude, death, and evil. Amor fati: to
love our fate, as Friedrich Nietzsche (1908/1992) so passionately urged.
Though today we tend to think of therapy as being primarily about change, it

is, in my experience, both professionally and personally, at least as much
about acceptance: acceptance of the existential facts of life, of reality, of the
world and how it works, of the daimonic, and of our human responsibility for
becoming more balanced, genuine, and whole. This requires not only accept-
ing the world as it is, including the distressing reality of evil, but seeing and
accepting others as they are (as opposed to trying to change them), and, most
important, perceiving and accepting oneself as one truly is.
Such radical acceptance of oneself and the world in which we are inextri-
cably and existentially embedded requires allowing some sort of authentic
expression and recognition of our repressed or denied potentialities for both
good and evil, creativity and destructiveness. As Jung himself reputedly pith-
ily put it: “I would rather be whole than good” (see Aho, in press). This sort
of voluntary surrender to our imperfect humanity and unequivocal engage-
ment in existence is tantamount to taking an essentially spiritual attitude
toward life, alluded to by Jung’s (1952/1969f, p. 402) superexistential spiri-
tual statement: “. . . God is Reality itself.” Pure unadulterated existence as
supreme being. Such a sacred approach to existential reality—what existen-
tial theologian Paul Tillich (1952) similarly called the “ground of being”—
and our ultimate concerns about the human condition, describes well what we
could rightly consider a “secular existential spirituality” (Diamond, 2016a,
p. 329).
To sum up, the ultimate clinical concerns in existential depth psychology
include a focus on dealing directly with both existential and pathological
anxiety (see May, 1950/1977); acknowledging the capacity for consciousness
and unconsciousness or self-deception (Sartre’s [1962] mauvaise foi or “bad
faith”); finding and exercising the courage to authentically become one’s self
in the world (integrity or individuation) and to accept our existential burden
of freedom, aloneness, and personal responsibility; confronting the subjec-
tive experience of alienation, nihilism, guilt, absurdity, rage, and despair, and
suffering; facing the reality and finality of death; recognizing and addressing
the daimonic (or shadow) and the perplexing and pervasive problem of
human evil (see Diamond, 1996; May, 1969; Stein, 1996); and, finally, redis-
covering the potentially transcendent, reinvigorating, or redemptive power of
meaning, purpose, creativity, relationship, love, truth, and beauty.
Existential depth psychology, then, can be partly defined by its ultimate
task of liberating patients not only from their neuroses or psychoses that
prevent them from fully and authentically being and expressing themselves
in the world but also from their painful alienation from their fellow human
creatures, as well as from their true self (see Aho, in press). In other
words, existential depth psychology seeks to rehumanize the patient by
Diamond 47
rehumanizing the psychotherapist and the psychotherapy process (see also

Längle & Klaassen, in press). It recognizes, honors, and addresses the ines-
capable existential facts of separateness, isolation, and aloneness, the burden
and blessings of individuality, authenticity, and selfhood, within the sys-
temic context of being intrinsically embedded in the world and inextricably
connected to and rooted in the collective. As Jung himself (1946/1969g)
indicates, “Individuation does not shut one out from the world, but gathers
the world to oneself” (p. 226), adding that, “As the individual is not just a
single, separate being, but by his very existence presupposes a collective
relationship, it follows that the process of individuation must lead to more
intense and broader collective relationships and not to isolation” (1921/1971,
p. 448). This consists of a recognition and acceptance that though we may be
existentially isolated and alone, we human beings are also deeply and inte-
grally related and interdependent on each other for support, sustenance, car-
ing, camaraderie, conflict, collaboration, and love, which, as Yalom (1980)
asserts, may be the only thing that makes our existential isolation more toler-
able and bearable.
At the same time, existential depth psychology seeks to set people free
from their infantile, toxic, morbid dependence on others, and on therapy
itself. This liberation is encouraged within the context and comparatively
safe and sacred container (temenos) of the therapeutic relationship—with its
essential limits and ethical boundaries—which, nevertheless, despite its
alchemical and transformational power, must, at some point, inevitably end.
Existentially speaking, termination of therapy is, like loss and death, unavoid-
able and even necessary, be it sooner or later:
Because contemporary existential therapy emphasizes ultimate human

concerns such as isolation, loss, separation, and death, the termination or
ending of the therapeutic relationship takes on special significance. . . . One of
the most deep-seated and difficult projections for patients or clients to relinquish
during the sometimes-stormy termination phase is the unconscious belief in the
ultimate rescuer, an omnipotent force or being that loves and protects us.
Although an ultimate rescuer may be construed in many forms, magical powers
commonly are projected onto the person of the therapist [or analyst] to fulfill
unmet dependency needs, dispel life’s problems, cure every psychological
symptom, and alleviate existential suffering. (Diamond, 2016a, pp. 338, 339)
The process of existential depth psychology, like the Jungian goal of indi-
viduation, typically involves some tendency toward eudaimonism. Aristotle
(ca. 330 BC) “defined eudaimonism as the capacity to live happily and har-
moniously with the daimonic” (Diamond, 1996, p. 268). Schopenhauer
(1890/1942) spoke similarly of this artful approach to living or learning to
cohabitate creatively with one’s daimon and its sometimes unruly and unrea-
sonable desires, proclivities, talents, and passions (see Diamond, 1999a).
Clearly, these aspirational aims cannot be the ultimate outcome of therapy in
all cases, for a whole host of reasons. Nor should they automatically be pre-
supposed or imposed—consciously or unconsciously—by the therapist. In
certain cases, the client or patient may have no time, money, motivation, or
interest at all in working toward individuation or eudaimonism, preferring to
focus on far more modest, concrete, “realistic” cognitive, behavioral, or rela-
tional changes. Or he or she may request or require psychopharmacological
intervention or, in acute cases, immediate psychiatric hospitalization so as to
mitigate debilitating or dangerous symptoms as expeditiously and safely as
possible.
While existential depth psychology can and does provide and facilitate
such brief pragmatic interventions when needed, the longer term goal is,
whenever realistically possible, to assist people in finding, creating, and
internalizing “their own philosophical grounding or spiritual perspective in
life” (Diamond, 2016a, p. 346). Building such a sound foundation upon
which to stand in the world—be it of bricks and mortar composed of Jungian,
Freudian, existential, pragmatic, scientific, spiritual, philosophical or reli-
gious wisdom, or some combination thereof as the patient or client chooses—
is an essential element of existential depth psychology. As is learning not
only to acknowledge and accept the presence of the daimonic and shadow in
oneself and others, but, perhaps most important, to discover creative path-
ways for integrating it into one’s personality and expressing it more construc-
tively in the world. For it is on that footing, and on that footing alone, that the
person
will eventually be able to live independent of therapy and deal with the stark
existential facts of life and with present or future existential crises from a
position of inner resilience, strength, confidence, and stability, while being
better able to savor and be fully present to life’s sublime pleasures, beauties,
and wonders. (Diamond, 2016a, p. 346)
Jungian analysis, with its useful comprehension of the unconscious as

compensatory to consciousness, assumes, based on decades of clinical obser-
vation, the presence of an innate teleological trend toward wholeness in the
psyche, toward an integration and unification of persona, ego, shadow, anima
or animus into the Self. Embracing such Jungian notions, without applying
them dogmatically or rotely to each unique case, existential depth psychol-
ogy acknowledges this apparent tendency toward wholeness, individuation,
or self-actualization. But it stresses that, for we humans, despite the body and
Diamond 49
psyche’s congenital self-regulating system, such wholeness does not happen

automatically, as it does in animals or plants; on the contrary, it must be
actively willed and daily committed and recommitted to. This caveat places
the heavy burden of responsibility for choosing wholeness, shifting from a
state of dysdaimonia (Diamond, 1996) toward eudaimonia, squarely on the
individual, and his or her willingness and readiness to respond consciously
and even creatively to the daimonic (see Aho, in press). The existential deci-
sion to work toward the goal of reconciling with and constructively managing
and directing our daimonic passions can and must be consciously taken, com-
mitted to, confirmed, and reasserted in every new moment. We can never rest
complacently on our psychological, philosophical, or spiritual laurels. We are
destined to continually evolve or devolve through our own choices and
efforts. Such is each human being’s inescapable existential fate, and—like
coming to terms with the poignantly evanescent, unrelenting, irreversible
passage and ravages of time and abiding burden of freedom, responsibility,
suffering, evil, and death—part of the absurd, excruciating, tragic yet never-
theless magnificent, deeply mysterious, and ultimately incomprehensible
experience of existence.
In the final analysis, life’s most daunting difficulties, conundrums, and
tragedies can never be fully resolved, but rather merely courageously and
consciously faced, accepted, suffered, and, sometimes, meaningfully tran-
scended. Speaking of these existential “givens” in life, these ultimate con-
cerns and the confounding human condition in general, Carl Jung (1931/1967)
concludes that “all the greatest and most important problems of life are fun-
damentally insoluble. They must be so, for they express the necessary polar-
ity inherent in every self-regulating system. They can never be solved, but
only outgrown” (p. 15). In this regard, writes Rollo May (1983), “the term
cure can be given a deeper and truer meaning—namely, becoming oriented
toward the fulfillment of one’s existence” (p. 165). Or, as I prefer to put it,
toward finding, accepting, and fulfilling one’s destiny.
Author’s Note
This article is an amplification of my original notes from a public lecture of the same
title presented at the Los Angeles Jung Institute on March 22, 2017.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publica-
tion of this article.
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Author Biography
Stephen A. Diamond, PhD, is a licensed clinical and
forensic psychologist practicing in Los Angeles, CA. A for-
mer pupil and protégé of existential psychoanalyst Rollo
May, he is the author of Anger, Madness, and the Daimonic:
The Psychological Genesis of Violence, Evil, and Creativity
(State University of New York Press, 1996). He has con-
tributed chapters to the bestselling anthology Meeting the
Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human
Nature (1990), Spirituality and Psychological Health
(2005), the Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion
(2009), Writing Music (2018), and, a chapter titled
“Existential Therapy: Confronting Life’s Ultimate
Concerns” to the textbook Contemporary Theory and Practice in Counseling and
Psychotherapy (Sage, 2015). His writing has also appeared in various professional
journals such as the San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal, Psychological
Perspectives, the Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, PsycCRITIQUES,
Existential Analysis, and Dasein, and he has lectured and taught at diverse institutions
including Pacific Graduate School of Psychology (Palo Alto University), J.F.K.
University, Argosy University, the C.G. Jung Institute–Zurich, Ryokan College,
Loyola Marymount University, and the Existential Academy in London. Presently, he
writes regularly for Psychology Today, serves on the editorial board of the Journal of
Humanistic Psychology, and maintains a private psychotherapy practice.

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809915

1Ryokan College, Los Angeles, CA, USA

contends, be credited with being one of the forerunners of today’s existential

In this article, I compare the contemporary practices of existential therapy

notion of the “unconscious” and other core concepts central to traditional

Defining Depth Psychology and Existential Therapy

For existential therapists, “phenomenology” refers to the disciplined philosophical

The primary purpose of the phenomenological method is to perceive the

Existential therapy generally consists of a supportive and collaborative

However, in distinction to Jungian analysis, and Freudian psychoanalysis

In keeping with its strong philosophical foundation, existential therapy takes

As with Jungian analysis, the ultimate aim of existential therapy is not

and psychotherapy. Instead, distressing “symptoms” such as anxiety, depres-

Jung’s Analytical Psychology and Existential

And from the same clearly disclamatory letter:

Your “interpretations” in the light of existential philosophy are so entirely

Addressing in this same remarkable correspondence the effort of existen-

On Myth, Meaning, and Meaninglessness

existence is inherently meaningless, as most existentialists contend, myths are

A myth is a way of making sense in a senseless world. Myths are narrative

Myth is an essential method of making meaning: No myth, no meaning.

them rediscovering some spiritual meaning through the traditional structure

even the elementary psychoanalytic notion that dreams are meaningful

In either case, contemporary existential therapists such as Yalom (1980) sug-

Jung (1961b) philosophically concludes, “The meaning of my existence is

On Suffering, Anxiety, and Mortality

As against Freud’s view that dreams are wish-fulfillment, my experience of

Or, as Jung (1938/1969d), speaking of psychiatric symptomatology in gen-

same thing in another way, in the unconscious every one of us is convinced of

Freud believed that much psychopathology results from a person’s repression

It can, at least sometimes, as Yalom notes, be understood to be inversely cor-

awful (awe-full) power, numinosity, and sobering reality. In existential ther-

Indeed, religion can, as Freud controversially and rather existentially con-

I am convinced that it is hygienic—if I may use the word—to discover in death

Here Jung refers to the potentially positive or therapeutic power of religion in

On Freedom, Fate, Destiny, Despair,

Indeed, according to Frankl (1946/1967), “Existential analysis aims at

stood nonchalantly nearby. Pleading desperately with him to help extricate

the psyche toward wholeness and balance. The unconscious, according to

On Evil, the Shadow, and the Daimonic

means for making sense of and communicating about ubiquitous phenomena

Recognizing the psychologically symbolic rather than metaphysical nature of

It could be argued that the essential nature of Jung’s classic conception of

Creativity and the creative process is another ultimate concern in both

Creative endeavors can help constructively channel disturbing daimonic affects

terms—philosophically, spiritually, psychologically, and emotionally—with

On Diagnosis, Etiology, and Treatment of

humanistic, holistic, psychological, philosophical, spiritual and systemic

It is generally assumed in medical circles that the examination of the patient

arrived at as regards prognosis and therapy. Psychotherapy forms a startling

Most prominent existential therapists today, like Yalom (2009), concur

transpersonal, and existential—as opposed to being merely personal, idiosyn-

It is not the therapist’s function to “cure” the patient’s neurotic symptoms,

On the Practice of Presence, Encounter, and

Yalom and Josselson (2013) describe this crucial encounter in existential

Endorsing this existential stance, Jungian analyst David Sedgwick (2001)

What Jungian psychotherapy is really about is the therapeutic relationship

Here Sedgwick seems to allude to what Jung meant when, in a moment of

psychological wholeness” (p. 33). It is within the context, confidentiality, and

is primarily and thoroughly descriptive. . . . Reality as it is present within lived

Existential therapy stresses the importance of immediate experience as an

leading to existential therapy’s enigmatic yet nonetheless effective technique

he improvised. The root word means “not to foresee.” . . . Improvisation does

Not only was Rank’s existentially inclined method of therapy improvisa-