Ernesto Spinelli on Existential Therapy: a Personal Reflection on its Defining Features

With me is Ernesto Spinelli. He's an extremely influential psychotherapist and writer, mostly known for his work in existential therapy. In an international survey asking more than a thousand existential therapists what they consider to be the most important books influencing their practice, your book, *Practicing Existential Therapy*, was the most influential to come out in the last 30 years.

You're also a scholar in phenomenology and have been influenced by writers like Edwin Husserl, incorporating his concepts and ideas into your own practice. So, thanks so much for having us, Ernesto. Thank you.

My pleasure. Oh, it's great! So, existential therapy has come a long way, and in your career, it's also been a long, fruitful journey helping that development.

Before jumping to your current ideas, I'd like to ask you how it started for you. Was there a particular book or author that made a big impact when you were starting out? Well, the way it started was that I was teaching at an international college in London.

I was teaching various undergraduate courses on psychology, and I was asked to teach a course on humanistic psychology, which I knew something about because I had grown up in that period when it kind of blossomed and so forth. However, I didn't want to teach a course that was just going through the different schools and approaches because it was too messy. Anyway, I said, “Well, I'll teach it, but what I want to teach is a course that looks at what might be the underlying philosophy or ideas that unify all these different approaches.

” I mainly wanted to do this because I didn't know myself, and I thought, “Well, the best way of learning is to teach something. ” So, they agreed that I could do this, and I began to read. Very quickly, existentialism and phenomenology were two terms that kept coming up.

I had heard of these terms, obviously, mainly through when I was an undergraduate, particularly via the writings of R. D. Laing, which were very popular and exciting at that time.

I had used some concepts, but only very vaguely. So, I went to the college library, headed to the philosophy section on phenomenology, and found some books by Husserl. I thought, “Oh, great!

” I picked one of the books up and started reading it, but I couldn't make any sense of it. I thought either I'm really dense, or this is just impenetrable. Anyway, I kept going back to it, and eventually, I think I got some idea of what he was trying to say.

In my naivety, I thought, “Wow! This is really interesting because it could create a kind of new way of thinking about doing psychotherapy. ” I had a background in psychoanalysis; I had started to train in psychoanalysis and then I stopped.

So, I had always had an interest in psychotherapeutic ideas and approaches, but I hadn't come across something that felt like these ideas could be transposed to some extent to what was going on in psychotherapy. Of course, I later discovered that many people before me had already had this thought. Nevertheless, I was lucky enough to secure a contract to write a book on phenomenological thinking as applied to psychology and to psychotherapy, and that's where it took off, basically.

Great! Actually, I was curious—because you mentioned R. D.

Laing, he was also a psychoanalyst with an existential bias. So, there is this bond between you and him. Well, I would like to think there is.

I mean, we got as close as talking on the phone; we never actually met face to face. He died just, I think, it was in the same week that my book was published. I had these dreams and hopes that he might read it or that I could give it to him, but it never came to be.

Nevertheless, he remains a very important figure in my life. I remember he died playing tennis, and his last words were, “I don’t need any bloody doctor. ” Yeah, I think it was, “Doctor!

” *laughs* Okay, thank you. Now, jumping to a little bit of present history, what are your current views on the defining features of an existential therapist in comparison to other modalities? This is really difficult because one of the characteristic features of existential therapists is that we won't agree on anything!

So, we all have our particular views on this. To be fair, we are trying to work together, to talk with each other, which is a very unusual thing, and to try and figure out if there is anything in common that unifies us. I think there are two things that I can say about that.

The first is that more than the ideas as such, it's the attitude that I think is a unifying feature. That attitude, I think broadly speaking, is a kind of a skeptical position on psychotherapy itself and on the roles and assumptions of psychotherapy. That would be a broad thing.

Personally speaking, I think that what is unique—what's central to existential therapy and existential ideas in general—is again not the usual things. You know, when people think of existential therapy, they think of concepts like death, anxiety, authenticity, and isolation. Meaning all of those things are really very, very valuable there, and obviously existential thought has a lot to say about them.

But I think every form of therapy has something to say about those themes. So, for me, it's the way that existential thought approaches these ideas that makes it distinct, rather than the death of things themselves. You know, I've tried to present a view that says basically I think there are at least three key principles that underpin the way existential thought considers human beings—or considers existence in general.

The crucial one being what I and other people call relatedness. This is a basic condition of inseparability; that I am anything that I can say that I am or am not is not just dependent on some kind of internal psychic awareness. It's a relational understanding, an understanding that emerges through all my interactions with the world and all the world's interactions with me.

More deeply than that, fundamentally, all these "I's" that we are, to me, are an expression of a more foundational grounding that is unified. So it's like we are distinct manifestations of a shared life condition. I think when you start to see things in that way, then a lot of the language of psychotherapy, which is so individualistically focused, it’s not that it becomes irrelevant, but you start to see it in a very different way.

It turns it around. I have felt that, speaking of psychotherapy more broadly, you are saying that the evolution of the different schools actually kind of goes with the flow of these ideas of relatedness. For instance, psychoanalysis became more relational, and cognitive therapy is highly criticized for the lack of this relational aspect.

So, there seems to be this move that you’re saying towards this interdependence. Yes, yes. The only thing I would say about that is that still there are different ways of understanding relational or relationality.

I think in the West we have a tendency to understand relationality as the interaction between two distinct beings who come together in some kind of way. I think existential thought takes this idea in another direction—that the distinct beings are really just an outcome of relation itself. For some people who study Eastern ideas, it has some affinity with some Buddhist ideas, some Hindu ideas.

It's not the same, obviously, but there are points of contact. For many people, existential therapy was a discovery mainly through the popularity of Irvin Yalom. I know that you have your concerns regarding the identification of Yalom’s four givens: freedom, isolation, meaninglessness, and death.

You're concerned that this is too connected with existential thought. Can you elaborate on this? Sure.

Again, I think those four concerns are crucial and critical. As I said before, I think for me the problem, though, is what kind of psychotherapy doesn't explore those four concerns? In that sense, if you're talking about the distinctiveness of existential therapy, then it can't be in the concerns themselves.

And this is Yalom's point, you know, because he doesn't actually believe that there is such a thing as existential therapy; he believes that there are existential questions or issues that need to be addressed appropriately within psychotherapy. So it can be psychoanalytic, it can be CBT, it could be Rogerian; it doesn’t really matter. It's that these principles get addressed.

Now for me, like I was saying before, it’s not the principles themselves that distinguish existential thought, but it’s the way these principles are understood by existential therapy through this lens. On one hand, relatedness, and then, two, other factors—this notion of a basic uncertainty in our existence and the anxiety that is given of our lives. So when we look at these notions, like say death anxiety or whatever, or life and death from this standpoint of relatedness, uncertainty, and anxiety, we get a slightly different or maybe significantly different understanding compared to say the more individualistic views that many other therapies adopt.

Which I guess would also lead you to say that this inevitably leads to a nomological stance? Yeah, exactly. You know, for some time I've been worried about the way that therapists find to defend themselves from the client with concepts like transference and resistance, and through an emphasis on role-playing, game-playing, and authority or something.

Yes, I know you wrote about this in your book *The Mystifying Therapy of Museum Rec Therapy*. I'm curious to know your current thoughts on the way therapists defend themselves at the expense of their clients, and how do you think this phenomenological stance can help us to balance that? Okay, I think I can put it into a nutshell.

I think there's a basic mantra that an existential therapist should try to adopt, which is: the client is always right. If you take that position, then all these ideas of resistance and transference, all this stuff just goes out the window. I find it really irritating, and I think it is largely defensive, obviously.

If we’re looking at things from a relational standpoint, it makes perfect sense that anything I'm saying to you probably has resonances with what I mean in my interactions with my parents, my interactions with my cats, my interactions with my friends—with everything, with the world in general. But to give particular significance that says that when I'm talking to you as the therapist, that somehow I'm not really. .

. Talking to you, but I'm talking to somebody else, I find that really silly too. You know, it just makes no sense to me, so I try to work from the basis that whatever the client is saying, he or she is addressing it to me and to the world.

I can look at it from both those perspectives, not either/or, but both/and. Equally, even if what they're saying sounds completely absurd or feels wrong or whatever, fundamentally, what they're saying is right, even if I have no understanding of it. My task is to try to understand what it is that they're saying in their statements.

So there's this core validation of the subjective experience of, um, yeah, yeah. Well, you said one of your mantras: "The client is always right. " Yeah, now I want to ask you about another mantra.

I know you have two: "To describe something is to change it. " Yes, please explain this to us. It's, I mean, it's certainly not a new idea, and it basically says that the minute you really start to focus in on some experience in a fashion that really tries to clarify that experience without giving an explanation to it or a kind of analysis to it, but just really examining as carefully as possible what that experience is, the magical thing is that the experience shifts.

What you brought to it initially is no longer held by because you’re seeing more of what was always there. So it’s not like something new is being added; it’s just that you’re experiencing more of what was present, of what is present. For me, the importance of this idea is that it seems to me that this is the key to the effectiveness of psychotherapy, of all psychotherapy.

We all have crazy ideas about why psychotherapy works and so forth, but I think, fundamentally, if you look at the commonalities and the common principles of psychotherapy, then you realize that when the client is given the opportunity to be in a space that is both challenging enough and safe enough to address more honestly and accurately what it is that the client experiences, their experience changes. Yeah, you know, it's not really that surprising. It reminds me of a paradoxical fear of change.

I don't know if it's Gestalt or something, but yeah, yeah—to change how you already had to stay. Yeah, yeah. I mean, a lot of approaches have this understanding; it’s just that I find that sometimes they tend to mystify it a little bit into kind of magical language of some sort or other when it’s actually pretty straightforward.

In other words, just examining anything changes what is being examined; it changes the examiner. How do you compare this approach then with Rogerian therapy? Because there is a very commonality between Rogers and existential thinking.

There are a number of commonalities. Rogers always made it clear that the way he developed his model was deeply influenced by his understanding of existential thought. I think what I would say is that while there are strong points of connection, there are important differences broadly at both an applied level and a theoretical level.

At a theoretical level, there is this tendency in Rogers, I think, to add to our sense of being human these notions of inherent goodness and so forth, which existential thought is much more cagey about. We’re human; we’re capable of so many possibilities, some of which we might label as good, some which might be labeled as bad—some which at one point seem good and at another point seem bad. So human existence is much more complex than I think the theories that Rogers would propose would suggest.

At an applied level, I think that there is a questioning element in existential thought, an exploratory element, an inquisitive element that undoubtedly is there in person-centered therapy as well. But it uses description in a different way. You know, it uses description to try to address what isn’t obvious in the client’s statements that is there but is not being seen.

But I think, to be fair, you know, I think probably an excellent practitioner in person-centered therapy and an excellent practitioner in existential therapy, if you see them working at some level, probably you would go, "I don’t see too much difference. " I think some differences would eventually emerge, but there would be a lot of points of commonality. Maybe one of the differences is the stance that you’re saying—the pre-assumptions they have.

I know that there was a friendly exchange of letters between Rogers and Roll away from the American attention. Yeah, was that friendly? I don’t think.

I mean, and Brother May brought this out with regard to, you know, the question of evil and Rogers' incapacity to really address that question in a genuine way or in a deep way. There’s one concept in your work that I find extremely useful, which is the idea of unknowing. For those not familiar with it, could you just tell us what that is and if you can recall a personal experience where you suddenly realized this was very important in psychotherapy?

Okay, first thing is that the term I use, unknowing, is "UN" and then "knowing. " The reason for that is that I'm not suggesting a kind of erasing of knowledge or a blanketing out of knowledge. The "UM" actually refers to uncertainty, so it's more like uncertain knowing.

And what I'm trying to. . .

Get across there is the idea that when the therapist starts to listen to what the client is saying, obviously the therapist doesn't hear the client's statements or respond to the client’s statements from a position of a kind of blank slate. You know, the therapist brings all kinds of his or her own experiences, his or her own knowledge, understanding, all those things which can't be erased, but they can be placed into a context of uncertainty. They can be placed in a point where the therapist says, "Yes, I have all this, but I can also take a stance that says I might be wrong.

I might not have understood. " So, unknowing is trying to get across this phenomenological idea of remaining open to what presents itself as possible, as much as you can. You can't do it truly, but you can be willing to do it.

Yeah, you know, and that willingness to do it then allows you to hear the client as though, even though they've made the statement 20,000 times, it's like you've heard it for the first time, and that you don't really know what the hell character they're actually signing. So, I find this principle very useful in my own life, not just in terms of practicing psychotherapy, but you know, in engaging with people in my interactions with my friends, my wife, colleagues, or whatever, trying to stay with this open position. You asked me if I can think of a particular example.

I'm not sure if it's exactly the same, but this is what came to my mind. It's an example that I've spoken about and written about. I was working with a client who came to see me because she was getting more and more upset and disturbed by her relationship with her mother.

Her mother had developed Alzheimer’s disease and was in a home because she knew she needed to be cared for 24 hours a day. My client had initially been going over at least every other day to see her and speak to her, but she had found the experience more and more irritating, disturbing, demoralizing, and really sad. Because each time she went and introduced herself as the daughter, the mother would look at her and say, "I don’t know who you are.

You’re not my daughter. " If she insisted, then increasingly the mother would get more agitated, more upset, angry. This was really upsetting my client a great deal.

Anyway, we had lots of discussions, and I think what was key was that in the course of the discussions, even though we never explicitly named it, I tried to listen to her from this unknowing position. I think somewhere along the line she picked up what I was doing, you know, that I was kind of looking at things like they were brand new. So, one day she came back to see me, and she was happy; things had changed quite radically.

What had changed was that she had gone to see her mother this time, but rather than introducing herself as her daughter or even insisting that she was the daughter, she just sat down next to her mother and started to talk to her as though, you know, she was a stranger of some sort who was just being friendly and talking to the woman. As they got to talking, the mother asked her whether my client had any children. My client answered her, and then the mother started to say, "I have a daughter," and began to speak about her daughter — to her daughter — in a way that really moved and touched my client.

She finally achieved that closeness that she was looking for, hoping for, and felt that she would never get again, but she only managed to do it by staying with where things were rather than trying to impose her knowledge that she was the daughter onto the presence of the other. So, that's where we stay looking at the unknown. It's a great story, and you've talked about how you find this useful in your own life.

I want to emphasize exactly this openness and unknowing that you're advocating, and that existential therapy seems to be advocating. It seems like quite a challenging enterprise. It is, yeah.

What do you find in your own practice to be the greatest difficulties in maintaining this phenomenological stance towards your clients? I think it is precisely staying open to what’s being presented and not trying to solve things. Again, in the college where I used to work, which was on Baker Street, every day I would come out of Baker Street tube station, and there was a statue of Sherlock Holmes just outside the station.

It hit me one day that, you know, I told the students that we start off in psychotherapy thinking that we’re going to be the equivalent of Sherlock Holmes, but actually our task is to be more like Dr Watson. You know that if whenever Watson tries to take on the role of Holmes, he really makes a mess of things, and I think that’s what happens when therapists do that. It's more like we have to take a position that is an ally—a very good ally and a very necessary ally to the great detective that is the client.

Yeah, you know, play devil’s advocate because yes. . .

You are clearly, of course, talking about the relational and validation side. You know, if the client asks directly for a change, how does your stance towards that change? Like I said before, the client is always right.

I would basically take a position like any other: initially, I hear what you're saying, but I have no idea what you mean. So, okay, let's go into the description. One way of looking at that might be to say, let’s say you've got the change that you're looking for.

What would be different about your life? What would stay the same? Now, just to help clarify what the client is actually looking for, because my experience has been that when clients come in asking for change, they're asking for the positive sides of the change that might happen, and they very rarely consider what might be lost to them in that change.

When they look at what might be lost, they might change their mind. I can change; you know, it's an awareness process. So, if you open that statement descriptively, then more of what the gain and loss of change will emerge so that the client can really have a sense of, “I really do want this,” or, “Actually, mmm, maybe as bad as it is, it's as good as it gets.

” Again, it shifts the perspective issue. Yeah, in one of his diaries, R. D.

Laing once wrote, “The self you are trying to find is the you that is trying to find the self you are trying to find, so we will never find yourself since you have never been lost yourself. This is the self that you have lost; it is the you that has lost it. ” Hmm.

Having said that, I’d like to ask you, who is Ernesto Spinelli? Huh, you mean right now? Sure.

Someone who’s engaging in an interview with Alexandre and who is telling himself, “Oh, you’re coming across like a truck driver again. ” Hex truck driver? Yeah.

I always, whenever I hear myself or read myself in interviews, I get this image, you know, me driving this truck. It’s like I talk in a very uncouth sort of way. Really?

Yeah. Why is that? Why is that?

Yeah, that's what it feels like. I got it. I see myself in this very kind of elegant sort of way, but I never fulfill it.

Well, I have a different experience from you, so it’s interesting. Yeah, actually, that’s not my experience. Okay, well, that’s good.

I quoted R. D. Laing because I knew, of course, that it was an important reference for you; it was also an important reference for me.

And since we're talking about early influences, I would like to finish off by asking you, what advice do you wish you'd received when you were starting out as a psychotherapist? Mmm, that’s a good question. I don't know if I can answer that.

I had a try and answer in a slightly different way. When I was doing my Master's, it was in child development, and I was doing some experimental studies on the way children develop concepts. In the course of that, I started to have this crazy idea that some of the younger kids were coming up with correct answers to the questions that they were being given, not through some kind of logical means, but through something that was quite close to what, in ordinary language, is referred to as telepathy.

So this was a very crazy idea within psychology, and I decided that I wanted to pursue this a little bit. My supervisor at the time was basically saying to me, “Listen, you’re going to ruin your career if you try to do something like this because this is just too absurd. ” And you think you're a class person, or.

. . ?

Yeah, exactly. And then another lecturer, who was there and was an expert on mind and brain studies and so forth, I was talking to him, and he said to me, “Well, you know, don’t forget what Freud said. ” And I said, “Well, what did Freud say?

” Supposedly, Freud said, “When you have a small issue or insignificant issue, you know, treat it very logically and rationally, make sessions and so forth; but for the really important issues, go with your heart. ” Yeah. And that stayed with me, you know?

I think that’s been an important factor in my whole so-called career. I’ve been lucky that my heart has led me to interesting places, and I’ve not been too taken up with following, you know, the logic and the rationality of my thinking to my knee. So I would suggest something similar to people who are beginning to try and, you know, particularly when they're having to make decisions about what direction of training they want to take or what the truths of psychotherapy are and so forth: listen, maybe more than just your heart—listen to your body.

You know, listen to how your body responds to the statements that are being made. And even if your mind is going, “Oh, this is wonderful,” or it’s going, “This is ridiculous,” listen to what the body is expressing. And quite often, you may find that there’s a real contradiction between the two—go with the body.

Okay, go with the body. Yeah. Ernesto, thank you so much for this opportunity.

My pleasure. It was great. Take care.