How Can Existentialists Do Research On Psychotherapy?

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to build a case that there are at least three ways that existentialists can do research on psychotherapy: (a) They can do research in the same way, and for the same reasons, that non-existentialists do. (b) They are probably more suited to do what can be described as 'discovery- oriented' research. (c) They are especially suited to help resolve the serious problems that plague most of the reasons that traditional researchers do traditional research on psychotherapy. ____________________________________________________________ While one part of us is trying to phrase this question in a simple and clear way, another part is waving its arms around: "You are kidding, right? You think that existentialists would be interested in doing research on psychotherapy? That alone would be extraordinary! Wake up! With rare exceptions, if existentialists did what most psychotherapy researchers do, that would be evidence that they are not real existentialists!" We want to ask and answer three specific questions. Here are the questions and a capsule preview of the answers. One question is: Can existentialists do what is commonly accepted as psychotherapy research, and still be faithful to existential principles? Our answer is yes. If an existentialist finds it important to do psychotherapy research, or is unaccountably smitten with the urge to do psychotherapy research, we have faith that the existentialist would be able to justify this with their own existential principles. It could be much harder to convince one's colleagues, but that is a separate issue. Personally, we hope that existentialists decline joining the ordinary psychotherapy researchers, and we are pleased that most existentialists are not busy doing ordinary psychotherapy research. On the other hand, if there is an occasional existentialist who is drawn toward doing conventional psychotherapy research, we would be bewildered if the rogue existentialist proclaimed, "But I am not able to justify doing research because of my existential principles!" Existentialists are probably just as proficient as others in being able to justify most of what they do. A second question is: How can existentialists do actual psychotherapy research in a way that has high 'goodness-of-fit' with existential ways of thinking? Some existentialists point to ‘qualitative research methods’ or to 15 Alvin R. Mahrer and Donald B. Boulet ‘phenomenological research methods’ as in keeping with existential principles, so here are ways to do research that are suited to existential principles. We are going to suggest another way for existentialists to do research that is in keeping with most existential principles. It is called the ‘discovery-oriented approach’ to doing research on psychotherapy (Mahrer, 1985, 1988, 1996, 2004a; Mahrer & Boulet, 1999). Our impression is that only a few existentialists are familiar with this way of doing research. Our impression is that only a few psychotherapy researchers actually use this discovery-oriented approach. However, if some existentialists are genuinely inclined to do psychotherapy research, we invite them to consider the discovery-oriented approach partly because it can be seen as having high goodness-of-fit with existential principles. A third question is: What are some useful solutions to some of the serious problems underlying most of the common reasons for doing research on psychotherapy? The case is that most of the common reasons for doing psychotherapy research are accompanied with quite serious problems, and that existentialists are in a favorable position to help solve these serious problems, more by careful thinking than by doing further psychotherapy research. First it seems helpful to clarify some important introductory points in order to set the stage: We Have A Hard Time Identifying Something As Existential