Existential Approaches and Gender

Existential psychotherapy is a philosophical approach to therapeutic practice. This unique approach emphasizes the freedom of individuals to choose and act in response to their circumstances and create meaning, in contrast to traditional psychoanalytic theory, which stressed unconscious forces and instinctual drives. This school of thought is less concerned with identifying and classifying pathology and more with understanding individuals’ way of being in their world. Existential psychotherapists encourage their clients to consciously shape their own lives and create meaningful existences. For these reasons, existentialism is an excellent fit for addressing concerns of gender. For years, individuals have been both condemned by and confined to the binary experience of gender, expectations of polarizing, ill-fitting identities for many people whose gender identity falls within a diverse spectrum ...