Sartre articulated a phenomenological conception the “human being-in-situation,” which forms the ontological background of a therapeutic method that he called “existential psychoanalysis.” The overall principle of existential psychoanalysis is that each agent is a totality and not a collection, and thus she expresses herself even in the most insignificant or superficial of her behaviors; its goal is to decode and interpret the behavioral patterns, so as to articulate them conceptually; its point of departure is the pre-reflective awareness of lived experience; and its overall goal is to reach not some past psychic complex, but the choice that renders meaningful how one lives—so that the analysand achieves authenticity, owning up to the projects through which she, as a situated freedom, is making herself into the person she is.
The Essentials of Existential Psychoanalysis
