Existentialism
pp. 317-338
in: Luciano L'Abate (ed), Paradigms in theory construction, Berlin, Springer, 2012Abstract
The contents of this chapter discuss the relationship between paradigm, theories, and models in the existentialist perspective. For existentialism we mean a specific cultural climate in the twentieth-century old Europe as well as in the USA whose philosophical paradigm has its roots in some Greek philosophers, although the Danish thinker Søren Kierkegard and the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre are among its most important exponents. We will explore just three psychological approaches of this not homogeneous movement including many different schools of thought sometimes conflicting: the phenomenological perspective, the antipsychiatry movement, and existential psychotherapies. In this temporal and conceptual excursus, we will investigate whether the existentialist paradigm has generated theories and/or models that can be qualified as particular-specific or general-integrative.
