Book Review: An Existential Approach to Human Development: Philosophical and Therapeutic Perspectives

Abstract

"This textbook reviews for the first time the thinking of six major existential philosophers; Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Simone de Beauvoir with respect to their ideas about human development. Martin Adams presents a philosophical and psychological analysis, and critically evaluates the different ways that existential philosophy can illuminate the way we all strive for meaning and purpose in life. Written in a detailed, well-structured manner, this text offers a fundamentally different way to understand not only life in general but the practice of psychotherapy in particular." -- Publisher's website. PART I -- 1.A Short History of Human Development -- Human development in mythology -- The medieval period -- Shakespeare -- The Enlightenment -- Modernism -- Natural science and stage theory -- 2.Thinking Phenomenologically and Existentially about Human Development -- Phenomenology -- Phenomenology and human development -- The language of human development -- Principles of existential philosophy -- Defining human development existentially and phenomenologically -- PART II -- 3.Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55) -- Living with faith -- Philosophy -- Objectivity and subjectivity -- Kierkegaard and human development -- The Aesthetic sphere of existence -- Sexuality -- Temporality -- The Ethical sphere of existence -- The Religious sphere of existence -- Addiction -- The paradox of the self in relationships -- 4.Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) -- Living with power -- Reading Nietzsche -- Philosophy -- `God is dead' -- Christianity and slave morality -- The body -- The human spirit -- Nietzsche and human development -- The three metamorphoses -- The `last man' -- Time, temporality and eternal recurrence -- 5.Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) -- Living in time -- Philosophy -- Temporality and anxiety -- Authenticity and inauthenticity -- Heidegger and human development -- The meaning and development of death awareness -- Three dimensions of temporality -- The future -- The past -- The present -- Authenticity and our relationship with the material world -- Thrownness and the development of Dasein -- 6.Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) -- Living with nothingness -- Philosophy -- Sartre and human development -- The sense-of-self and the original project -- The influence of early experience -- The Look -- The visual look -- The touch -- The word -- Relationships with others -- Laing: engulfment, implosion and petrification -- Engulfment -- Implosion -- Petrification -- Mutuality and love -- 7.Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) -- Living with embodiment -- Philosophy -- Perception and embodiment -- Merleau-Ponty and human development -- Early experience: primary undifferentiation -- The mirror and the world of others -- De-centering and re-centering -- Language acquisition -- Embodiment and imagination -- Incompleteness and loss -- Acquisition of a sense of perspective -- The changing effect of the look -- Narcissism -- Later development -- Sympathy and empathy -- Love -- Masculinity, femininity and the development of difference -- Pregnancy -- Gendered space -- 8.Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) -- Living with others -- Philosophy -- Freedom, ethics and ambiguity -- Freedom, violence and other people -- Beauvoir and human development -- The development of freedom and morality -- Childhood -- Adolescence -- Adulthood -- Becoming a woman -- Objectification and the development of gender identity -- Infancy and childhood -- Puberty and adolescence -- Adulthood -- Motherhood -- Growing old(er) -- PART III -- 9.Implications for Therapeutic Practice -- Working with age -- Working with young(er) people -- Working with old(er) people -- Working with truth, narrative and the sense-of-self -- Working with beginnings and endings -- Working with embodiment -- Working with randomness and chance -- Working with adversity -- The skills learning process -- Working with love -- Working with freedom, responsibility and choice.