Abstract

The existence of a self and the imperative of knowing it have gone through philosophy from its beginning until today. Existentialism, starting with Kierkegaard and continuing with Heidegger, relate the scope of the authentic self to that of anxiety. Once the scope of the anxiety of self has been formulated, it entered the sphere of psychological theories. The prolific encounter between existentialism and psychology materializes into the influent contemporary psychological school, named existential psychotherapy. Our analysis wishes to describe the nodal points of this encounter, having as reference points the scope of self and its anxieties. In the first part of the analysis we look into the philosophical premises, referring to the two above mentioned names, while in the second part we present the taking-ups and the applicative adjustments brought up by existential psychotherapy.