Chapter 13:Experience, Existence, and the Meaning of Life

1. Chapter 13:Experience, Existence, and the Meaning of Life Kerri Murphy

2. Phenomenology • A person’s conscious experience of the world • A broader reality may exist, but only the part of it that you perceive will matter to you • Gordon Liddy- Your hand is on fire, but the trick is not to care • Construal: Your particular experience of the world- it will be different from anyone else’s They change by circumstance and you can potentially have multiple ones operating at the same time

3. Existentialism • The approach to philosophy that focuses on conscious experience, free will, the meaning of life, and other basic questions of existence • Umwelt: Sensations you feel by being an organism- pain, heat, cold, etc. • Mitwelt: Social experience, what you about other people and what they think about you- thoughts and emotions experienced as a social being • Eigenwelt: Psychological experience, the experience of the experience itself- how you think and feel when you try to understand yourself

4. Angst • Anxiety brought on by lack of a purpose in life, resulting from supposed meaningless aspects of reality • Anguish: Choices are never perfect. Doing something good may lead to something bad- “Making one choice prevents you from making others” • Forlornness: You are alone with your choices, you have no one to guide you or excuse you choices- You are the one responsible for the consequences of your decisions • Despair: Some things will always be outside of your control-There are some things that you can’t stop from happening

5. Self-Actualization • To maintain and enhance the quality of one’s life • Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow: Goal of existence is to actualize • Maslow: Actualization can only take place when other needs are met which leads to…

6. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

7. Unconditional Positive Regard • Refers to a feeling of love, appreciation, pride, etc towards a person regardless of that person’s successes or failures • Conditions of Worth: Criteria for giving praise- good looks, money, intelligence • A person who has received unconditional positive regard is more free, generally happier, and able to pursue a set of more personally satisfying goals • A person who has not received unconditional positive regard usually develops “conditions of worth” and their lives are spent trying to live up to those expectations and criteria

8. Roger’s Psychotherapy • Aims to: • Help the client perceive his own thoughts and feelings without the therapist seeking to change them in any way • Make the client feel appreciated no matter what he thinks, feels, or does Psychotherapy is the foundation for humanistic therapy

9. George Kelly • Personal Construct: A scale of polar opposites, upon which things in your life can be arranged- You make judgments about your life based on how things fit into those constructs Ex: Lesser of two evils- both are “bad” but one is worse than the other so you choose the less “bad” option • Chronically Accessible Construct: You are more likely to base a value judgment on that construct rather than another construct • Social Corollary- In order to understand a person you need to understand their construct system

10. References • Funder, D. The Personality Puzzle • http://meerasinha.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/800px-maslows_hierarchy_of_needssvg.png