Humanistic vs. Existential Therapy (And How to Use Them) | BYOT Podcast Ep.9 with Prof. Mick Cooper

From a humanistic standpoint, problems often emerge when we try to do things to please others, so that others like us, and we lose connection with our own humanity. [Music] Okay, welcome to the "Become Your Own Therapist" podcast, the podcast where I try to put myself out of a job as a clinical psychologist. Today, we have Professor Mick Cooper, who is an internationally recognized author, trainer, and consultant in the field of humanistic, existentialist, and pluralistic therapies.

He is a chartered psychologist and professor of counseling psychology at the University of Roehampton. Mick has facilitated workshops and lectures around the world, including New Zealand, Lithuania, and Florida. Mick's books, which we'll be speaking about today and I'll link those in the video description below, include "Existential Therapies," "Working at Relational Depth in Counseling and Psychotherapy," and "The Handbook of Person-Centered Psychotherapy and Counseling.

" His latest work is "Integrating Counseling and Psychotherapy: Directionality, Synergy, and Social Change. " Mick's principal areas of research have been in shared decision-making, personalizing therapy, and counseling for young people in schools. In 2014, Mick received the Kami Harari Mid-Career Award from Division 32 of the American Psychological Association.

He is a fellow of the British Association for Counseling and Psychotherapy and the Academy of Social Sciences. Mick, thank you so much for being here. Nice to be here, Vernon.

Okay, great. So I thought I'd have you on the podcast today to speak a bit about humanism and existentialism and the related therapies that come from those schools of thought. In my personal life, I found a lot of value in this way of thinking, just in helping myself and thinking about my own suffering.

So I thought maybe a good place to start would just be to introduce those two big terms. Now, just a short introduction on what is existential therapy and what is humanistic therapy. Okay, well, if we start with humanism, the classic definition of humanism is to show regard for all that is human.

I guess it's a philosophy that goes back a long way, which is about really trying to value, respect, understand, and be with the realities and the authenticity of our lived human experience rather than perhaps reduce it down in mechanistic ways to numbers or to kind of abstract ideas. So the humanistic therapies are really based around the concepts of authenticity and helping clients to face up to, be with, acknowledge, and value the reality of their lives and what our lives consist of, and to feel that it's okay to be ourselves in that. From a humanistic standpoint, problems often emerge when we try to do things to please others so that others like us, and we lose connection with our own humanity.

You know, for instance, a young boy grows up feeling that to be a man means he has to be tough; he has to be strong. He's not allowed to be vulnerable or afraid, and those sides of him, which rather than showing regard for his full humanity, he starts to hide. He hides his tears; he hides his anxieties.

He doesn't talk about them—they live on the inside—and he presents a mask of something that is strong, courageous, and determined. But actually, that's not him; that's not the reality of his humanity. The other way around might be a young woman who learns that to be angry and to express her needs and wants is not acceptable for women, and that she needs to be more deferential.

So she loses part of who she is. In both cases, it means from a humanistic standpoint that people don't live their full lives; they live frustrated, stunted, reduced existences that are difficult for them because they're not living for themselves, but they are living ultimately to make themselves acceptable for others. And of course, it’s important to understand that people who do that face enormous social pressures.

But when we make the choice, in a sense, to do that—and sometimes it's maybe an unconscious choice—ultimately we lose out, and often the people around us lose out. Because even though we might feel we’re doing things to please others, at the end of the day, most of us want a relationship with a real person—somebody who’s complex and mixed—and somebody who is a kind of shadow, or a stereotype, or a caricature of a person isn’t always fulfilling to be with. Thank you!

Yeah, that’s—a really key piece there is authenticity. It's a really key piece. It's a really key piece.

The therapy is then around helping that client to [Music] recognize the reality of their humanity, to recognize—to provide a space in which they really can be authentic. The key ingredients for that are, as Carl Rogers, who was the founder of humanistic therapy, talks about three key ingredients. So the first one is a really deep acceptance of the client, whoever they are.

If that young man comes to therapy, then it's really important that if he starts expressing his vulnerability or his fears, the therapist is accepting of that and doesn't judge in any way. Empathy is the second really important part, that the therapist tries to understand from the inside. This humanistic therapist is really trying to understand people from the inside—what's it like to be that person in terms of their world—and to help them explore their world.

The third part is that the therapist is themselves authentic and congruent, so that they’re kind of modeling what it means. To be a real person, and what was typical of the humanistic therapies is that they're often less directive than other therapies, like cognitive behavioral therapy, where, for instance, the therapist will really take the lead and might teach the person certain skills and behavioral ways of coping with stress. I think those approaches can be really helpful, but because in the humanistic therapies you're trying to help somebody discover the truth for themselves from the inside out, the therapist is often more concerned about providing a kind of fulcrum—a space in which the client can connect and talk about and begin to recognize their emotions, as well as their thoughts and experiences.

And so the therapist may take a kind of less leading, directive, expert-based role and more one as a kind of fellow traveler who will help the client discover things for themselves. I've found this extremely useful in my own clinical work; it just feels like it allows the client to take much more responsibility for their own lives and to really make decisions that are more congruent. Just that sort of subtle stepping back and also just that acceptance—that atmosphere—I found it so useful as compared to, you know, dissecting and trying to find the problem in this person and then trying to correct it forcefully in some way.

Something I wanted to ask you about—this was something I've always wondered—is to what degree is it possible for us to create that sort of space for ourselves? Someone who can't afford therapy, or, you know, is that something that's possible? If so, how?

How would something like that work? I mean, you know, I guess the caveat here, of course, is that if people have problems that are really distressing them, talking to a professional is important, and, you know, sometimes trying to deal with it on your own isn't a substitute for talking to someone with professional expertise, like a clinical psychologist or a doctor. But having said that, I think that, yeah, certainly in relationships, people can— I think on your own is maybe difficult.

There's something about that relationship healing, the comfort and the facilitation that happens in a relationship that is important. But I think with a very close friend, with a partner, with a family member that you can talk to, I think absolutely. And certainly many people do experience that acceptance and that empathy that allows them to talk about the most hidden, deepest parts of themselves and to express that to someone else.

I certainly don't think it needs a therapist necessarily, and I think the more that, as a society, we can provide each other with empathic, warm, honest relationships, the more that we can allow all of ourselves to be the people that we want to be. And what's the key bit, you know? If you’re thinking about helping someone else, I think the key is often about listening—and really listening—not just kind of letting them talk, but really listening closely, trying to imagine how it is for that person in their world, so that rather than thinking, “Okay, they’ve got to do this or that; this is how they should be solving their problems,” it’s much more around, “I wonder how it is for that person to feel things and to experience things in their world.

What’s it like being that person? ” You know, that’s the kind of humanist question, in a sense: What’s it like to be that person and to live in that world? And so really, you know, that’s a kind of empathic understanding of the person from the inside out, rather than, as you say, kind of looking at the person and maybe trying to say, “This is a problem; they should do this.

” One of the interesting things, I think, is that when you listen to people really deeply from the inside out, often all the advice and ideas you have kind of fade away because you realize, actually, that most of the problems people have are pretty complex. People are doing their best to cope with their worlds and have already often tried things, and being alongside the person to support them and to explore things with them is often a much more helpful strategy. Yeah, that’s so well articulated.

Thanks for that. I want to—and I know we’re a bit short on time—so I wanted to ask about existential therapies, but before going there, I just wanted to ask if there’s anything you wanted to add on what the value is of a humanistic way of thinking about ourselves just on our own journeys? Is there any additional value there before we sort of turn left?

Well, I think the—whatever approach we take—and there are many differences in therapy—whatever approach therapists take, there’s always some humanistic element. You know, even the most hardened cognitive behavioral therapist—a good one—will want to listen to someone and understand someone in terms of what’s going on for them. I think the, yeah, I mean, I think in any self-journey, understanding ourselves and being honest with ourselves from that humanistic standpoint and being accepting and compassionate to ourselves—there are some very interesting developments recently by Paul Gilbert and colleagues on compassion-focused therapy, which kind of takes humanistic ideas forward, combines them with cognitive behavioral therapy, but really emphasizes the importance of self-compassion and the way that, when we're exploring our lives and being true to our lives and how we deal with things—our vulnerabilities, our anxieties—that being able to accept that that’s who we are is just so.

. . Important, you know, we all have a tendency to be critical, and there's lots of research now on what you might call the inner critic—the part of ourselves that's berating us and saying, "You're not good enough," and "Why did you do that?

" and "You know you should have been better. " It's understandable we have that part, but at the same time, trying to, um, lighten that part a bit and just being able to have that self-compassion and say, "I'm doing my best; I'm trying my hardest," um, it allows us to be really true and to recognize some of those really core feelings about who we are, what we want, um, how we experience life. Probably just something else to say with humanism is that the focus is on maybe less about what we are as a kind of fixed self and more about how we experience our worlds.

For many of these humanists—and this comes onto existentialism a bit—there isn't any real fixed self or person that we are; what there is is our experiencing of the world. I think that can be useful in terms of being able to be compassionate to ourselves because rather than trying to define ourselves or diagnose ourselves or label ourselves, um, being authentic is more about recognizing how we experience the world and particularly our emotions. Emotions are such a big part of this humanistic approach because, at the end of the day, so cool to how we experience the world are our feelings, and being able to recognize that our fears, as well as our anger, our hopes, our sadnesses, our grief—to be able to be with all that and to recognize it and validate it—feeling that it's valid.

And, of course, self-compassion, um, and accepting ourselves doesn't mean that any behavior is okay. It's not saying that whatever we do doesn't matter. You know, if we're angry, it's okay to shout at people or be violent; it's not saying that in any way.

What it's saying is that it's our experiences that always have a validity and that it's okay however we experience the world, but how we behave is a choice, and this is right and wrong; there is good and bad. Yeah, okay, awesome. Yeah, I think that's an important caveat about behavior—that we don't need to flagellate ourselves to, you know, correct our behavior.

There could be self-compassion there but also some sort of concern for how we're acting in the world. Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting that you brought Paul up because I've talked to him on the podcast recently, and I saw quite a bit of overlap in terms of that relationship you have to yourself versus the person-centered relationship to someone else externally, just in terms of acceptance—that acceptance and the, um, being with what's there in a moment-to-moment congruently.

Um, I just saw a lot of overlap there myself. It looked like you wanted to say something, though. Yeah, no, just—Paul's wonderful.

Um, Paul Gilbert—he's a really innovative thinker, combining many humanistic ideas with a more structured approach, and he also applied it very much to how people relate to themselves and the idea of self-compassion. So, yeah, that's great. And, you know, going on to existentialism—so, existentialism and humanism are also overlapped, and all these different approaches overlap to some extent.

Existentialism is also, I mean, at the heart of it, very much about being authentic, um, and being true to our existences and our lives and our experiences. So, it's very similar to humanism in that sense. The difference is that humanism has more of an understanding that people are maybe growthful, creative—that we are on this kind of constant, maybe quite optimistic, idea of evolution and development—and that to be true to ourselves is to be in touch with the growth potential within us.

Existentialism has a little bit more of what you might call morose or melancholic; you know, the existentialists tend to argue that the reality of life is actually pretty tough. Often, we face struggles, and there are challenges and tensions that, um, there are certain existential givens of life that we can't avoid, like, of course, death—being born into a world not of our choosing, um, that we always live in a culture, that we live in systems, family systems, political systems. Um, and from an existential standpoint, being authentic is not just kind of recognizing our own experiences, but also recognizing the nature of our world and of our lives, and in some senses, coming to terms with it—so coming to terms with, um, some of the challenges, the difficulties, the, uh, you know, what it means to die, what it means to be someone with, uh, ideas and possibilities.

But also that we will lose that, and we'll lose all the people that we love. Also, a big emphasis on the existentialists is freedom and the idea that one of the givens of human existence is that we are all free. What do we do without freedom?

The existentialists would say, are we authentic? Do we authentically grasp the freedom that we have and try and make the most of it, or do we push that freedom away and pretend that other people are making choices for us and that our lives are, um, controlled or determined, and that we have to do this because other people tell us that we have to do it? Um, an existentialist would say often it's challenging to really grasp our freedom.

Again, the humanists are a bit more optimistic; they see freedom as a good thing. The existentialists, being a bit more morose, would say that often we don't want to recognize our. .

. Freedom; we don't like the fact that we're free because it makes us responsible, um, for our lives, for the lives of others. Who are we gonna be?

How are we gonna be in our lives? That's not easy decisions to make. But the existentialists and the existential therapies, uh, are about helping clients to face up and make the most helpful choices for them, even if, in the short term, it creates anxieties.

Some of the existentialists have said the more in freedom we are, the more anxious we are. So, whereas a lot of therapies see anxiety as a problem or something to be overcome, the existentialists would say, well, it's the nature of being often to feel anxious, and rather than trying to cure our anxiety, we should be trying to harness it and use it to make the choices to live the fullest life possible within the time that we have. Okay, that sort of leads into the last question I wanted to ask you for today, which was that, um, you know, is the morose nature of existentialism helpful in some way?

Is there something that comes out of meditating on these givens of life? I think if you're a naturally optimistic person who loves life and sees things in very positive ways, you don't need existentialism. I don't think it's going to do you any favors to, you know, start reading Kafka or Sartre.

The wonderful thing about existentialism is there are fantastic novels like Camus' *The Outsider* or Sartre's books on, uh, the *Roads*, the *Freedom Trilogy*, and *Nausea*. But, you know, I think it really suits some people. It's a bit like listening to Leonard Cohen or Bob Dylan.

Some people love it; I love it—they're my favorites. But some people listen to that music and just think it's kind of morose and morbid, and why would anyone want to listen to it? But I think the reality is that many of us do feel questioning or melancholic about life often, a lot of the time.

What existential ideas do is that they can kind of— I mean, again, it goes back to, in some ways, to around acceptance. They provide a space in which somebody can feel that it's okay to feel that and to live a life despite it. So that, for instance, if you're working with someone who's depressed, it wouldn't be about, you know, sometimes what happens where people have depression.

It's not just that they feel sad, but then they feel sad about being sad. They feel that there's something wrong with them for feeling sad, and they feel guilty about being sad— you know, there are starving children in Africa; why are they struggling? Um, and so for somebody like that, who at that, what you might call reflective secondary level, feels bad about some of these more negative melancholic feelings, recognizing that actually they can be seen as quite legitimate and very human can be very liberating and can make people feel more compassionate toward themselves.

So all these things link up really; it's about feeling compassionate about who you are and accepting those parts of ourselves—the sad parts, the parts that at times feel hopeless about the world. Um, yeah, allowing ourselves to feel those things, and by doing so, rather than pushing them away—which doesn't really make them go away—accepting them so that we can use them and draw on them and live as full of a life as possible. You know, although existentialism is quite a melancholic philosophy, it's certainly not lifeless.

The existentialist people, like Emily van der Ander, are incredibly vibrant, alive, charismatic figures. There's a phrase, um, and it's because he writes about standing naked in the storm of life. Um, that life, you know, life is often a storm, and we can either kind of hide away from it or we can stand in the rain and dance around; and, you know, it's not, as the cliché goes, it's not about waiting for the storm to pass; it's about dancing in the rain, would be another way of kind of describing the existentialist, I think.

And I think one of the things about some therapies, including humanistic, is that they kind of give you this idea that sometimes if you do enough work and you do this and you do that, then life is going to be good. And so people can actually end up then waiting until they've done enough therapy, uh, talked about, resolved their problems, worked through stuff before they really start living. And the existential message is "gonna live now because it's never gonna get that much better," which, in some ways, is, you know, thinking it's never gonna get that much better—in some ways can feel a bit demoralizing, but in other ways can make people feel like, okay, I've got to make the most of my life now rather than waiting for, uh, you know, some dramatic turning point.

Yeah, yeah, both feels, uh, quite useful depending on the person you're speaking to and what they need in that moment. Yeah, I really feel that. I mean, and that's pluralism—the idea that different people need different things at different points in time.

You know, we all benefit from different forms of help, and what might be really useful for one person, like running or medication, can be really helpful for some people; for others, it really isn't helpful. Um, so, um, rather than thinking about what are the helpful things, yeah, as you say, never, it's much more useful, I think, to think about what do particular people need at particular points in time. Yeah, great.

And, you know, maybe we. . .

Can I have you on again when you've got some time to speak about pluralism? Thank you so much for being here. Where can people go to find out a bit more about the work that you do?

If you go to my website, which is mick-cooper. co. uk, or just Google search "Mick Cooper," you'll find information about the different trainings I do, the various books I've written, and lots of resources around different aspects of my work.

Okay, great! I'll link that in the video description below. Thanks again for being here, Mick.

I hope you have a good day. Thank you; it was great to talk to you. Thank you.

Bye!