af Stephen Joseph, a University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

BOOK REVIEW:

The Preface opens by saying ‘‘This book is an invitation to explore the richness and

depth of the human being as seen by existential psychology. Psychology is not just for

diagnosing psychological illnesses. Psychology also has to show people how it is

possible to develop a fuller being, to achieve a more vibrant sense of being alive, to

meet adversity, to get closer to states of happiness and love, and to acknowledge what

is good and bad in their lives’’ (p. ix). Is the invitation worth accepting? Speaking for

myself, yes, I loved this book.

Chapter 1 opens on the question of what is existential psychology, and gives a tour

beginning with the concept of phenomenology through to the big questions in life and how

existential psychology compares and contrasts to other schools of psychology—humanistic

psychology, positive psychology, and mainstream psychology. The remaining chapters 2

to 7 take us into the world of happiness and suffering, love and aloneness, adversity and

success, death anxiety and life commitment, free choice and the obligations of your life

reality, and meaning of life in a chaotic world, respectively. The book is well written and

very engaging, and although I thought I had a fairly good grasp of existential psychology

already, I learned a lot of new things. I know this is a book that I will return to time and

again for inspiration, professionally and personally.

Bo Jacobson brings his own insights to the book interwoven with scholarly and

comprehensive discussions of the work of main existential theorists such as Rollo May,

Medard Boss, Eric Fromm, Ernesto Spinelli, Otto Rank, Karl Jaspers, and Irvin

Yalom. Links are made to humanistic and psychoanalytic ideas, and to moral

philosophy. Short pithy case examples are used throughout to illustrate. The book

demands self-reflection and engagement with our own answers to the big questions.

Towards the end, Bo Jacobson reminds us of the importance of taking responsibility

for our own lives, others, and the world, and the various ways in which people avoid

responsibility. Importantly, he reminds us of how, as professional psychologists, we can

easily collude with people in their avoidance. But what I really appreciated, given my

own research programme on trauma and growth, was the emphasis on adversity and

the role of crisis in human development. I had not quite seen myself as an existential

psychologist, but I do now.

I would recommend this book to anyone studying psychology. Existential

psychology is not a major part of the curriculum, but after reading this book I

am wondering why not. It should be. As the subtitle indicates, however, this is

a book primarily aimed at therapists. I am sure most people who are training in, or

who specialize in, existential therapy already have a copy. But the rest of us in

counselling and psychotherapy, and other psychology professionals, no matter what

our theoretical orientation, would do well to read this book. This is important stuff,

and sometimes in a world captivated with the medical model, it is easy to forget the

importance of meaning in life and the need to understand from the inside rather than

the outside.