Abstract
Psychotherapy is a comprehensive biological treatment modifying complex underlying cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and regulatory responses in the brain, leading patients with mental illness to a new interpretation of the sense of self and others. Psychotherapy is an art of science integrated with psychology and/or philosophy. Neurological sciences study the neurological basis of cognition, memory, and behavior as well as the impact of neurological damage and disease on these functions, and their treatment. Both psychotherapy and neurological sciences deal with the brain; nevertheless, they continue to stay polarized. Existential phenomenological psychotherapy (EPP) has been in the forefront of meaning-centered counseling for almost a century. The phenomenological approach in psychotherapy originated in the works of Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Binswanger, Medard Boss, and Viktor Frankl, and it has been committed to accounting for the existential possibilities and limitations of one’s life. EPP provides philosophically rich interpretations and empowers counseling techniques to assist mentally suffering individuals by finding meaning and purpose to life. The approach has proven to be effective in treating mood and anxiety disorders. This narrative review article demonstrates the development of EPP, the therapeutic methodology, evidence-based accounts of its curative techniques, current understanding of mood and anxiety disorders in neurological sciences, and a possible converging path to translate and integrate meaning-centered psychotherapy and neuroscience, concluding that the EPP may potentially play a synergistic role with the currently prevailing medication-based approaches for the treatment of mood and anxiety disorders.
Highlights
IntroductionIt would undoubtedly be useful to investigate in what way and how psychotherapy modifies the complex brain responses underlying mental illness, which may lead to the development of new therapeutic interventions
To treat the specific hyperintention that is so pathological in cases of impotence we have developed a special technique, which dates back to 1947
An exploratory pilot study reported that advanced cancer patients receiving home palliative care showed a significant decrease in levels of despair, anxiety, depression, and emotional distress by receiving individual meaning-centered psychotherapy (MCP) (IMCP), compared to those who received only counseling [24]
Summary
It would undoubtedly be useful to investigate in what way and how psychotherapy modifies the complex brain responses underlying mental illness, which may lead to the development of new therapeutic interventions. The progress in neuroimaging research such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques has provided more and more knowledge of brain functions, which leads to deeper understanding of psychopathologies and the development of therapeutic interventions for mental disorders [9]. Translating and integrating methods and knowledge of psychotherapy and neurological sciences can certainly lead to deeper understanding of disease mechanisms, testing new hypotheses, and searching for novel treatments of mental illness [11]. This review article presents the development and methods of EPP, clinical evidence of its efficacy, current understanding of mood and anxiety disorders in neurosciences, and the need for convergence of this expertise to translate and integrate MCP and neurological sciences (Figure 1)
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