Members – Existential Therapy

honorary members

Aleksandras Alekseičikas

Lithuania

Aleksandr Alekseichik (1940) is psychotherapist at the Vilnius Mental Health Centre. He is known to say – it is better to be not the best, but the first. And this aphorism suits himself as well. In psychotherapy, Alekseichik quite often happened to be the first, suggesting lots of new ideas and new activities. He started therapeutic practice in 1962 and became the first ‘official’ Lithuanian psychotherapist in 1967. In 1977, Alekseichik initiated a seminar on psychotherapy in Vilnius which immediately proved so popular that it became an annual event and is still hosted up to now for the last 40 years. Because of this seminar, Vilnius used to be called a psychotherapeutic capital of the then-vast Soviet realm. Later these seminars were organized solely by Alekseichik and were called the April seminars. In 1989, he became the head of the newly opened psychotherapeutic department of the Vilnius Mental Health Hospital. The work in this department was based on the principles of the therapeutic community, a great novelty in those times. Aleksandr Alekseichik teaches at the Institute of Humanistic and Existential Psychology since the very start of its courses in 1995, and he was the first to be awarded the Honorary Membership of our Association. Intensive Therapeutic Life – the psychotherapeutic approach to existential therapy developed by Alekseichik – made an immense impact on spreading ideas of existential therapy in Lithuania. Aleksandr Alekseichik has authored and co-authored 5 books on psychotherapy.

prof. Simon du Plock

United Kingdom

Professor Simon du Plock is Head of the Faculty of Post-Qualification and Professional Doctorates at the Metanoia Institute, London, UK. He is responsible for a number of research degree programmes, including a PhD in Psychotherapy, a DPsych in Psychotherapy by Professional Studies, a DPsych in Psychotherapy by Public Works, and a DCPsych in Counselling Psychology. Overall, the Faculty hosts approximately 260 research candidates and as many alumni, making it one of the largest concentrations of psychotherapy scholarship in the UK. He is a Chartered Counselling Psychologist, an Associate Fellow of the BPS, and a Founding Member of the BPS Register of Psychologists Specialising in Psychotherapy. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society for Medicine and a UKCP Registered Psychotherapist. He lectures internationally on aspects of existential therapy, and has authored over 80 books, book chapters, and papers in peer-reviewed academic journals. Currently, he is editing a new book, Case Studies in Existential Therapy:Translating theory into practice, which will be published in London by PCCS Books in September 2018. This is a considerably expanded and updated version of a much earlier text with the same title, first published by Sage in 1997. He is also Section Editor of ‘Newly evolving forms of Existential Therapy around the world’ and has contributed a chapter, ‘Overview of geographic development’, for The Wiley World Handbook of Existential Therapy , due to be published by Wiley Autumn 2018). He has edited Existential Analysis, the Journal of the British Society for Existential Analysis continuously since 1993. In 2006 he became the first Western therapist to be made an Honorary Member of the East European Association for Existential Therapy, in recognition of his contribution to the development of collaboration between East and West European existential psychotherapy. In 2017 he was delighted to be invited to join the Editorial Board of Psichologija, a learned journal published by Vilnius University. As an invited speaker at the IX International Congress, held in Birstonas in 2016, he shared some of his recent thinking about what he has come to term ‘Everyday Existential Therapy’. In the process, he has begun to move away from the medical/scientific approaches which have historically informed psychological health care, and has sought to return to the holistic tradition which, in particular, inspires the profession of counselling psychology and makes it distinctive. He attempted, in his talk, to illustrate how this enables us to attain a philosophical overview which draws its vitality from a wide range of disciplines which seek to address what it means to be human.

prof. Ernesto Spinelli

United Kingdom

Professor Ernesto Spinelli has gained an international reputation as one of the leading contemporary trainers and theorists of existential therapy and, more recently, the related arenas of coaching and conflict mediation. He is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, (BPS), a UKCP registered existential psychotherapist and an APECS accredited executive coach and coaching supervisor. In 1999, Ernesto was awarded a Personal Chair as Professor of Psychotherapy, Counselling and Counselling Psychology and in 2000 he was awarded the BPS Division of Counselling Psychology Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Advancement of the Profession. Ernesto is currently Director of ES Associates, an organisation dedicated to the advancement of psychotherapy, coaching, and supervision through specialist seminars and training programmes. His most recent book, Practising Existential Psychotherapy: The Relational World 2nd ed (Sage, 2015) has been widely praised as a major contribution to the advancement of existential theory and practice. His previous books include: The Interpreted World: an introduction to phenomenological psychology, 2nd ed (Sage, 2005); Demystifying Therapy (PCCS, 2006); Tales of Un-knowing (PCCS, 2006); and The Mirror and The Hammer: challenging therapeutic orthodoxies (Sage, 2001).

dr. Kirk Schneider

United States of America

Kirk Schneider, Ph.D., is a licensed psychologist and leading spokesperson for contemporary existential-humanistic psychology. Dr.Schneider is past president (2015-2016) of the Society for Humanistic Psychology of the American Psychological Association, recent past editor of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology (2005-2012), president of the Existential-Humanistic Institute (EHI), and adjunct faculty at Saybrook University and Teachers College, Columbia University. Dr. Schneider is also on the Global Advisory Board of The Organization for Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies. A Fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA), Dr. Schneider has published over 100 articles and chapters and has authored or edited 12 books (several of which have been translated into Chinese, German, Greek, Russian, Turkish, and Portuguese). These books include „The Paradoxical Self“, „Horror And The Holy“, „The Psychology Of Existence“ (with Rollo May), „The Handbook Of Humanistic Psychology“ (2nd ed.) (with Fraser Pierson and James Bugental), „Rediscovery Of Awe“, „Existential-Integrative Psychotherapy“, „Existential- Humanistic Therapy“ (with Orah Krug, accompanying APA video also available), „Humanity’s Dark Side: Evil, Destructive Experience, And Psychotherapy“ (with Art Bohart, Barbara Held, and Ed Mendelowitz), „Awakening To Awe“, „The Polarized Mind“, „The Essentials Of Existential- Humanistic Therapy Supervision“ (with Orah Krug), and „The Spirituality Of Awe: Challenges To The Robotic Revolution“. A forthcoming book, The Wiley World Handbook Of Existential Therapy (with Emmy Van Deurzen et al.) is in preparation. Dr. Schneider is the recipient of the Rollo May Award from Division 32 of the APA for “Outstanding and independent pursuit of new frontiers in humanistic psychology,” the “Cultural Innovator” award from the Living Institute, Toronto, Canada, a psychotherapy training center which bases its diploma on Dr. Schneider’s Existential- Integrative model of therapy, and an Honorary diploma/membership from the Society for Existential Analysis of the U.K. and the East European Association of Existential Therapy. Dr. Schneider is also a founding member of the Existential-Humanistic Institute in San Francisco, which in August, 2012 launched one of the first certificate programs in Existential-Humanistic practice to be offered in the U.S.A. In April, 2010, Dr. Schneider delivered the opening keynote address at the First International (East-West) Existential Psychology Conference in Nanjing, China, and delivered a keynote address at the First World Congress of Existential Psychotherapy in London in May, 2015. For more information on Dr. Schneider’s work visit https://kirkjschneider.com/

dr. Viktor Kagan

Germany

Viktor Efimovich Kagan (1943) – Doctor of Medical Sciences (Russia), M.D., Ph.D. (USA). He is the student of prof. S. S. Mnukhin. Circle of scientific and creative interests: psychiatry and child psychiatry, sexology, psychotherapy, literature, photography. V. Kagan is the author of the first in Russia fundamental research of autism which children have. He was also the first to write the books for doctors and parents about autism. He was too one of the pioneers of pediatric psychosexology in the USSR / Russia, the author of the concept of trans-methodological psychotherapy. Viktor Kagan is a Member of the Independent Psychiatric Association of Russia, Member of the Academic Council of the Institute of Existential Psychology and Life-Creating (Moscow). Author of many scientific publications in the domestic and foreign press, including more than 30 books. His poems, essays, journalistic articles and prose were published in many Russian and foreign print and online publications. 10 poetry books published in Russia and the United States. Viktor Kagan is the winner of the International Literary Voloshinsky Competition (2005, 2008), winner of the Silver Age Prize (following the results of the Non-fiction book fair, Moscow, 2009).

Alice Holzhey-Kunz, Ph.D.

Switzerland

Born in 1943 together with a twin brother near the lake of Konstanz in Switzerland Alice most of her life has lived in Zürich. From 1964 until 1971 she studied modern history and modern philosophy at Zürich’s University. There she was awarded her doctorate in philosophy of history with a thesis about ‘Remembering and Forgetting’. During her study she married for the first time and has started her own analysis.
Exactly at the time when she finished her studies, the first training institute for Daseinsanalysis, founded by Medard Boss and Gion Condrau, opened its doors in Zürich. Alice took the opportunity to start this training and became four years later the first graduated daseinsanalyst. Because of her love of philosophy and my passion of independent thinking she chose the latter.
In 1977 she married a second time and soon became a mother of two children.
Since 1983 some daseinsanalysts decided to start an alternative training institute in Zürich, which is still active as the ‘Daseinsanalytic Seminar DaS’. Alice is deeply committed to this new undertaking not only as a training analyst, teacher and supervisor, but also as either president or co-president of the Seminar. Besides she is since long president of the Society for hermeneutic Anthropology and Daseinsanalysis GAD which organizes theoretical lectures and seminars addressing psychoanalysts, daseinsanalysts and philosophers.
In the 1990-ies she became co-editor of the new edition of the selected works of Ludwig Binswanger. In 1994 her first book ‘Suffering from one’s own being’ (‘Leiden am Dasein’, translated in Russian by Irina Gloukhova) was published. Until today she has written and edited five books which deal with her own daseinsanalytic approach and with a new dialogue between psychoanalysis and existential philosophy. Her last book titled ‘Daseinsanalysis’ (2014) is not exactly a textbook but it is strictly structured with short chapters about the main topics of author’s own daseinsanalytic theory and practice. It is translated into English, French, Portuguese and Greek.
2010 a new and very fruitful collaboration started when Alice was invited for the first time to an annual conference of the EEAET in Birstonas. In 2015 Rimas Kociunas – the founder and director of HEPI – got the idea of a new setting: seminars in Lithuania and Russia, which lead to a Diploma in Daseinsanalysis. Since then two groups of roughly 25 people did this kind of training.
In 2012 Alice has got the Margrit-Egnèr Price at the University of Zürich, which is given for outstanding work in the realm of philosophical anthropology and existential psychology. In September 2018 she became an honorary member of the EEAET.

actual members

associated members