Clinical psychology from a point of view of J. P. Sartre’s contributions

Abstract

Traditionally, clinical psychology has faced epistemological dilemmas in its core, such as the multiplicity of tendencies that structure it, which leads to an undefinition of its object. Among other aspects, the legacy it received from the liberal perspective and the medical model are also problematic and they have already been put in question. This affects its practical dimensions. Sartre was an author who discussed aspects of the basis upon which psychology was built, as well as clinical facets and proposed some innovative concepts. His work has much to offer to overcome such dilemmas. The fundamental project in Sartre’s intellectual work was reformulating psychology in his set of psychological, philosophical, literary works and in his biographical enterprises. Sartre was the creator of a new psychological theory as of a specific methodology to investigate the human reality. Both of them were explained in his “existential psychoanalysis” where Sartre gives the basis for an existential clinical psychology. The duty of the sartrean psychotherapy is to put the being project of the individual into his own hands, turning him into the manager of his own life and his own history.

Keywords: clinical psychology; Jean-Paul Sartre; existential psychology.