Applied Existential Psychotherapy™ (AEP)
Applied Existential PsychotherapyTM (AEP) is an experiential psychodynamic approach that has been developed and taught at the Boulder Psychotherapy Institute over the past twenty-three years. Its founder is Dr. Betty Cannon, BPI President. AEP interlaces the insights of existential philosophy and contemporary psychoanalysis with techniques drawn from Gestalt therapy and other experiential approaches. It is a dynamic here-and-now therapy that also takes into account how the past impacts the present. AEP works deeply with the body and process as well as verbal material and content.
AEP is strongly influenced by the work of French existential philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre. Betty's mentor and friend, Hazel E. Barnes, translated Sartre's Being and Nothingness and Search for a Method into English. Hazel is the person considered most responsible for bringing existentialism to the English- speaking worldÐÐboth through her translations and through her books, articles, and media presentations. Betty is her literary executor. Read about her contributions to existential psychology in Betty's memorial essay: Hazel E. Barnes 1915-2008: A Farewell to America's Foremost Sartre Scholar.
"We are neither facts in a world without freedom nor free in a world without facts. Instead we are bodily grounded and free in situation, which is a combination of what the world brings and what we make of what the world brings. We experience the world and our history, but we choose what we make of them."
– Betty Cannon in Existential Therapy, ed. Laura Barnett and Greg Madison, Routledge, 2011.
PUBLICATIONS ON AEP
Betty Cannon is the author of numerous journal articles and chapters and an internationally recognized book on existential therapy. Betty's book, Sartre and Psychoanalysis (University Press of Kansas, 1991; French translation Presses Universitaires de France, 1993), received international acclaim and is considered a classic in the field. Ernesto Spinelli, author of Tales of Un-knowing and other influential books on existential therapy, has this to say about it:
"Every once in a rare while a text comes along whose intellectual impact is such that it makes one want to shout: 'Please, whatever you do, READ THIS BOOK!' Betty Cannon's Sartre and Psychoanalysis is such a book... Her arguments and conclusions, as well as being stunningly original, light not only upon psychoanalytic practice, but (if implicitly) upon psychotherapeutic practice in general... I cannot praise this book too highly. For anyone interested in existential analysis, and most especially anyone practising such, Cannon's text is required reading. Thankfully, it is also pleasurable and eloquent reading, admirable for its clarity, authority and lack of academic pretension. In other words: a text destined to become a classic in the field."
–Ernesto Spinelli, Existential Analysis, July-Sept. 1992, no. 3.
Betty has a chapter in a new book, Existential Therapy: Legacy, Vibrancy and Dialogue, edited by Lauara Barnett and Greg Madison (Routledge, 2011). Her chapter is called "Applied Existential Psychotherapy: An Experiential Psychodynamic Approach." The book has been compared to Rollo May's epochal volume, Existence. Robert Stolorow, founder of Intersubjective Psychoanalysis and author of Trauma, Heidegger and Post-Cartesian Psychoanalysis, has this to say about the it:
"This volume, whose list of contributors reads like 'Who's Who' in existential therapy, will leave the reader with no doubts about the influence and vitality of the existential tradition in a plurality of contemporary psychotherapeutic approaches. The book is a marvelous feast for anyone with a taste for the existential."
Betty is the executive editor for the section on "Existential Psychoanalysis" for the prestigious Edinburgh International of Psychoanalysis (Edinburgh University Press, 2006), general editor Ross Skelton. Betty contributed many entries, including the overview of Existential Psychoanalysis.
Betty is a member of the editorial boards of three professional journals: Sartre Studies International, Review of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry, and Existential Analysis. She also has chapters and articles in many other books and journals (See her BPI Therapist Directory page for a full bibliography.)
Read more about Existential Analysis.
FORTHCOMING BOOKS AND WORK-IN-PROGRESS ON AEP
Betty Cannon and Reed Lindberg, BPI Managing Director, are currently co-authoring a book on the theory and practice of Applied Existential Psychotherapy. They also have a chapter coming out in a new book on Existential Couples Therapy, edited by Emmy van Deurzen and Susan Iacovou. The chapter is titled "Being Yourself While Being with another: Bad Faith and the Couple's Dilemma."
Robyn Chauvin, Senior BPI teaching faculty, is working on a book on Gender Construction and Freedom: An AEP Approach. Robyn also teaches Diversity, Group Dynamics, and Professional Orientation at Naropa University. This book will explore gender issues in the light of Sartre's, Beauvoir's, and some postmodern ideas about gender fluidity and freedom. It will also consider the importance of the development of gender identity in earliest infancy and childhood as well as ways of approaching gender issues in psychotherapy.