Meaning Centered Counseling in Seattle:
An Existential Approach to Living Your Vital Life Values!

The International Network on Personal Meaning
The INPM is dedicated to advancing health, spirituality, peace and human personal fulfillment through research, education and applied psychology with a focus on the universal human quest for meaning and purpose. The International Network on Personal Meaning does this through an extensive offering of articles on meaningful living, providing a source for research on meaning and existentialism, and information on meaning centered counseling and therapy for students and practitioners.


A Brief Manual for Meaning Centered Counseling
Above find an assortment of resources from various authors, many dealing specifically with finding the meaning of living "the vital life." You may review information on grief, drug addiction, suffering, love, teenage issues, and many others. If your search involves a personal quest for meaning, you should certainly investigate these inspiring resources. See articles on Adventure Based Counseling, and Abstinence Approaches to Addiction Treatment and some shortcomings of the construct of "addiction."


Acceptance and Commitment Therapy:
An Exposition on an Existential Approach to Living Your Vital Life Values.
The above article attempts to show, through a case study, the possibilities of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) applied from existential thought. The authors describe the symptoms referred to by a patient diagnosed as suffering from “negative schizophrenia”. These symptoms are then analyzed in existential terms, with special emphasis on the notion of “personal identity”. These researchers defend the appropriateness of acceptance in problems of an existential nature, at the same time illustrate the importance of situating people’s difficulties in the context of a vital  psychological framework known as "ACT."

Addiction as a Substitute for Meaningful Living:
Geoff Thompson of the Sunshine Coast Health Center, and  Author of A Long Night's Journey Into Day, emphasizes the need for adjunct therapy and Meaning Centered Counseling in helping people outgrow the ravages of problems of addiction.

"Intensity (the pleasures and chaos of addiction) thus allows addicts to distract themselves from facing the reality of their existence. But this is a dangerous game. Psychologist Rollo May (1953) observed that much of modern humanity was trapped in a meaningless existence: "…the chief problem of people in the middle decade of the twentieth century is emptiness" (p. 13-14). He went on to caution:

The human being cannot live in a condition of emptiness for very long: if he is not growing toward something, he does not merely stagnate; the pent-up potentialities turn into morbidity and despair, and eventually into destructive activities. (p. 22)

May would likely have included addiction as one these "destructive activities." Viktor Frankl (1977) was even more direct. He described addiction as one negative alternative people chose because they do not have the resources to find meaning in their lives. "[A]lcoholism…[is] not understandable unless we recognize the existential vacuum underlying [it]" (p. 169-170). Psychologist Jefferson Singer (1997) similarly concluded that addiction is a problem of meaning. Those suffering from "chronic addiction either had never found sufficient meaning in a sober life or through years of addiction had squandered any meaning they had once possessed" (p. 17)."

Radical Positive Psychology for Radical Times: Paul T. P. Wong Ph.D.

Viktor Frankl: Prophet of Hope and Herald of Positive Psychology
The less traveled road to tragic optimism - a personal odyssy.


Patrick J. Hart Psy.D.
Seattle Therapist: Private Practice Counseling and Psychotherapy