EXISTENTIAL APPROACHES

To do so optimally, it is important to recognize that sports participants are, first and foremost, human beings with the same existential concerns as everyone else. Existential psychology provides insights into what those concerns are and how people address them. This chapter summarizes these insights and illustrate their value for sport psychology consultants. Existential psychology builds on the insights of philosophers such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, de Beauvoir, and Camus. Existential themes emerged in seminal writings of William James and Sigmund Freud, but existential psychology was first developed by Otto Rank, and later expanded by authors such as Viktor Frankl, Robert Jay Lifton, Ernest Becker, and Irvin Yalom. When disruptions arouse one or more existential concerns, people may experience anxiety and depression, and they are likely to attempt to intensify their coping in either constructive or maladaptive ways. Six sport-related events seem most likely to arouse the Big Five existential concerns: death, injury, retirement, career change, failure, and success.