Existence, culture, and human encounter

Engaging with existential, phenomenological, and intercultural perspectives means recognizing that clinical practice cannot be reduced to the application of techniques; rather, it is grounded in the quality of human encounter. Since their philosophical and psychological origins, these traditions have emphasized the need to understand the individual not as an object of analysis, but as a being in process, shaped by history, culture, language, and meaning.

Existential philosophy initiates this shift by affirming that existence precedes any fixed definition. Søren Kierkegaard suggested that truth does not appear as something universal and abstract, but as lived experience, maintaining that “truth is truth for the individual.”This conception inaugurates an ethics of listening that values singularity and subjective responsibility in relation to one’s own existence.

Phenomenology deepens this perspective by proposing that experience should be welcomed as it manifests itself. Maurice Merleau-Ponty argued that “we are not in the world as in an object, but are of the world", highlighting that body, perception, and world form an inseparable unity. In clinical practice, this implies recognizing that suffering, desire, and identity cannot be separated from lived context.

Within psychoanalysis, the cultural dimension has always been present. Sigmund Freud demonstrated that the individual is constituted within the tension between drives and civilization, identifying culture as a simultaneous source of organization and discontent. Carl Gustav Jung expanded this understanding by introducing the concept of the collective unconscious, viewing the psyche as shaped by shared symbols, myths, and cultural narratives.

This clinical sensitivity is further deepened by contributions such as those of Anna Freud, who emphasized the importance of relational context and emotional development, and Sabina Spielrein, whose reflections on psychic creation and destruction anticipated the understanding of transformation as a core element of subjective experience.

Existential-humanistic psychology revisits these foundations by placing meaning and relationship at the center of clinical work. Viktor Frankl argued that “human beings are in search of meaning”, suggesting that suffering intensifies when this dimension is disrupted. Carl Rogers highlighted that growth occurs within a climate of empathy, authenticity, and acceptance, where individuals can come into contact with their own experience. Rollo May, in turn, understood anxiety not as pathology, but as an expression of the human condition in the face of freedom, choice, and responsibility.

Within the same relational horizon, Martin Buber contribution is fundamental in understanding the human being through the dimension of encounter. For Buber, the individual is constituted within the I–Thourelationship, in which the other is not reduced to an object (I–It), but recognized in their living presence. This conception supports a clinical ethics grounded in dialogue, reciprocity, and openness to the other as irreducible alterity.

Interculturality thus emerges as an essential element of contemporary listening. Experiences of displacement, migration, multiple belongings, and cultural crossings generate singular ways of existing and suffering. Recognizing these dimensions broadens the understanding of subjectivity and helps prevent decontextualized readings of human experience.

To engage with these perspectives is to sustain a professional practice committed to the complexity of existence, a practice that recognizes that each individual constructs meaning through their history, relationships, culture, and singular way of inhabiting the world, understanding the therapeutic encounter as an ethical space of presence, listening, and transformation.