On The Existential Analysis of Jean Paul Sartre

The philosopher Jean Paul Sartre developed a method called existential analysis derived from Freud's innovative psychoanalysis. Existential analysis is probably under-utilized today. I read about it in his book written during the Second World War 'being and Nothingness'. I haven't read anything about it elsewhere.

Existential analysis can be used at several levels. It can be applied to collective social behavior such as government or plutocratic finance de facto nation formation with exclusive franchise or just individual psychology. Existential analysts should be part of U.S. Government V.A. counseling opportunity as well as for soldiers on active duty. Existential counseling could be of value to the population generally as a way to consider pomp, circumstance and phenomenality of being-for-itself as a thing-in-itself as if it were a mirage selected from an infinite realm of possibly better social mirages. For a democracy the population should take control of its own destiny and raise taxes on an oppressive minority concentrating wealth. Media archetypes programming collective unconsciousness would work against that suggesting the dreamers acquiesce in political economic myths. Existential analysis might consider objectively deeper structures an individual experiences that affect his or her subjective psychology.

Freud's analysis of repressed childhood memories is obviously a limited approach to solving adult psychological issues. Some or much adult behavior is the result of adult trauma, the Iraq war for example, instead of early childhood experience. Existential analysis might work better than a pharmacopoeia approach or even a Christian counseling approach to select psychological adjustment problems in secular reality. So what is existential analysis and what sort of things would it address?

Consider the military veteran traumatized by events in Iraq. A very hot dry place itself with a populace traumatized by shock and awe hyper detonations, heavy initial war casualties in bunkers bombed by B-52's, decades of state police terrorism, the anomie of a destroyed government followed by sectarian strife, economic privations, terrorism and foreign occupation with global mercenary contractors, the American soldier encounters a place with lower value of human life de facto, sustained disillusionment about the role of the U.S. Government and foreign policy implementation, meaning and value of life for-oneself and for-others and experiences first-hand sustained immanent death stresses, encounters with casualties and hate from some, duplicity and exploitation from others. Existential analysis might examine and reveal these things, while pharmacopoeia, Christian and Psychoanalysis might not.

Existential analysis might consider the objective experiences that stimulated adverse behavioral response for an individual. In The Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre's other major philosophical work, the social environment built up collectively from individual existential experience is described, analyzed and effectively encapsulated well enough even at a political level that it can serve as a procedural example of existential analysis even if not a complete repertoire of existential analysis.

It is possible to consider childhood experience as a character formation phenomenon that effects the responses of a soldier to war, trauma and recovery, yet the adult existential content is what needs analysis for the individual is not simply a machine that ought to have processed any trauma flawlessly except for manufacturer or assembly errors of youth. Existential analysis would consider objectively myths of political correctness as well as archetypes of the collective unconscious; it would develop an intellectual cache for the individual's mind allowing detached examination of subjective behavior and response to external, existential experience and memory.

Existential analysis might exploit some pharmaceutical tools when helpful, yet treating the actual existential history of an individual analytically so the individual objectively considers memory and reality as an existential phenomenality he can determine his or her own response to is requisite for restoration of individual determinism in the pursuit of happiness.