Abstract

This paper represents an opportunity to reflect on the contributions of Existential Analysis (EA) to psychotherapy practice and training, research and scholarship, and community development in Canada. We begin by outlining the history of EA in Canada and elaborate on some milestones of development and accomplishment, such as the formation of the Existential Analysis Society of Canada (EAC), the launching of training cohorts, and various scholarly efforts of EAC members. Following this, we offer some reflections on the place of EA and its unique contributions to the psychotherapeutic landscape in North America. We believe that EA’s phenomenological and personal stances offer a unique contribution to both psychotherapy practice and to psychotherapy training by re-centering psychotherapeutic praxis on the person and on a phenomenological method. Finally, we conclude this paper by envisioning a future for EA in Canada that considers our particular history and the ways in which EAC may develop with respect to psychotherapy training, scholarship and community development.

It is a privilege to contribute to this special issue of Existenzanalyse in honour of the Alfried Längle’s 70^th birthday. This contribution is born out of 20 years of collaboration with each other that led to the formation of Existential Analysis in Canada. Over the course of these years, we have come to respect, appreciate and love him deeply as a person, scholar and mentor. It is out of deep gratitude to Alfried Längle and to his work in developing EA in Canada that we offer the following reflections.

The aim of our contribution to this special issue is three-fold. We begin by looking backward at the development of EA in Canada, including on our accomplishments and milestones. Next, we survey the current landscape of psychotherapy in Canada and explore the EA’s unique contribution. Finally, we look at what is ahead and future developments. Our hope in telling this story is that it will not only give the readers an insight into the unique and unfolding account of EA in Canada, but that it will illustrate the ways in which the Canadian story is part of and contributes to the unfolding of the development of EA throughout the world.

The History of EA in Canada

The history of EA in Canada has a rather personal beginning. The story begins with a vacation trip that a young couple (Derrick Klaassen & Holly Klaassen) took to Europe in the summer of 2001. At the time, I (Derrick Klaassen) was working as the Executive Director for the International Network on Personal Meaning (INPM). When Dr. Paul Wong, the president of INPM, learned that I was planning a trip to Vienna in the summer of 2001, he asked if I could deliver a personal invitation to Alfried Längle, inviting him to the Meaning Conference in July, 2002. I heartily agreed, not knowing at the time that I was agreeing to have an encounter that would change the course of my life.

Holly and I arrived in Vienna in July, 2001. We had agreed to meet with Alfried Längle on a Saturday evening. After a day of enjoying the goodness of Viennese culture, we rang the doorbell at the Eduard Suess Gasse 10, climbed the stairs to the 3^rd floor, and were welcomed into the Längle home. We were informed that Alfried Längle was still involved in GLE board meetings, and then treated to a tour of the Längle home, including a spectacular view of the castle Schönbrunn. After a few minutes, Holly and I were joined by Alfried and Silvia Längle, as well as several board members from Germany, Austria and Switzerland, who also wished to meet this young couple from Canada.

The next hours that we spent together are deeply memorable and remain moving to this day. Amid wine and cheese, Holly and I sat and talked with our hosts and the other guests about our lives, psychotherapy, EA and the upcoming conference in Vancouver. What remains with me as I reflect upon this encounter is the following: First of all, we experienced wonderful Austrian hospitality; we drank fine wines, at cheese, and felt warmly invited into a community of psychotherapists who clearly enjoyed each other’s company. Holly and I ended up staying long into the night and then left with the beautiful feeling of having experienced a kind of homecoming; we had arrived in the home of ‘strangers’ and found ourselves welcomed and experiencing belonging and genuine encounter. At the time I had no idea that EA would still occupy a central place in my heart, practice and scholarship 20 years later.

While it was evident from our dialogue on that memorable evening that all of our hosts were brilliant psychotherapists and scholars, what really drew me to EA was the personal encounter, the kind, open-hearted, and genuine way in which they welcomed and made room for this young couple from Canada. I wondered at the time to what extent this way of being and relating might be reflected in EA as a psychotherapy. It was only years later, during my personal study of EA, that would come to realize how right my intuition was in that first encounter back in July, 2001. EA as a psychotherapy aims to facilitate precisely such encounters, a fusion of holistic phenomenological openness and seeing and personal dialogue (Längle, 2003).

Over the next several months, I remained in regular contact with Alfried Längle. We messaged regularly and it was a pleasure to welcome the whole Längle family to Vancouver in conjunction with the 2002 Meaning Conference. In the months following the conference, I assisted with the translation of several English-language articles, which would subsequently be published as a special issue of European Psychotherapy. I also facilitated several visits to Trinity Western University, where Alfried Längle would give workshops on anxiety (2003) and meaning in life (2004).

Over time, I came to understand and appreciate EA’s in-depth training model, which contrasts (to this day) to the way in which much of psychotherapy is taught in North America. I decided to pursue doctoral studies in Counselling Psychology at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver in 2005, and began to explore whether EA training could possibly be offered in Vancouver.

Milestones of EA in Canada

It is at this point that my story (Derrick Klaassen) begins to overlap and connect with our story as EA trainees in Canada and then weaves its way into the story of our as the Existential Analysis Society of Canada. The first training cohort began in 2006, just a year after I started my doctoral training at UBC. I gathered approximately 20 persons from the Vancouver area who were interested in the training, and Alfried Längle generously offered several introductory workshops to facilitate the formation of the first cohort. After a few seminars, the cohort began to form in the fall of 2006. This group of people were to become the first EA training cohort in Canada. Alfried Längle travelled to Vancouver four times a year, each time for approximately 5 training days. My (Derrick Klaassen) tasks included the organizational and financial management of the training, as well as the translation of the first handouts for trainees. These initial handouts– some of which are still in use 15 years later – would eventually become the foundation for the translation of the GLE training manuals. In addition to training seminars, we would arrange public lectures for Alfried Längle in the Vancouver area. Some of these lectures remain live on YouTube to this present day (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zExrcaRG_is&feature=youtu.be), such as this introduction and therapy demonstration in 2007 at UBC. Other memorable events included a 2007 lecture at Vancouver General Hospital on finding meaning, which was sponsored by the Canadian Research Institute for Spirituality and Health (http://www.crish.org) or a panel discussion at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver with Dr. Gabor Mate and Dr. Bruce Alexander in 2014 on addiction.

A natural elaboration of these ongoing activities was the formation of a second cohort in Canada in 2009. This cohort saw the ongoing involvement of Alfried Längle as a trainer, but this was supplemented by the assistance of Daniel Trobisch. As the training for the first cohort came to a close in 2011, Alfried Längle and several Canadian trainees began to ask questions about the future of EA training in Canada. We explored who might be interested in forming a first Canadian-led training cohort, and whether it might make sense to organize as a professional society as a way of coordinating our efforts.

The Existential Analysis Society of Canada, affiliate of the GLE (EAC; www.existentialanalysis.ca) was formed in 2011 as a non-profit, scholarly society in British Columbia, Canada. Its mission is as follows: “The Existential Analysis Society of Canada is a non-profit, scholarly, and professional association that aspires to guide persons to experience inner freedom, to facilitate authentic decisions, and to foster a truly responsible way of dealing with life and the world” (https://www.existentialanalysis.ca/who-we-are). The society’s aims were formulated as serving the public by making EA counselling and psychotherapy accessible, promoting research and practical application of EA, providing training and professional education on EA, and fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and community among its members. EAC has since been led by a voluntary board of directors. To date, there have been two chairs of the board of the society, with Thomas Salley providing leadership from 2011 to 2015, and myself, Derrick Klaassen, serving as the chair from 2016 to the present.

While a variety of ongoing board committees have been struck over the years, the Training Committee is of particular note. This committee has included representation of the EAC board and all EAC trainers. In collaboration with and under the supervision of Alfried Längle, this committee has given leadership to training and assisted in forming successive cohorts, including the 3^rd cohort in 2014 (led by Mihaela Launeanu and Karin Steichele), the 4^th cohort in 2015 (led by Rochelle Chapman, Beth Daley, Mike Mathers and Kari-Ann Thor), the 5^th cohort in 2017 (led by Beth Daley, Kari-Ann Thor and Mihaela Launeanu), the 6^th cohort in 2018 (led by Derrick Klaassen, Janelle Kwee, and Mihaela Launeanu), and the 7^th training cohort in 2019 (led by Kari-Ann Thor, Karin Steichele, and Rochelle Chapman). In 2018, training in Canada expanded beyond the confines of Vancouver, BC, as Rochelle Chapman, Beth Daley and Daniel Parker began to offer training in Edmonton, AB.

Accomplishments

In reflecting on the mission and activities of the EAC, it is helpful to list a few accomplishments with respect to fulfilling its mission. With respect to training, eight cohorts have been formed through the efforts of the society, with three of those cohorts having now completed all training requirements and four remaining in progress. The first two cohorts relied on trainers from Austria and Germany, while the subsequent cohorts have been trained entirely by Canadian trainers. These latter cohorts have been shaped by eight EAC trainers who have worked with great dedication to adapt the EA curriculum and training materials into the English language. One of the extensive and ongoing projects has been the translation of the full EA curriculum from German into English. This has been done as a collaborative effort between the GLE and EAC. To date, approximately 85% of the curriculum has been translated, and the EAC has begun to take on the task of preparing and distributing English student training manuals for trainees. In total, approximately 30 counsellors and psychotherapists in Canada who have completed EA training, and approximately 60 trainees are in various stages of training.

In addition to clinical training, the EAC has also been involved in various research publications and professional. Here we list a few such efforts as examples of ongoing scholarship. Mihaela Launeanu, Janelle Kwee and Derrick Klaassen have been involved in regular presentations at the Canadian Psychological Association’s annual convention from 2015 to the present, exposing Canadian psychologists to EA psychotherapy on a variety of topics, such as finding meaning (Klaassen, Kwee, & Launeanu, 2016) or personhood (Klaassen, Launeanu, Konieczny, & Kwee, 2018). Various members of EAC have also given presentations the World Conferences on Existential Therapy in London, UK, in 2015, and in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2019.

EA research and scholarship efforts have also made their way into numerous English-language journals (e.g., Journal of Humanistic Psychology, the Canadian Journal of Counselling and Psychotherapy), conference proceedings (e.g., Klaassen, Bartel, & Bentum, 2019; Launeanu, Klaassen, Kwee, & Konieczny, 2019) and edited books (e.g., Launeanu, Klaassen, & Kwee, 2018), most notably the Wiley World Handbook of Existential Therapy (2019), which included four EAC members as co-authors of various chapters (e.g., Kwee & Längle, 2019; Längle & Klaassen, 2019; Launeanu, Klaassen, & Muir, 2019).

A meaningful opportunity for EAC has been the international collaboration with other EA communities through an inter-American journal, Existencia, founded through the Chilean Institute of Existential Analysis under the leadership of Michèle. In 2017, collaborators from Chile, Argentina, Mexico, and Canada began to work towards publishing a Spanish-English bilingual journal that would be co-edited by an editorial committee across North and South America (including Janelle Kwee from EAC). This resulted in re-branding Existencia as a bilingual publication, which features book reviews, brief articles, and full-length articles on EA related themes. The journal, Existencia (ISSN 0719-8671) is freely accessible via www.icae.cl. A compilation of elaborated articles from Existencia became the basis for the book, Encuentros Existenciales (2019), and included chapters written by several EAC members (Tammy Bartel, Janelle Kwee and Mihaela Launeanu).

In addition to these traditional sources of publication, EA has shaped several students’ research projects supervised by some EAC members at Trinity Western University. These Master theses have explored existentially-relevant topics, such as grief (Drisner, 2017), shame (Konieczny, 2020), spiritual searching (Newman, 2020), ethics (Schutt, 2020), or moral injury (Kuburic, 2018).

While one important aim of EAC has been to make EA known in scholarly and professional circles, the society has also supported efforts to bring EA content to the general public. This has in part occurred through public presentations at universities and beyond. More recently, four EAC members (Janelle Drisner, Mihaela Launeanu, Chelsea Stenner, & Xavier Williams) launched a podcast entitled The Existentialists (https://www.existentialistspodcast.com/podcast). So far, it has published 16 episodes on a variety of topics from grief to phenomenology to inner consent. The uptake by the audience has been encouraging, and we are eager to see the way in which these new media may engage the broader public in dialogue concerning such existential themes.

Much more could be said about the ongoing efforts to bring EA into the Canadian and North American context. We hope that this brief history of the development of EA in Canada has been interesting and instructive to the reader. At this point, we would like to cast our gaze a bit more broadly, asking the question of how EA fits into the Canadian context and reflect upon its essential and unique contribution to the landscape of psychotherapy.

Distinctiveness of EA in the Canadian Context

Our enthusiasm for the contribution of EA to psychotherapy, psychotherapy training, and research in the Canadian context is informed by the landscape of this context and by what EA uniquely offers that is otherwise missing. In this section, we offer some considerations about the context and then speak to how EA contributes unique values that are needed for psychotherapy training and practice.

Psychotherapy and Psychotherapy Training in Canada

The field of psychotherapy in North America is fragmented by over-choice; recent estimates suggest that there are over 500 distinct approaches to psychotherapy. Training and practice in psychotherapy in Canada is shaped by pressures for efficiency and cost-effectiveness. The economics of mental health care coverage have shaped a culture of practice in which treatment guidelines largely aim to increase cost effectiveness without acknowledging the idiographic complexities and mysteries of person-to-person healing work.

In spite of the paradigm that emphasizes matching best treatments for specific disorders, over seven decades of psychotherapy research offers evidence that positive therapeutic change occurs in the subjective, relational encounter between therapist and patient, and is due to factors that transcend therapeutic approaches (Duncan et. al 2010). These common factors are identified as, (a) the client and extratherapeutic factors; (b) therapeutic techniques; (c) the therapist; and (d) the therapeutic relationship. Each of these four factors that have borne out in research to be the most significant contributors to psychotherapeutic change, are addressed deeply and systematically in the framework of EA. This body of research points us towards the values that EA offers for strengthening training, practice, and research in psychotherapy.

Existential Analysis: A Needed Framework for Centering The Person

The extant common factors research on psychotherapeutic outcomes deals specifically with persons and relationships and challenges this approach. The importance of a psychotherapeutic framework in which there is a central focus on being a person is urgently needed in North America. As a phenomenological and person-oriented psychotherapy, EA offers what we see as needed distinctives and, dare we say, corrections, within the modern context of psychotherapy in North America. Specifically, we highlight the importance of several contributions of EA for this context. These include, (a) theoretical and philosophical situatedness; (b) methodological rigour; (c) emphasis on formation; and (d) praxis applications.

Theoretical and Philosophical Situatedness

With its roots in continental philosophy, including the work of Scheler, Heidegger, Levinas, and Buber, and in Frankl’s anthropology, EA is distinct from North American existential psychology, including the work of Rollo May and Irving Yalom. In this philosophical situatedness, EA unifies the practice of psychotherapy with its philosophical roots. Unlike symptom-focused psychotherapeutic approaches, EA is grounded in the anthropology of Viktor Frankl (1988), offering a framework with a strong theoretical and philosophical situatedness.

Frankl’s work repeatedly returned to a focus on the person, standing against the trends toward reductionism in psychology that limit human beings to deterministic and biological processes. The person provided an anthropological dimension that endowed humans with freedom, with the capacity to say ‘yes’ to live in spite of inevitable limitations and suffering. Frankl described the development of personality as a possibility that can be fulfilled with dialogue being at the centre of the actualization of personhood. It is precisely through this capacity for dialogue that the person, in constant relatedness to self and world, is invited to speak authentically. It is from this deeply rooted understanding of personhood as the pure potentiality of being and ongoing process of becoming that EA offers a framework for deep and coherent psychotherapeutic practice.

Methodological Rigour

The central therapeutic method of EA, Personal Existential Analyis (PEA; Kwee & Längle, 2013) aims explicitly to bring the person into dialogue with the world and with oneself, mobilizing one’s personal capacities. PEA provides a rigorous and praxis-focused description of phenomenology. More specifically, PEA facilitates an idiographic description, understanding, and mobilization of the person in their unique situation in the world. The person is the subject of Existential Analysis, not simply an object of analysis. The systematic steps of PEA support inner and outer dialogue. In this person-to-person therapeutic encounter, the therapist aims to see the person of the patient, essence-to-essence.

In addition to psychotherapeutic applications, personal phenomenology offers an approach to research that stimulates personal encounter between researcher and participants. Personal phenomenological research includes receiving and uncovering the lived experiences and meanings of participants while also activating the personal ethical capacities of the person towards acting in the world. The personal encounter between researcher and research participants is central to this approach. Encounter and dialogue continue after data collection in the relationships between research team members, and the researcher’s own reflexivity stimulates inner encounter in the researcher’s own self throughout the research process.

For both psychotherapy practice and research, EA provides a rigorous methodological framework aimed at stimulating a deeper level of seeing. Turning towards and inviting the potential of the person to emerge takes place in a disciplined, focused, and rigorous approach. It requires the psychotherapist and researcher to resist the temptation to focus simply on content, and to guide the patient or research participant in encountering the preciousness of their own inner, free person.

Emphasis on Formation

Training cohorts in EA follow a structured curriculum in which the themes of training are elaborated in the trainees own experience of being persons. The training model, which is implemented over time and in the context of dialogue with fellow trainees, is notably distinct from topic-based graduate degree programs that constitute most of the psychotherapeutic training opportunities in North America. The unique training approach of EA comes with the challenges of being unusual, demanding, time-consuming, and consequently expensive. For trainees who can embrace the value of their own process of becoming as central to their work as psychotherapists, the emphasis on personal development over time is a treasure.

Praxis Applications in Psychotherapy, Supervision, and Research

EA provides a framework which recognizes that suffering and loss are part of the conditions of real life. Moreover, these givens that are the conditions of life offer a context for personal development. With these real conditions of life, the person is actively engaged in dialogue and EA offers a transparent structure for assisting each client in a singular, personal, life journey. Similarly, EA provides a phenomenological model of clinical supervision with ten systematic steps. These include, (a) description; (b) clarification; (c) impressions; (d) supervisee responses; (e) supervisor summary; (f) primary themes; (g) obstacles; (h) therapeutic steps; (i) positioning; (j) closing and summary.

As described in the previous section, EA is positioned to further contribute to methodological developments in phenomenological psychotherapy research that aim to look at the essential experiences around encounter and change. Beyond the applications to psychotherapy, clinical supervision, and research, EA offers a framework that can lend to flexible integration with different specialized practice areas in Canada. Some of these include applications to, (a) educational settings; (b) coaching and leadership; (c) group therapy and workshops; (d) embodiment training; and (e) mindfulness integration.

Summary of EA’s Contribution to Psychotherapy in North America

Research has shown that therapists impact clinical outcomes more than their specific techniques. Their research that points to the patient as the strongest contributor to psychotherapy outcome. These findings easily make sense in EA, where the activities of being and becoming are nurtured through genuine person-to-person encounter. The work of psychotherapy takes place through this therapeutic relationship of encounter, offering a deeper look at the potential for what the ‘common factors’ research describes more functionally as a therapeutic alliance. This work of psychotherapy in EA is focused and applied through systematic methods aimed at strengthening the person.

For those who are exposed to the concepts and methods of EA, there is often an easy personal resonance. We repeatedly find this to be the case when we speak about EA at academic and professional conferences and when we teach EA in postsecondary educational contexts. However, for as much as the refined, deep, and elaborated structure of EA is needed and resonates with practitioners in North America, it does not fit seamlessly within this landscape. EA offers a needed alternative for psychotherapists who are committed to the core activities of being a person, and who wish to offer this possibility to their patients.

In a field fractured by trends and over-choice, EA offers a deep, practical, and coherent framework that will continue to stand for the real human person. We are persuaded that this is a critical contribution to psychotherapy research and practice in the Canadian context and encouraged by the development that has allowed EA to come into being over the past 20 years. Next we turn our attention toward the horizon of becoming, looking forward with expectancy to the specific ways in which EA in Canada may and hopefully will develop over time.

The Future of EA in Canada: Main Trends of Further Development

In this section of the paper, we highlight the main trends for development of EA in Canada with respect to some key domains: training and professional development, clinical practice, scholarship, community development, and collaborations and partnerships.

Training and Professional Development

 EA training is at the core of the EA presence in Canada as the formal venue to train EA counsellors and psychotherapists, as well as a valuable professional training option amongst the various psychotherapy trainings that populate the current Canadian market. Thus, we foresee that continuing, expanding, diversifying, and effectively organizing EA training will be key areas of future development for EA in Canada.

Continuing and Expanding the Training.

Currently, EA training has been offered in two Canadian provinces-British Columbia and Alberta. In the future, we hope to offer the training in most Canadian provinces and run training cohorts simultaneously across provinces. Moreover, we intend to develop and implement a secondary stream of training for graduate students and professionals working in allied health or related fields. Offering this secondary training stream in Canada would allow the EA values and practical methods to inform and benefit the praxis in related professional domains (e.g., healthcare, education, social work).

Adopting Alternative Training Formats.

The expansion of the EA training would be reflected also in the variety of training formats and options. For instance, the in-person training model could be complemented by hybrid models that would flexibly combine and integrate in-person with online training. Adopting alternative training formats would align with the contemporary demands for technological innovations in teaching and learning and with the growing need for online education fuelled by the current COVID-19 pandemic.

Although the importance of personal engagement and experiential activities cannot be emphasized enough when it comes to the pedagogy of EA training, some recent technological innovations could be integrated in the delivery of the training in a way that would increase its accessibility and convenience while maintaining its high-quality standards and personal, experiential focus.

Increasing Training Accessibility, Affordability, and Recognition.

In Canada, EA training is relatively demanding both cost-wise and timewise in comparison to other local professional training programs. Moreover, EA training is a postgraduate training completed while or after the EA trainees have earned a graduate professional degree (e.g., Master’s degree), and it is not yet accredited beyond being acknowledged as a continuing education opportunity. Hence, in the future, it will be important to increase the flexibility of the training delivery format, seek the recognition or accreditation of the training by the local authorities, develop a program of bursaries and scholarships for trainees, and implement an effective system of training prospective EA trainers to improve potential trainees’ access to multiple EA training options.

Training and Mentoring Prospective EA Trainers.

Training prospective Canadian EA trainers is critical for the development of the EA training in Canada. Adopting a trainer education model that is both highly effective and of high quality is essential for the future of EA in Canada. Currently, the endorsed model of training prospective EA trainers is the ‘craft model’ based on the premise that a prospective trainer learns to become a trainer by observing, gradually assisting, and emulating a senior trainer over minimum two training cohorts after graduating from the EA psychotherapy training.

Notwithstanding the merits of this approach, given the immediate demands for new Canadian trainers, it would be helpful to explore some alternative models of training new trainers. For example, an alternative approach would allow to train a cohort of prospective trainers simultaneously, as a group, rather than one trainer at a time. Specifically, this model implies training a small cohort of potential trainers through intensive seminars focused on EA training pedagogy, interspersed with intensive and purposeful teaching placements hosted by various training cohorts at different training stages, under the close guidance and supervision of EA trainers. This alternative model would encourage parallel, alternative and team teaching, and a more active, collaborative stance for the trainer in training. In line with EA pedagogy and values, the trainers in training would also engage in a process of self-reflection and self-experience related to their process of becoming a trainer in parallel with attending seminars, teaching placements and supervision sessions.

Another critical aspect pertaining to the process of training new EA trainers is the establishment of a mentorship system for the EA trainees who may show potential and are interested in becoming EA trainers. This mentorship process would imply an early identification and screening of these trainees and involving them in co-facilitating and moderating some small training sections or self-experience groups as early as they finish the EA basic training.

Professional Development Opportunities.

In the future, it would be important to diversify and expand the EA educational opportunities beyond the formal EA training. Specifically, this would involve creating and delivering EA professional workshops and courses for counsellors, psychotherapists, and professionals from related or allied health fields. Some of these educational opportunities could meet the demand for continuing education credits required by some professional associations, and they could also provide continuing educational opportunities and engagement for the EA trained counsellors and therapists.

Creating an EA Training and Research Institute.

An EA training and research institute would be an effective way of designing and implementing an integrated approach to organizing, marketing, delivering, and evaluating the EA educational opportunities, which include the EA training, courses, and workshops. The institute would be actively involved in ongoing EA curriculum development to expand the EA educational offer in Canada and internationally. This would mean developing and promoting an effectively planned and integrated expansion of EA training, courses and workshops that could reach more professionals than the standard training alone.

In addition to assuming the responsibilities of marketing, organizing, and managing the EA training in Canada, an institute would coordinate the design and implementation of research projects related to EA psychotherapy and EA-inspired research methodology. In this sense, the institute could become a platform for disseminating EA research by promoting and hosting various scientific events, such as conferences or congresses.

Clinical Practice

Another important future direction of development for EA in Canada is the expansion, consolidation, and integration of local EA clinical practice. Presently, in Canada there are around 30 trained EA therapists, and approximately 60 prospective EA therapists who are currently enrolled in the EA Counselling and Psychotherapy Diploma trainings. Most of these counsellors and therapists are either working in private practices or for various agencies, and usually have few opportunities to connect and consult with other EA therapists.

Hence, it would be important to gradually develop integrated, local communities of EA clinical practice to support the EA therapists, and, implicitly, to solidify the identity or the brand of EA psychotherapy in Canada. One such initiative is the Centre for Existential Therapy in Vancouver, created in December 2020 with the aim of becoming a hub of integrated clinical practice in Vancouver with affiliated practices. Building similar local centres of clinical practice would foster the development of local and regional professional communities and is a priority for the future growth of EA in Canada in terms of clinical practice opportunities and internship partnerships.

Scholarship

Developing an active EA scholarship represents a core trend of future development of EA in Canada. This aim could be accomplished through consistently featuring EA related presentations at various scientific events (e.g., conferences, congresses), publishing English books and articles to disseminate EA research and knowledge, and conducting research on various EA topics.

Some main areas of research pertain to designing and implementing systematic studies investigating the effectiveness of EA therapy and of its various methods and clinical applications. This would require developing and testing new research designs and methods to investigate these topics in a manner that fits with the EA worldview and principles. Another important area of EA research would be to continue the development of novel research methodologies based on the EA phenomenological process. Disseminating the findings of these research projects via publications and conference presentations would be equally important for maintaining a dynamic, constant EA scholarly presence within Canadian and international scientific contexts.

In terms of furthering and establishing the EA scholarship, some theoretical-methodological developments may be also auspicious as they would respond to some contemporary debates and would allow the expansion of the existing EA frameworks. For instance, integrating some of the critical theory frameworks with some EA tenets would allow a more explicit engagement with questions such as: how to engage with non-Western/diverse clients by ‘localizing’ or ‘contextualizing’ some of the EA frameworks; how to acknowledge, challenge or adapt some colonial, Western stances to make EA more hospitable in encountering and working with the strangeness of refugees, homeless people, gender fluid individuals or people with disabilities; how to address the racialized, oppressive dynamics in working existentially with non-Western or diverse clients.

Community Development

Building and nurturing a strong community that actively supports and promotes the presence of EA in Canada is especially important in the future. This goal can be accomplished by organizing regular public events such as free talks, webinars, and podcasts on various EA topics relevant to everyday and community life. Organizing forums where people can gather and dialogue on a variety of existential themes would be another way to build a sense of EA community beyond training and clinical practice.

Another important aspect of EA community development is organizing fundraising campaigns that would ensure some stable funding channels for the activities that would increase the EA public presence while creating mutually beneficial partnerships with local communities. For example, building partnerships with local communities and serving them through charitable actions and initiatives would promote a steady, helpful presence of EA values amidst these communities.

Collaborations and Partnerships

Consolidating the EA presence in Canada will require promoting intra- and interdisciplinary collaborations as well as creating local and regional strategic partnerships with some key stakeholders involved in professional training and development.

In terms of intradisciplinary collaborations, encouraging an explicit dialogue between EA and other therapeutic approaches would be particularly beneficial for making the wider therapeutic community aware of EA distinctiveness and for differentiating EA psychotherapy from similar therapeutic approaches. This intradisciplinary dialogue would contribute to solidifying the EA identity in Canada and North America and could be accomplished either through dedicated publications or through podcasts and webinars that invite this dialogue with colleagues from other therapeutic approaches.

EA frameworks and practical strategies could be integrated and applied in related contexts of praxis such as healthcare or education. Thus, it would be important to promote these interdisciplinary collaborations that would allow an enrichment and expansion of the EA presence in Canada.

Finally, it would be important for the EA future development in Canada to develop partnerships with local educational institutions (i.e. colleges and universities) and other key stakeholders who may contribute to a more active presence of EA and support the vision and mission of EA in Canada.

Concluding Remarks

Existential Analysis represents a unique and much-needed addition to a North American psychotherapeutic landscape that is dominated by approaches that emphasize technique over the involvement and formation of the person. In this paper, we have chronicled the history of the development of EA in Canada, and the unique and personal way in which Vancouver, British Columbia, has set the stage to become a centre for EA practice and scholarship. We have also reviewed the specific ways in which EA, as a phenomenological and person-centred psychotherapy, fits into the Canadian and more broadly North American context, and we have envisioned the ways in which EA could develop so that we can continue to meet the particular needs for psychotherapeutic training in the future. We remain deeply grateful for our formative and ongoing relationship with the GLE and with Alfried Längle in particular, and we look forward to hopefully many more years of ongoing collaboration. In our hearts, we are convinced that the world in general and the psychotherapeutic world in particular needs practitioners whose practice has been shaped by the formation of their personhood.