Year: 2025
Type: article
Study design: Case Report
Abstract: This paper presents a case study of anxiety within the framework of hermeneutic-existential-phenomenological therapy (HEPT), grounded in Martin Heidegger’s early philosophy. Through the therapeutic journey of a young man caught in a self-perpetuating spiral of anxiety and control, the paper explores how, in Heideggerian terms, mood worlds the client and how the shift from reflexive management to existential description opens new possibilities for presence, freedom, and relational attunement. The paper offers therapists an alternative lens for engaging with anxiety—not as pathology but as a mooded disclosure of being. For practitioners, this case offers a reminder that the work of existential therapy lies in staying-with, rather than in solving. It invites practitioners to help clients find language not about moods but from within the moods—where a different kind of agency can begin to stir.
DOI: 10.59158/001c.144362
Author: Steven Segal
Language: English
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4414319210