Emmy van Deurzen
Professor, Principal NSPC, Existential Academy, London, United Kingdom

Emmy van DEURZEN is a philosopher and professor of psychology and psychotherapy with 18 books to her name, translated into well over a dozen languages. She is the Founder Director of the New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling and the Existential Academy (www.nspc.org.uk) (www.existentialacademy.com), in London, where she also runs her private practice Dilemma Consultancy (www.dilemmaconsultancy.com)

Born and raised in the Netherlands, she lived, studied, and worked in France before settling in the UK in 1977. Emmy has been instrumental in founding or cofounding numerous organizations, including the Society for Existential Analysis, the Federation for Existential Therapy in Europe and the World Confederation of Existential Therapy. She has practised as a therapist to help people face their life problems since 1973.

Amongst her books are the bestsellers Existential Psychotherapy and Counselling in Practice (3d edition 2012), Psychotherapy and the Quest for Happiness (Sage, 2009), Everyday Mysteries (2nd edition Routledge, 2010) and Paradox and Passion (2nd edition, Wiley, 2015). Her book Rising from Existential Crisis was published with PCCS books in 2021. She is currently writing a book on Existential Freedom for Penguin.

Her website is: www.emmyvandeurzen.com. She is a human rights campaigner on Twitter as @emmyzen and she has made hundreds of videos for YouTube.

Living with freedom and meaning in time and space

 Emmy van Deurzen 

Existential thought has carefully explored and described the ways in which human beings move through time and space. It has traced how people get caught by obstacles, to stagnate in despair and decay. It has also discovered how people can reclaim the flow of their existential freedom, to make new connections, new commitments and to find new meaning in the world.

Emmy’s talk will be a whirlwind tour around human existence through time and space.

Alfried Längle
Professor, Psychotherapist, Physician, Clinical Psychologist | Honorary President of the International Society of Logotherapy and Existential Analysis (GLE-I), Vienna, Austria

Alfried LÄNGLE, M.D., Ph.D. (psychology), born 1951 in Ausria, founder (1983) and long-term president of the International Society for Logotherapy and Existential Analysis (Vienna), was scholar and collaborator of Viktor Frankl. He is professor of psychotherapy at the Moscow’s HSE-university and Vienna’s Sigmund Freud University. For his development of modern Existential Analysis and his over 400 publications he got two honorary doctorates and six honorary professor degrees as well as the Golden Medal for Merits for the Republic of Austria.
www.laengle.info

Positioning oneself
How to improve my presence in the world

 Alfried Längle 

Being-in-the-World is not just a given but also a demand to bring it to completion by actively bringing oneself into it. In fact, it needs our own engagement to make ourselves present not only in front of others but also in front of ourselves, especially when psyche brings up its claims. This existential act of coming into real being needs a process which must be undergone in each situation anew. The basic elements of this (mostly unconscious) process will be presented and pointed towards the therapeutic potential which is inherent in it. – The second part is devoted to the specific work with hindrances of being produced by anxiety and depression. An abreviated version of the forementioned general procedure is helpful for that by using one’s potential and forming a restructuring of the ego for its reactivation. It demonstrates that the lack of presence contributes to the development of losses of being and the respective suffering and its restitution is therefore a basic tool for the treatment of anxiety and depression. The application of this “Method of Personal Positioning” will be explained and discussed to a degree that participants should be enabled to apply it by themselves with their clients.

1. Why presence is essential? – Being in the world = essential. = Meaning of being borne. Bugenthal?
2. Presence needs a process – needs one’s own contribution to make me present → PEA
3. Short form to give oneself presence in front of anxiety and depression: PP

Kirk Schneider
Licensed Psychologist, Council of Representatives, APA (Humanistic Psychology) | Adjunct Faculty, Saybrook University and Teachers College, Columbia University | President of the Existential-Humanistic Institute, San Francisco, USA

Kirk J. SCHNEIDER, Ph.D. is a leading spokesperson for contemporary existential-humanistic and existential-integrative psychology. Dr. Schneider is a cofounder and current president of the Existential-Humanistic Institute (an award-winning psychotherapy training center), a two-term Council Member of the American Psychological Association (APA), and a two-time Candidate for President of the APA. He is also past president (2015-2016) of the Society for Humanistic Psychology (Division 32) of the APA, recent past editor of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology (2005-2012), a trained moderator for the conflict mediation group Braver Angels, and an adjunct faculty member at Saybrook University and Teachers College, Columbia University, and he is Guest Instructor at the Manhattan Institute of Psychoanalysis. Dr. Schneider is also an Honorary Member of the Society for Existential Analysis and the East European Association for Existential Therapy. He received the Rollo May Award for “outstanding and independent contributions” to the field of humanistic psychology from the Society for Humanistic Psychology, APA and is a Fellow of five Divisions of the APA (32, 42, 12, 29, and 24). His work on existential-integrative psychotherapy has been featured in a special issue of the Journal of Psychotherapy Integration (March, 2016) and is the inspiration for the psychotherapy training program of the Living Institute, Toronto, Canada. Dr. Schneider has published over 200 articles, interviews and chapters and has authored or edited 13 books including The Spirituality of Awe, The Polarized Mind, Awakening to Awe, The Handbook of Humanistic Psychology, Existential-Humanistic therapy, Existential-Integrative Psychotherapy, The Wiley World Handbook of Existential Therapy, and The Depolarizing of America: A Guidebook for Social Healing. Dr. Schneider’s work has been featured in Scientific American, the New York Times, The Guardian, Vanity Fair, Psychology Today, BBC World News and many other health and psychology outlets. For more information on Dr. Schneider's work visit https://kirkjschneider.com.

What the World Needs Now: Life-Enhancing Anxiety

 Kirk Schneider 

Counter to our conventional wisdom, what many of us need now is not less anxiety but more, at least of a certain kind. I propose that the world has far too much destructive anxiety precisely because it too often refuses to face the deeper and more invigorating anxiety that could preempt or even prevent that destructive anxiety. I call this invigorating anxiety “life-enhancing anxiety.” Life-enhancing anxiety is that level of anxiety that enables us to live with and make the best of the depth and mystery of existence, and it could be key to improving our child-rearing practices, our creativity, our capacity for cross-cultural bridge building, and our spiritual connection to life. I call this spiritual connection “awe-based.” In this talk I will describe each of those latter applications of life-enhancing anxiety including and in the context of my own struggle with the sensibility. In the end, I hope to convey how critical life-enhancing anxiety is to many of our individual and collective lives today, and how its depletion--as manifest in wars, violence, bigotry, political and religious polarization and dispirited lives—is killing us, both literally and figuratively.

Susana Signorelli
Licensed Psychologist, President of CAPAC Foundation, Honorary President of ALPE (Latin American Association of Existential Psychotherapy), Buenos Aires, Argentina

Licenced in Psychology. Buenos Aires' University.
Lanfranco Ciampi Award.
Honorary President of ALPE (Latin American Association of Existential Psychotherapy).
President of the CAPAC Foundation. Argentina.
President of the II World Congress of Existential Therapy. Buenos Aires. 2019.
Honorary member of several institutions and congresses, international juries, arbitration and scientific committees, director of mental health prevention programs, research consultant, organizer of scientific events, supervisor, international speaker.
She is the author of (5) books, compiler and author of (3) books, chapters in books (7) and articles in scientific journals, in Argentina and in other countries (Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and the United Kingdom). Foreword to (3) books.
Director and editor of the virtual Latin American Journal of Existential Psychology "A comprehensive approach to being".

Chronos versus Kairos

 Susana Signorelli 

The Greeks allowed us through their gods, Chronos, Kairós and Aion, to conceive time in different ways. This is a concern that has been occurring, in one way or another, for all time of humanity. In this work some conceptions of time are mentioned from the Greeks to existential philosophers such as Heidegger, Binswanger, Minkowski, Ricoeur. The one who also revolutionized the conception of time was undoubtedly Einstein, with his conception of gravitational orbits. After this path we can ask ourselves if Kairós and Cronos are really against each other or if they are mutually intertwined.

Ernesto Spinelli
Professor, Ernesto Spinelli and Associates, London, United Kingdom

Professor Ernesto SPINELLI has gained an international reputation as one of the leading contemporary trainers and theorists of existential analysis as applied to psychology and psychotherapy as well as the related arenas of coaching and conflict mediation. He is a Fellow and Chartered Counselling Psychologist of the British Psychological Society (BPS) and an APECS accredited executive coach and coaching supervisor. In 1999, Ernesto was awarded a Personal Chair as Professor of psychotherapy, counselling and counselling psychology. In 2000, he was awarded the a BPS Division of Counselling Psychology Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Advancement of the Profession. And in 2019, Ernesto received the BPS Award for Distinguished Contribution to Practice. His most recent text, Practising Existential Therapy: the relational world, 2nd edition (Sage, 2015) has been widely praised as a major contribution to the advancement of existential theory and practice.

Erik Craig
Psychologist, psychotherapist, author, teacher, Santa Fe, NM, USA

Erik Craig, Ed.D., has been studying, practicing, and teaching humanistic and/or existential psychotherapy for 55 years. In 2015 he was given APA’s Society for Humanistic Psychology’s Rollo May Heritage Award for “outstanding and independent contributions” to the field and, in 2021, was acknowledged for his “steady stream of invaluable research” in The Journal of Phenomenological Psychology as one of 11 independent psychologists contributing to the emergence of phenomenological psychology in America. Although he never thought it possible at the time, and of course couldn’t fathom the true reasons, he first dreamt of being a psychologist when he was just 13 years old. His path from that day to this took him through intensive study, friendships, and collaborations with four extraordinary scholars and psychologists including the humanistic psychologist, Clark Moustakas; the existential psychoanalyst, Paul Stern; the Daseinsanalyst, Medard Boss, and the Korean taopsychotherapist, Rhee Dongshick. In addition to his practice of psychotherapy Erik also enjoyed 30 years of full-time graduate teaching in university and professional schools of psychology. His primary scholarly interest has been to develop phenomenological hermeneutic grounds for understanding critical issues in psychological theory, research, and practice with the hope of achieving a comprehensive, existential approach to depth psychology and psychotherapy. Along the way he has served on the editorial boards of 5 juried journals and as president of state, national, and international psychological associations. Today, Erik savors both his personal life and practice in the high mountain desert town of Santa Fe, New Mexico and selectively conducting international teaching, trainings, and intensive group experiences. Beyond these, he privately enjoys observing and walking in nature, reading, poetry, and music.