Format: Live-online Lecturer Led Classes (Virtual-Classroom) via Zoom

Duration: 1 Evening Every Week 6pm to 8pm

Online Live Attendance: 20 Hours

Self-Directed Learning: 40 Hours

Total CPD Credits: 60 Credits

Assessment: Written Assignment +/- Viva Voca Assessment

Award: Accredited Diploma

 

Course Accreditation:

• Professional Development Consortium

• Provider of Excellence

• CPD Standards Office

• Irish Counselling & Psychotherapy Association (ICPA)

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Course Description

 

Certificate in Existential Philosophy and Phenomenology for Counsellors and Psychotherapists is a rigorous, reflective training programme that invites practitioners to engage deeply with the philosophical foundations of therapeutic practice. Drawing from the works of key existential and phenomenological thinkers, this live online course provides a rare opportunity to explore the human condition, not through pathology or symptom, but through lived experience, freedom, meaning, embodiment, and relationship.

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Accredited by The CPD Standards Office (UK) and awarding 30 CPD Points, this programme is designed for counsellors, psychotherapists, psychologists, and mental health professionals who seek to expand their clinical depth and philosophical literacy. By integrating existential-phenomenological thought with contemporary therapeutic process, participants are encouraged to critically examine how philosophical inquiry can inform presence, attunement, and ethical responsibility in the therapeutic space.

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The course traces the evolution of existential thought from Kierkegaard and Nietzsche through to Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Buber, and contemporary voices such as Irvin Yalom and Emmy van Deurzen. Emphasis is placed on the lived experience of clients and therapists alike, enabling practitioners to work not only with what clients suffer from, but what they suffer with—anxiety, freedom, isolation, loss, mortality, and the quest for meaning.

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Learning Objectives

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By the end of this programme, participants will:

• Understand the core tenets of existential and phenomenological philosophy as they relate to psychological suffering and personal transformation.

• Explore key philosophical themes such as authenticity, freedom, temporality, embodiment, responsibility, and the search for meaning.

• Apply existential-phenomenological frameworks to therapeutic presence, dialogue, and attunement.

• Critically examine diagnostic models through an existential lens, with a focus on being-with rather than fixing.

• Develop reflective capacity around therapist identity, ethics, and the relational field.

• Integrate existential insights into clinical practice, regardless of primary modality, including humanistic, integrative, psychodynamic, and trauma-informed approaches.

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Course Content

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Module 1: Introduction to Existential Philosophy in Therapy

• The roots of existentialism and phenomenology in psychotherapy

• From ontology to encounter: shifting the clinical gaze

• Introduction to Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and the emergence of the modern self

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Module 2: Being, Anxiety, and Authenticity

• Heidegger's Being and Time: Dasein, temporality, and the call to authenticity

• Existential anxiety vs clinical anxiety

• Working with choice, ambiguity, and existential guilt

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Module 3: The Intersubjective Field

• Sartre and the "look" of the Other

• Buber’s I-Thou and relational presence

• Phenomenological dialogue in the therapeutic encounter

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Module 4: Embodiment, Language, and the Lived World

• Merleau-Ponty and embodied subjectivity

• Phenomenological listening and the pre-reflective self

• Speech, silence, and narrative as existential expression

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Module 5: Contemporary Existential Practice

• Irvin Yalom’s four ultimate concerns

• Emmy van Deurzen and the four worlds model

• Integrating existential approaches into modern clinical settings

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Module 6: Meaning, Mortality, and the Therapist’s Own Existence

• Death awareness and therapeutic presence

• Meaning-making in times of crisis and loss

• Ethical embodiment and the limits of therapeutic knowing

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Who Should Attend?

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This course is suitable for:

• Psychotherapists and counsellors (accredited or in training)

• Clinical and counselling psychologists

• Mental health professionals seeking to deepen their reflective capacity

• Professionals interested in philosophy, depth psychology, and the existential-phenomenological tradition

• Any individual with an interest in the topic

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This Diploma offers a rare opportunity to step beyond symptom reduction and into the realm of existential understanding—where the therapist becomes a fellow traveller in the profound questions of being, meaning, and human limitation. It is ideal for practitioners seeking philosophical depth, therapeutic presence, and ethical clarity in an increasingly complex world.