Dear friends,
I’m happy to share that in a few days I’ll be recording a podcast conversation with existential psychotherapist and philosopher Emmy van Deurzen about her new book, Beginning to Live: The Art of Existential Freedom.
Emmy is one of the founding figures of existential therapy in Britain. She studied philosophy in France, worked in psychiatric hospitals, and went on to found the New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling and the Existential Academy in London. She has practiced for over fifty years and written some twenty books, and Beginning to Live is the first she has written for a general audience.
At the heart of Emmy’s work is the idea that philosophy is not merely something to study, but something to live. She maps human existence across four dimensions: the physical, the social, the personal, and the spiritual. Each holds its own tensions, which we are called to face rather than flee. For Emmy, freedom and courage are not personality traits but ways of being available to each of us.
If there is anything you would like me to ask Emmy about existential freedom, courage, anxiety, the four dimensions of existence, meaning, ageing, mortality, or what half a century of sitting with people in crisis has taught her about where philosophy helps and where it falls short, I invite you to submit your questions through this form: