The potential of personal story analysis in existentially oriented counselling
DOI: 10.23951/2307-6127-2026-1-115-125
Based on the author’s model of existentially oriented counseling, represented by three levels (the level of life strategies, the level of “self-care” and the level of “construction of being”), the idea of using the psychosemantic potential of the client’s personal stories is argued and developed in order to detect points of misalignment with oneself on the path of life (“points of self-confusion”, “bifurcatios”, episodes of “self-repression of authenticity”) and clarify (untangle) the subsequent chains of experienced and semantically amplified life events that lead the subject away from his authenticity. Existential counseling is considered as a form of mutual philosophical and hermeneutic practice designed to transform the person himself and the intentions of his life path, as well as to construct some new relationships with reality (“adduction to lucidity” his being, allowing him to answer the question “why am I doing what I do?”). The article presents a number of consultative and therapeutic techniques (“Autobiography”, “The Butterfly Effect”, “My Current Self →My Different Self”, “Fly, fly, petal”) proposed for use in the investigation of personal stories. A variant of the consistent construction of the topics of sessions for the analysis of personal stories in the paradigm of the author’s model of existentially oriented counseling is proposed.
Keywords: existentially oriented counseling, personal stories, life path, sense, authenticity, inauthenticity, self-care
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Issue: 1, 2026
Series of issue: Issue 1
Rubric: PSYCHOLOGY
Pages: 115 — 125
Downloads: 210