Running head: THERAPEUTIC LESSONS FROM KIERKEGAARD 1

Modern Therapeutic Lessons Learned From Søren Kierkegaard’s Philosophy

Caleb M. Woolston

Salt Lake Community College

ePortfolio link: http://calebmwoolston.weebly.com/

Modern Therapeutic Lessons Learned From Søren Kierkegaard’s Philosophy

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Lessons to Learn: Introduction

In modern times, there are many lessons to be learned from the existential philosophy of

Søren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard, as a philosopher, developed a school of thought that

transformed much of the thinking of his time to a more person-centered, existential line of

thinking. In the few years before Kierkegaard, English liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill began

a philosophy based on the idea of “one is free as far as is does not infringe on the freedom of my

neighbour”. Mill’s strong focus on self liberty began a line of thinking across the globe focused

on what humans wanted. Taking Mill’s focus on the freedom of the human self, Kierkegaard

became an existentialist philosopher answering questions through his philosophy such as, “Who

am I?”, “Who should I become?”, or “Where do I fit in?”. Observing this shift Soccio mentioned,

“Kierkegaard’s work represented a radical shift in philosopher's orientation from objectivity to

subjectivity, from efforts to impose rational consistency to a search for authentic

existence.”(Soccio, 2015, italics added). It is this subjective search for a human’s authentic

existence, Kierkegaard developed methods and ideas that humans are meant to be their ideal

person. Who they were was not to be determined by anyone else, and even more importantly,

one’s identity was not to be determined by the masses. Conformity was to be avoided more than

perhaps anything else, according to Kierkegaard. “Because he rebelled against the system and

against objectivity, Kierkegaard’s work confounds easy classification (which would delight

him).” (Soccio, 2015). He rebelled greatly, in a similar manner to Mill, and turned the world’s

philosophical view on the existential condition to what makes a person such a unique person. He

coined the term of the authentic self, and in a definition that almost seems to be directly from

John Stuart Mill, he said that, “Our human essence is to be free”. In forming such an individual

focused philosophy, Søren Kierkegaard unintentionally (and perhaps to his disapprovement)

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developed a scientifically sound and time-tested approach that spearheaded psychological

research to come. What Søren Kierkegaard formed was an idea that has lead to extensive study

on who people are. In the years following the legacy of Søren Kierkegaard, there are therapeutic

principles that can be learned from his philosophy.

The Search for Identity: The Struggle of Life

When Søren Kierkegaard defined the authentic self as the essence to be free, he meant

that we ought to be free to explore who we are. Society should establish and maintain an

environment where its constituents are free to both explore and grow, according to Kierkegaard.

In life, humans are shown to be naturally curious about the way the world around them works. In

the human developmental lifespan, there is no more point in exploring who one is than the

adolescent stage of development. Almost as if in support of Kierkegaard’s philosophy, famed

German-American psychologist Erik Erikson, who was an expert on identity, said that identity

searching is in fact what adolescence is defined by. He defined adolescence as a mental conflict

he called “Identity vs. Role Confusion”. According to Erikson, the adolescent is searching what

he or she ought to be committed to (Berger, 2012). Søren Kierkegaard’s philosophy of searching

for identity and the authentic self is strongly supported by evidence.

While considered most strong during adolescence, this search for commitment is not

exclusive to it. It is in human nature to search for identity. Kierkegaard put forward that an

existential choice (one’s identity) leads to a responsibility to that identity, which leads to a

commitment to that identity. This is very much observable in human action. As an example,

when a person starts to be politically aware in their early adulthood, they choose to be committed

to helping society this way. They research issues on the political forefront and “feel out” what

side they ought to be on. This choice leads to responsibility, they take action and vote for those
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they feel represent what they best believe in. They often try to convert friends and neighbors who

belong to the other side. Eventually, the feelings of responsibility lead to a true, solid

commitment to their chosen party. Any other side against their party is wrong and the “bad guy”.

The other side is to be avoided at all costs. This constant cycle of commitment can be thought of

formula that answer an essential existential question, one that Søren Kierkegaard sought to

answer as a philosopher. Soccio observed, “the major existential issue is ‘What am I to do?’ …

‘How am I to exist’” (Soccio, 2015). Philosophically, Søren Kierkegaard did just that in his

approach. This formula leads to show just how one is to exist.

Therapeutic and modern psychological principles are found throughout the search that

Søren Kierkegaard put forward. The search for one’s authentic self has been proven to increase

mental health. A school of psychology known as Individual Psychology was built around the

idea of the human’s search for identity as a means to cure any mental illnesses or other

psychological abnormalities a person was suffering from. Its founder, Viennese psychiatrist and

close friend of Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler himself suffered from debilitating rickets, and used

many of his own experiences with his weaknesses to encourage his patients to find other interests

they weren’t physically limited by. Living in nearly the same time as Kierkegaard, Adler began

to show, just as Erik Erikson, that finding one’s identity was key to their mental health.

Happiness was the reward of those who overcame any type of weakness, according to Adler.

Misery and neuroticism were the symptom of those who did not know who they were. As

Kierkegaard observed, “We are in despair whether we know it or not because we have a ‘double

nature’” (Soccio, 2015). He meant that we as humans are always in the struggle to exist between

the pull of the world and eternity. As we find where we fit in this struggle, Søren Kierkegaard

says move toward the authentic self. The use of similar ideas in Alfred Adler’s theory show how
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strong of a philosopher Søren Kierkegaard is, and how we can still today, in our modern culture,

can use Kierkegaard’s philosophy to help us find who we are.

Conformity and Bureaucracy: The Enemy of Identity

In the struggle to find who we are, humans fall into a trap that we initially think helps us

find who we are. As we grow more socially aware in search for our identity, we begin to seek out

groups that we believe help us form identity. We find a church to regularly attend, a sports team

to follow, and a political party to align with. Our own search for who we leads us to what Søren

Kierkegaard was very much against: conformity. Philosophically, Kierkegaard warned strongly

that conformity would hurt, rather than help, one find identity. Group behaviour is unavoidable

and very much on the rise, much to Kierkegaard’s disappointment if he could see modern

behavior. A famous experiment highlighted very strongly how giving into group pressure ruins

our ability to think as an individual. Solomon Asch at Yale University told a large group of

college students that they were going to participate in a visual perception experiment. One at a

time, the students were led to a room that had six other students who were in fact confederates,

part of the experiment planted to further experiment. Then in front of this group of seven, Asch

drew three lines on a chalkboard labeled a, b, and c. Line c was drawn significantly shorter than

the other two. One by one Asch asked the students which line was longest. He intentionally

started with the six confederates, saving the outside student for last. As scripted, the first six

students all said that line c was the longest. As Asch got to the final student, a large number of

the final students said that line c was the longest. They conformed to group pressures despite

significant evidence that the group was wrong. In total, 76 percent of the final student in the

group ended up conforming to the rest of the group, saying that line c was the longest (Franzoi,

2016). Kierkegaard warned against this very type of group conformity.

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The pressure to be like everybody else is unacceptable to Søren Kierkegaard. The

authentic self and our essence of being free is ruined by social peer pressure. According to

Kierkegaard, we are meant to be unique, not tied down to merely follow the masses. Diener

argues that, “in explaining deindividuation, the crucial cognitive factor is a lack of self-

awareness, the deindividualized do not think of themselves as separate individuals and do not

attend to their own inner values and standards” (Diener, 1980). Kierkegaard would have agreed,

believing that the crowd’s identity ruined our sense of who we are, and the more we conform to

groups, we take away from ourselves our own authentic self. Søren Kierkegaard argued strongly

against conformity, believing that we should avoid it more than anything. We cannot fulfil out

mental health needs for becoming our true selves if we constantly cave into group pressures, a

fact true in science as it is in Søren Kierkegaard’s philosophy.

Bureaucracy, in the philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard, was a major culprit for the

deindividuation of people. Kierkegaard argued on this point that an overly bureaucratic turns an

individual into “a case” rather than “a face”. The large governments and businesses, with many

sets of rules and regulations, would fail to see people as unique individuals. For example, when

an employee runs into a severe family emergency and has to be late for work on several

occasion, their employer may see this employee in a negative light. The employer probably has

regulation in place, perhaps its employees are only allowed a few lates or else the employee is to

face discipline, which often culminates into the employee losing their job. The employer does

not even ask why the employee was late so often, they only care about the number, the case, not

the face behind the employee. So often there are people who’s very identity is tied to family and

especially helping out this family, their authentic self is to help their family in times of need.

When their employer disregards the face behind this, these actions take away from the person’s
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individuality. Søren Kierkegaard strongly argued against this type of bureaucracy, arguing that it

removes the ability to achieve the authentic self.

Evidence for Kierkegaard: Conclusion

Even many years after his death, the philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard stands strong as a

method for healthy self achievement. Modern psychological research such as the ones done by

Erik Erikson and Solomon Asch shows that Søren Kierkegaard’s philosophy is able to be used,

in part, in modern therapeutic techniques. When put into practice, Kierkegaard’s ideas can help

us become who we are meant to be. The central focus that he placed on the existential condition

we are all in helps us to find how we can overcome the struggles of life and become people. So

long as we are self-aware enough to avoid conformity, peer pressure, and the crowd’s identity,

we can become a unique person. Almost as if Søren Kierkegaard studied this himself, it is this

idea of identity achievement that has been continuously shown to be what humans march toward.

Bureaucracy, though unavoidable, is a severe deterint according to Kierkegaard, in becoming the

authentic self. In our modern culture, there are many lessons that we ought to abide by that Søren

Kierkegaard was far ahead of his time in putting forth.

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