Genuine spirituality is founded on the will to transform oneself, not on the attempt to make reality obey one’s desires. Magical thinking moves in the opposite direction: it treats inner wishes as if they possessed authority over the external world. The Kleinian illusion of omnipotence In Kleinian psychoanalysis and the broader tradition of object relations theory, omnipotence is not simply arrogance. It is an early psychic defence against helplessness, dependence and frustra

Psychology was born from philosophy, and existential psychology is the tradition that has most consciously preserved its philosophical roots. An existential psychologist might be imagined as the kind of practitioner Aristotle, Epictetus, Seneca, Spinoza, Kierkegaard or Nietzsche might have become had they practised psychology in the modern world: someone who does not ask only how stress can be relieved, but what it reveals about the way a person lives, chooses, relates to oth

Modern culture equates freedom with the number of available options. Yet being able to choose between many alternatives is not the same as being able to author a life. The problem begins when freedom is confused with the permanent availability of alternatives. Existential freedom is the capacity to choose, relinquish unchosen possibilities and take responsibility for what one creates. Consumer freedom offers an endless display of options and the reassurance that one never has