Clinical paper on absurdism recently published

Danielsen Director of Research, Dr. Steven J. Sandage, recent Danielsen social work trainee, Lauren Startup, and Boston College philosophy professor, Dr. Matthew Clemente, recently published an interdisciplinary clinical paper on absurdism in psychotherapy. The citation and abstract are below.

Sandage, S.J., Startup, L., & Clemente, M. (in press). Absurdism as an existential and spiritual diversity consideration in psychotherapy. Spirituality in Clinical Practice.

Abstract
The growing literature on both spirituality and meaning in psychotherapy represents a positive development for mental health research and practice. However, there is a corresponding need for greater attention to spiritual and existential diversity to effectively and ethically address the realities of clinical practice with diverse client populations. This interdisciplinary paper emerged from clinical situations involving existential diversity represented by psychotherapy clients holding versions of absurdist worldviews about the lack of meaning in life while working with spiritually-integrative therapists. The paper opens with a clinical vignette of a client expressing absurdist beliefs to a therapist’s inquiry about making meaning in life, which evoked valuable existential diversity and countertransference reflections by the therapist. Absurdism represents a unique existential stance in which it can feel more anxiety-provoking to try to seek meaning in life than to accept life as lacking inherent meaning. These clinical considerations drawn from the vignette and therapist reflections are positioned within the wider literature on spirituality and meaning in psychology and psychotherapy, as well as research on existential humility. We then offer a brief philosophical overview of absurdism and differentiate this perspective from nihilism and other existential, spiritual, and religious approaches to experiences of the absurd. Clinical implications for engaging existential diversity in the form of absurdism are considered from a relational spirituality model of psychotherapy and potential client-therapist differences in spiritual and existential worldviews along with suggestions for research and training.