International Journal of Existential

Psychology & Psychotherapy

An Existentialism of Hope:
A Response to the Editorial by Paul
Wong
Alan Parry1

was immensely encouraged by Pauls

(2004) editorial for the inaugural issue of the
Journal of Existential Psychology and
Psychotherapy. Existential philosophy,
psychology or psychotherapy have suffered
a certain eclipse in their cultural impact
reaching all the way back to the mid-sixties.
The origins of this eclipse stem from several
factors, but the greatest of these may be the
premature optimism that exploded upon the
Western world somewhere around 1965.
Both politically and culturally, an
exceedingly strong conviction arose
amongst what has come to be known as the
baby boomer generation, then notoriously
under 30, that the times they are achangin
and a new world was coming into being.
The angst-ridden outlook that, in the eyes of
many, had come to be associated with all
things existential seemed to have little to say
in the face of the political activism and
cultural revolution that seemed to be
sweeping before it. What there remained of
self-examination during this outward
looking time tended to be seen through the
smoke and magic of mind-altering drugs.
Better living through chemistry was a
mocking slogan that I remember from those
heady days.
The expectation that the world was
going to be changed in much better ways by
marches, music and mind-expansion proved
to be short-lived. Change was still afoot into
the next decade, but it was very much a sail1

Alan Parry is an Associate Professor in the

Department of Family Therapy in the School of
Medicine at the University of Calgary.
Correspondence regarding this article should be
directed to parry@ucalgary.ca.

www.existentialpsychology.org

Volume 1, Issue 1, July 2004

trimming kind of change, more focused on

oneself than on the world and those who
held power. It was still change of a rather
exotic nature, if not through drugs then
through such means as various forms of
meditation and what amounted to neognostic practices. The sobriety of existential
thought continued to have little appeal. Out
of the sweeping cultural challenges to
virtually all things conventional and
traditional of the 60s and even the 70s
emerged an attitude to change that came to
be known as postmodern. Rather than the
predicament of the self, it emphasized its
deconstruction, along with that of every
cultural institution or practice that had
traditionally given life meaning or purpose.
The postmodernists were also dogmatically
insistent that there was no such thing as
human nature, but rather that we are all
social constructs.
Where modernism, that cultural force
which confidently sought meaning in life,
emphasized what could be done,
postmodernism insisted on what could not
be done. We could no longer think big, we
could not know ourselves nor could we find
meaning in life. There was none to be found.
Perhaps such skepticism was a necessary
and inevitable corrective in the face of the
collapse of the exuberant optimism of
modernism. Nonetheless it is, in the end, a
counsel of despair.
Are we back where we started? With the
old existential courage in the face of
despair? That is certainly not what we need
as the challenges of the 21st century already
mount up before us. We need the confidence
of the old modernism, not so much to tell us
this time what can be done, but to challenge
us with what must be done. In short this is
the time for the emergence of what I am
calling a new modernism. Pauls (2004)
editorial, which amounts to a manifesto for
an existentialism of hope, seems to me to
exemplify the kind of thinking that a new

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International Journal of Existential

Psychology & Psychotherapy

Volume 1, Issue 1, July 2004

modernism requires. There are so many

challenges that the 21st century demands of
us. We simply must take much better care of
our planet ecologically than we have done.
We simply must find alternatives to war as a
means of stopping not only the atrocities of
tyrants, but all those cancerous outgrowths
of modernity which insist that none are
innocent and that any one who is in their
way is unquestionably deserving of death.
And, as Paul so forcefully and
systematically reminds us, we must address
once again all those questions that pertain to
what it means to be human - its givens, its
possibilities and all those forces that shape
it. Unless we address this challenge, do it
thoroughly and with hope, we are bound to
fail at all the others. Let us resolve, that we
will rise to the challenge of those things that
must be done.
Reference
Wong, P. T. P (2004). Editorial: Existential
psychology for the 21st century.
International Journal of Existential
Psychology and Psychotherapy, 1, 12.

www.existentialpsychology.org

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