Abstract

This work present the salient features of existential psychoanalysis across a chronological selection of Sartre's works. It looks at the background in psychology and phenomenology which informed Sartre's concept and presents key aspects of the theory itself, in comparison with Freudian psychoanalysis. A study of Sartre's three existential biographies, on Baudelaire, Genet and Flaubert, shows how the theory and its progressive-regressive method are applied to concrete cases, while also tracing the evolution of Sartre's approach up to his late writings on the topic. The final assessment concerns the possibility of using Sartre's theory as a basis for existential psychotherapy. Sartre's account is shown to provide a consistent framework for analysing individuals in existential terms and through which to understand subjectivity