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Individual Meaning Centered Therapy Research

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
Shannon R. Poppito, Ph.D.

Investigating the leading edge of meaning in advanced cancer: An existential-developmental qualitative analysis of Individual Meaning-Centered Psychotherapy.
'Life holds meaning for each and every individual, and even more, it retains this meaning literally to his last breath. And the [therapist] can show his patient that life never ceases to have a meaning. To be sure, he cannot show his patient what meaning is, but he may well show him that there is a meaning, and that life retains it: that it remains meaningful, under any conditions... Even the tragic and negative aspects of life, such as unavoidable suffering, can be turned into a human achievement by the attitude which a man adopts toward his predicament... transforming despair into triumph.'
Viktor Frankl (1969, ix) 'The Will to Meaning'

Shannon Poppito, William Brendel, Beatriz Moreno-Milan
Kathleen Galek, Tasha Prosper, Carla Garcia

Reading List

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Cohn, H. W. (1997). Existential thought and therapeutic practice: an introduction to existential psychotherapy. London, SAGE.

Diane, C. (1987). All Sickness Is Home Sickness. Columbia, Maryland Centre for Traditional Acupuncture, Incorporated.

Frankl, V. E. (1970). The will to meaning; foundations and applications of logotherapy. New York, New American Library.

Frankl, V. E. (1992). Man's search for meaning: an introduction to logotherapy. Boston, Beacon Press.

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Duquesne University Press.

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the light of Heidegger. Washington, D.C., University Press of America.

Lashley, M. E. (1994). Being called to care. Albany, State University of New York Press.

Loy, D. (1996). Lack and transcendence: the problem of death and life in psychotheraphy, existentialism, and Buddhism. Atlantic Highlands, N.J., Humanities Press.

May, R. (1958). Existence; a new dimension in psychiatry and psychology. New York, Simon & Schuster.

May, R. (1975). The courage to create. New York, W.W. Norton and company, Inc.

Mayeroff, M. (1971). On caring. New York, Harper & Row.

Nancy, J. (2007). Meaning in suffering. Madison, University of Wisconsin Press.

Valle, R. S. and S. Halling (1989). Existential-phenomenological perspectives in psychology: exploring the breadth of human experience: with a special section on transpersonal psychology. New York, Plenum Press.

Van Deurzen, E. (2002). Existential Counseling and Psychotherapy in Practice. London, Sage

Publications.

Van Kaam, A. L. (1966). The art of existential counseling. Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Dimension Books.

Yalom, I. D. (1980). Existential psychotherapy. New York, Basic Books.

Yalom, I. D. (2008). Staring at the sun: overcoming the terror of death. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass.