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Beginning to Live: The Art of Existential Freedom
Not yet published
Expected 1 Dec 26'One of the most profound and potentially life-altering encounters I've had' Sophie McBain,
Guardian
Transform your life with existentialist psychology -- deepen your sense of identity, find new meaning in your interests and relationships, and discover how awakening to freedom helps you get better with age.
How can we find our own direction and purpose? When life feels too much, is it possible to free ourselves from the concerns that weigh us down? Whether you’re in therapy or prefer to find your own way through life’s struggles, pioneering therapist Emmy van Deurzen offers a lifeline for rebuilding trust in the world.
Beginning to Live is a practical invitation to step back and discover what really matters by considering each of the four key aspects of our experience in
physical,social,personal, andspiritual.
Harnessing over fifty years' experience, this book is filled with wisdom and moving stories that show how to deal with dilemmas and difficulties of every kind, so that even when survival takes all you have, you can rekindle confidence in your own abilities and revitalize your capacity to relate to others. It is not about a quality of personality or character, which you either have or don’t have, van Deurzen shows. It is about a way of being, which is available to each of us – enabling us all to find a more engaged way of living that is purposeful, deliberate and buoyant.
Your future is a work of art in progress. And it starts here.
'A refreshing reframing...calls for a return to existential an ability to confront the fundamental givens of life without recourse to labels or premature or inauthentic consolations.'--Times Literary Supplement
Transform your life with existentialist psychology -- deepen your sense of identity, find new meaning in your interests and relationships, and discover how awakening to freedom helps you get better with age.
How can we find our own direction and purpose? When life feels too much, is it possible to free ourselves from the concerns that weigh us down? Whether you’re in therapy or prefer to find your own way through life’s struggles, pioneering therapist Emmy van Deurzen offers a lifeline for rebuilding trust in the world.
Beginning to Live is a practical invitation to step back and discover what really matters by considering each of the four key aspects of our experience in
physical,social,personal, andspiritual.
Harnessing over fifty years' experience, this book is filled with wisdom and moving stories that show how to deal with dilemmas and difficulties of every kind, so that even when survival takes all you have, you can rekindle confidence in your own abilities and revitalize your capacity to relate to others. It is not about a quality of personality or character, which you either have or don’t have, van Deurzen shows. It is about a way of being, which is available to each of us – enabling us all to find a more engaged way of living that is purposeful, deliberate and buoyant.
Your future is a work of art in progress. And it starts here.
'A refreshing reframing...calls for a return to existential an ability to confront the fundamental givens of life without recourse to labels or premature or inauthentic consolations.'--Times Literary Supplement
432 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication December 1, 2026
About the author
Emmy Van Deurzen
43 books141 followersEmmy van Deurzen (born 13 December 1951 in The Hague, Netherlands) is an existential therapist and honorary Professor at the University of Sheffield.
After moving to the UK in 1977 to work with anti-psychiatrists, she founded the Society for Existential Analysis in 1988, and later created a London-based training institute for the Lapproach at Regent's College in 1985, before leaving to found The New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling in 1996 at Schiller International University. In 2010 The New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling became independent and is now situated in South Hampstead, London.
Her therapy work is based in existential philosophy, as a form of philosophical counseling, and focuses on enabling people to reflect on their lives with equal attention to past, present and future in order to draw on their strengths, talents and abilities, whilst facing up to the limitations of life.
- Wikipedia
After moving to the UK in 1977 to work with anti-psychiatrists, she founded the Society for Existential Analysis in 1988, and later created a London-based training institute for the Lapproach at Regent's College in 1985, before leaving to found The New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling in 1996 at Schiller International University. In 2010 The New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling became independent and is now situated in South Hampstead, London.
Her therapy work is based in existential philosophy, as a form of philosophical counseling, and focuses on enabling people to reflect on their lives with equal attention to past, present and future in order to draw on their strengths, talents and abilities, whilst facing up to the limitations of life.
- Wikipedia
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