I believe that the primal stuff of psychotherapy is always such existence pain—and not, as is often claimed, repressed instinctual strivings or imperfectly buried shards of a tragic personal past. In my therapy with each of these ten patients, my primary clinical assumption—an assumption on which I based my technique—is that basic anxiety emerges from a person’s endeavors, conscious and unconscious, to cope with the harsh facts of life, the “givens” of existence.*
