In this conversation with Paola Pomponi, we explore what existential therapy really means — not just as a theory, but as a way of being with others.

We talk about therapist training, authenticity, absurdity, everyday existential encounters, and why humor may be one of the deepest forms of connection.

Paola reflects on what first drew her into existential therapy, including the impact of reading Irvin Yalom and the call she felt to change direction and train in the field. From there, the conversation moves into the core of existential practice: what it means not simply to think about life, but to encounter it directly and relationally.

Together, they explore existential therapy as something embodied before it is intellectual; something lived before it is explained. Anna describes therapy not as a technical act of fixing, but as one human being sitting beside another, “breathing the same air,” discovering what it means to be with someone rather than act upon them.

The dialogue then opens onto wider questions: is existential therapy only for a small, intellectual niche, or can it become part of everyday life? Anna argues for the latter, suggesting that existential dialogue can happen anywhere — with a coffee maker, a postman, a child, a stranger — if we meet others with curiosity and depth.

They also talk about how existential training changes the therapist, the courage required to enter that process, the absurdity of life, and the little freedom we still have in choosing how to respond. The episode closes with one of Anna’s most memorable themes: humor, not as avoidance, but as another way of meeting reality and deepening connection.

This is an episode for therapists, trainees, students, and anyone asking deeper questions about how to live, how to relate, and what to do with the life they have.

About Paola Pomponi

UKCP-accredited Existential Psychotherapist

Certified EMDR Practitioner

Existential Coach (EMCC Practitioner Level)

Chair of the Society for Existential Analysis (SEA)

Practices in London and Rome, bilingually (English/Italian)

Author of Bach in the Park - a story about living, loving and dying, temporality, rationality and emotionality.

Available on Audible and Amazon

https://amzn.eu/d/j9dFBSK

Connect with Paola

https://ppomponi.com

https://www.instagram.com/paola_pomponi_ukit/?hl=en

About the host

I’m Max Karlin, a psychologist, counsellor, and UKCP trainee existential therapist at the New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling, London. On this channel I share existential therapy insights, interviews, and reflections to explore how psychotherapy can help us live more authentically and meaningfully.

Connect with me linktr.ee/maxkarlin

chapters:

00:50 Meet Paola

03:00 From Business to Therapy

05:25 Yalom’s Influence

10:20 Training and Being With the Client

15:00 Practising Existential therapy

18:00 Children, Curiosity, and Meaning

20:00 How Therapy Changes the Therapist

22:00 Advice for Trainees

27:00 Existential Therapy Beyond the Room

28:00 Is Existential Therapy for Everyone?

34:00 The Power of Humor

36:40 Final Reflections & Closing Thoughts

Professor Ernesto Spinelli - one of the founders of the existential psychotherapy in the UK, author of foundational texts including The Interpreted World and Practising Existential Therapy, and one of the most influential voices in the field globally.

WE DISCUSS:

[02:00] "An old man with a young mind" — Ernesto on aging and unfinished projects

[05:00] How he "fell into" existential therapy

[08:00] Reading Husserl for the first time: "What is this?"

[10:00] The birth of existential therapy in the UK

[14:00] Curiosity as the heart of good therapy

[16:00] "Psychotherapy is seen as treatment rather than engagement — that's been a terrible error"

[18:00] Explanatory vs. understanding-focused psychology

[25:00] "We have honest conversations" — Ernesto's simplified approach

[28:00] What your symptoms might be giving you

[29:00] The question that changes everything: "Would you miss it?"

[34:00] AI therapy: why people find it empathic

[37:00] "Like a super person-centered therapist"

[38:00] "I find that terrifying" — but also revealing

[40:00] Sartre on conflict and the possibility of constructive engagement

[45:00] The "dictatorship of I" and why relatedness matters

[50:00] Advice for therapists-in-training: "Stay with what drew you here"

[52:00] "It's like a poem that finally says what you always felt"

[54:00] Writing novels, cinema, and the road not taken

KEY QUOTES FROM THIS EPISODE:

"If you're not genuinely curious about your client, you won't be a good therapist."

"Psychotherapy is seen as a form of treatment rather than a form of engagement and relation. That's been a terrible error."

"What mostly happens in my engagements with my clients is that we have honest conversations."

"Is your problem giving you anything worthwhile? And if you were to lose it — would you miss it?"

"People are turning to AI therapy because they're getting something from it that they're not getting from day-to-day human relations."

"The world is increasingly dominated by a kind of dictatorship of I."

GUEST:

Ernesto Spinelli, PhD is an existential psychotherapist, psychologist, a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, former Chair of the Society for Existential Analysis, and author whose work has consistently challenged psychotherapy’s reliance on diagnosis, technique, and cure. A former Academic Dean at Regent’s University London, he is known for advancing existential-phenomenological psychotherapy through his emphasis on relatedness, uncertainty, and therapy as an act of understanding rather than intervention.

ABOUT THE HOST:

I'm Max — a psychologist, counsellor, and trainee existential therapist at the New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling (NSPC) / Middlesex University in London.

After 25 years in business, I'm now exploring what it means to become a therapist — and what that journey reveals about being human.

This podcast documents that unfolding.

📚 Books:

The Interpreted World: An Introduction to Phenomenological Psychology

https://a.co/d/eMQmy3y

Practising Existential Psychotherapy: The Relational World

https://a.co/d/hljWmsb

Tales of Un-Knowing: Therapeutic Encounters from an Existential Perspective

https://a.co/d/43q1StD

The Mirror and the Hammer: Challenging Orthodoxies in Psychotherapeutic Thought

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B014FVQY72?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&ref_=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_3F1YW0TCAYD8NP57XDYF

🔗 Links:

Ernesto Spinelli & Associates

http://www.plexworld.com

Society for Existential Analysis:

https://existentialanalysis.org.uk

CONNECT:

🎥 Watch the full video interview on YouTube: https://youtu.be/4u39LZ_M3Uk

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maxkarlintherapy/

🌐 Website: maxkarlin.com

📧 Contact: https://linktr.ee/maxkarlin

SUPPORT :

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- Subscribe https://podfollow.com/becoming-existential/view

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- Share with a colleague or friend who might benefit

In this episode of Becoming Existential, I sit down with Dr Claire Arnold-Baker — Principal of the New School of Psychotherapy & Counselling (NSPC), existential psychotherapist, psychologist, researcher and current Chair of the Federation for Existential Therapy in Europe (FETE).

Claire is one of the course leaders on my training programme and someone whose clinical, academic and organisational work continues to shape how existential psychotherapy is practiced today. Speaking with her offered a way to come back to the foundations of our approach through the lens of her own lived path into existential work.

Our dialogue travelled widely.

From the tensions and contradictions that characterise human existence to liberty and restriction, togetherness and solitude, accountability for ourselves and, at times, unavoidably, for others.

We explored the question of why existential therapy feels as particularly significant in a current fast-paced, anxiety-driven, and technology-dominated world.

An important part of our conversation was on Structural Existential Analysis (SEA) and the book on that Claire co-authored with Emmy van Deurzen: a structured way of exploring life as it is lived, through five interwoven dimensions:

Space, Time, Emotion & Value, Paradox and Purpose

We also spent time with Claire’s longstanding clinical and research work on motherhood, as a profound, ambiguous, identity-shaping experience — one marked by freedom and boundaries, care and responsibility, possibility and constraint.

And inevitably we arrived at the contemporary themes of human connection in an age of technology and AI. What shifts and what remains essential in the therapeutic encounter and beyond the therapy room.

Regardless of whether you’re a psychologist, therapist, researcher, or just someone interested in understanding how we interpret our experiences, I encourage you to engage with this insightful, meaningful conversation featuring a prominent figure in contemporary existential therapy.

0:00 – Why this series? Introducing the project & Claire

1:56 – Claire’s path into existential therapy (childhood death experiments, family philosophy, choosing psychology)

8:16 – NSPC as the “home of existential training” & what existential training feels like

13:10 – Structure, regulation & uncertainty: freedom within limits in professional practice

16:48 – Motherhood, feminism & giving voice to mothers’ existential crises

20:28 – Bound and free: the paradox of motherhood and responsibility for another life

23:09 – Structural Existential Analysis (SEA): researching life with four dimensions, time, paradox, emotion & purpose

29:12 – Clients turning to AI chatbots: human contact, disconnection & the tension of technology

34:55 – Existential therapy today: FETE, public discourse & why it’s “in its ascendancy”

39:41 – Who existential training is for & Claire’s advice on approaching philosophy and the journey

About Dr.Claire Arnold-Baker

Claire Arnold-Baker is Principal of the New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling (NSPC) in London, and also the Course Leader for the DCPsych Programme. She is UKCP-registered existential psychotherapist, HCPC-registered Counselling Psychologist, supervisor, trainer, lecturer and Chair of the Federation for Existential Therapy in Europe (FETE).

🔗 Links:

https://nspc.org.uk/faculty/nspc-faculty/faculty-member/262/claire-arnold-baker/

https://www.counselling-directory.org.uk/counsellors/claire-arnold-baker

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Books-Claire-Arnold-Baker/s?rh=n%3A266239%2Cp_27%3AClaire%2BArnold-Baker

https://x.com/DrClaireAB

Federation for Existential Therapy in Europe

https://existentialtherapies.org

Existential Movement

https://www.existentialmovement.world

About the Host:

Max Karlin - psychologist, counsellor, and trainee existential therapist at the New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling, London.

https://linktr.ee/maxkarlin

https://maxkarlin.com