Existentialism and psychoanalysis: from antiquity to postmodernism.

The term “existentialism” is so ambiguous that it has essentially become a meaningless word: it is associated with a number of disparate philosophical doctrines, social-political movements, and artistic sensibilities, that it becomes slippery to pin down its core philosophical tenets to such a degree that an undertaking of this kind would be no less rendered moot. We may nevertheless say that existentialism is a form of phenomenological philosophy that relies on certain reflective methods of studying human consciousness instantiated in the individual, society, and culture, which emerged as a popular general movement characteristic of 20 century European thought represented th