Abstract

The good life, or a flourishing life, is a vision of how people ought to best live their lives. Though this vision is vital to the conduct of psychotherapy, it is generally overlooked, and thus unexamined. The therapist's vision of the good life for the client guides his or her implicit and explicit interventions. Despite this, there is relatively little discussion about this vital topic, and relatively little training into the various approaches to the good life. In this thesis, I argue that this relative lack of examination and training is due to the lack of perceived options regarding conceptions of the good life. As I will show, the seeming diversity of psychotherapy theories is actually uniformly underlain with individualism. I will address this lack of diversity by revealing how abstractionism is the ontology that underlies individualism in order to present a competitor. Ontological relationality is presented as an alternative ontological framework for visions of the good life, along with practical applications and therapeutic implications.

Degree

College and Department

Family, Home, and Social Sciences; Psychology

Rights

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