The fear of not existing is not a symptom to be managed. It is, according to a new thesis from Old Dominion University, one of a handful of concerns that philosophers have wrestled with for centuries and that art therapists, in author Anzhela Akbarova's view, too often leave outside the studio door. The paper names five such concerns: establishing an identity, searching for purpose in life, the fear of nonexistence, spirituality, and relationships with other people in the world.
The argument matters because art therapy sits at a crossroads of clinical practice and the making of meaning. If the concerns that drive people to make images are the same concerns that philosophers have pressed on for generations, then a therapy that ignores those questions may be treating the surface of a deeper unease. Akbarova's claim is normative rather than empirical: art therapists should acknowledge these human concerns in their theory and practice.
The evidence is a comparative analysis of philosophical literature. The thesis traces how thinkers across centuries have posed and tried to answer questions about identity, purpose, nonexistence, and spirituality, and it notes that some psychologists and arts therapists have already recognized these concerns exist. From that reading it draws its conclusion.
What the work does not do is test that conclusion. There is no empirical data, no survey of practitioners, no measurement of whether patients fare better when such concerns are named. The claim that some therapists already acknowledge these questions is an assertion within a literature review, not the result of a systematic count. The paper is a thesis hosted on an institutional repository, and thesis peer-review standards vary. Its conclusions are recommendations, not findings.
Still, the choice of concerns is worth sitting with. Identity, purpose, and the fear of nonexistence are not only therapeutic categories. They are the raw material of self-awareness itself, the places where a mind turns on its own existence and asks what it is and whether it will end.
That is where the thesis leaves an open door. If the questions a person brings to art therapy are the same questions that define existential consciousness, then the line between treating a patient and attending to the structure of a self becomes hard to draw. This paper does not settle where that line falls. It asks us to notice that it is there. Source: https://doi.org/10.25777/j2hb-na73