‘One of the most profound encounters of my life’: could existential therapist Emmy van Deurzen change the way you think?

Her philosophical approach to therapy has become a global phenomenon, and inspired a new book. Could a session with her change Sophie McBain’s life?The existential therapist Emmy van Deurzen moved to the UK inspired by RD Laing, the Scottish anti-psychiatrist who said insanity is a “perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world”. It was 1977 and Van Deurzen, who is Dutch and had studied philosophy and psychology in France, found work with the Arbours Association in London, a therapeutic community based on Laing’s ideas, in which people in crisis, psychiatrists and therapists lived together as equals. It was a rude awakening.Arbours aimed to create space for people to “explore their madness”. “Now that was a very interesting idea,” Van Duerzen says, “but in practice it meant that people self-medicated, with alcohol and pot, and it was not a happy situation.” The residents were often very depressed or psychotic, and it was common to be woken up at ni