EMMY VAN DEURZEN on Existential Freedom, Finding Meaning & the Wonder of Natural World
Emmy van Deurzen has spent five decades mapping the architecture of human existence. Born in the Netherlands in the shadow of the Second World War and trained in the radical psychiatric wards of France, she eventually founded the New School of Psychotherapy and Counseling to challenge the medicalization of mental health. In this conversation, she reveals how our crises are not diseases to be cured, but profound philosophical crossroads demanding our attention. Drawing from her lifelong work and her new book, Beginning to Live: The Art of Existential Freedom, she shares how early encounters with loss and the fragility of life shaped her understanding of freedom. We explore the necessity of emotional intelligence in an increasingly automated world, the dangers of outsourcing our ethical thinking to AI, and how tapping into the multiverse's vast networks of consciousness can help us fully inhabit the dance of life.