"He is truly a philosopher and wordsmith and greatly revered in the field of
mental health and child welfare."
- Sharon Roszia, author, Seven Core Issues in Adoption and Permanency
With a style lauded early on and late as "poetic ... phenomenology” "almost dithyrambic," Harvest, JOURNAL FOR Jungian Studies, 1980, Randolph Severson, Ph.D., is an Existential Counselor and Analyst and writer, whose many books and other writings comprise an effort toward a “Roots Psychology,” an effort to get to the root of the things that matter—the things that matter at least to him: Soul, Family, Religion, Culture, History, Tradition, Ambition, Honor; and, to speak them in a manner true to his roots. Severson grew up in Oak Cliff, Dallas, with family roots deep in East Texas, coming over from Mississippi before the Revolution. That is, he speaks a language Biblical- and Blues-oriented, a blend of Shakespeare and the classics, the courtroom and the pulpit, the local politician thundering on the stump, and the Revival Preacher beneath the tent on a hot summer’s evening, beneath the stars, beside a gurgling creek whose fireflies, whippoorwills, and croaking frogs provide a background and a chorus. The touchstone of his work is the Existentialist idea that all truth is personal and situated — mediated by the ‘phantasm’ in Thomistic epistemology, that is, as Tillich said, by language and Culture — an idea given resonant depth and elegant scope in the Logos of the Soul psychology of Evangelos Christou, James Hillman and Rafael Lopez Pedraza.
About Spiritual Existential Counseling
'In an age when those who attend to the suffering of others are squeezed between insurance company mandates for managed care and the increasing use of drugs for all manner of suffering, Dr. Severson's book creates a space where healers and their patients can pause, take a deep breath, engage and be engaged by the ordinary miracles at the heart of a truly human encounter. Reading this book is itself an unfolding of that mystery where author and reader meet each other as companions. Given the author's rich, evocative and loving celebration of language, companion is the apt word. Read this book and be nourished by the bread of words that feed the spirit.' Robert D. Romanyshyn, Ph.D. author, Psychological Life: from Science to Metaphor
... to express the sublime in the pedestrian - that only the knight of faith can do.
Soren Kierkegaard