Will and Desire in Existential Psychoanalysis: Rethinking Willpower in Therapy
A Reflection on Michael Guy Thompson’s Essays in Existential Psychoanalysis
Most of us have tried to change something about ourselves through sheer effort. We make a plan, set a rule, tighten our grip, and then watch ourselves do the very thing we swore we would not do.
It is easy to call this “a lack of willpower.” It is also easy to feel ashamed when willpower does not deliver.
In Chapter 4 of Michael Guy Thompson’s Essays in Existential Psychoanalysis, the question becomes more interesting, and more clinically useful. When we look closely at will and desire in existential psychoanalysis, “the will” is not simply the engine of change. Often it is the strategy we use to keep desire contained, especially when desire feels risky
The familiar proverb, and the hidden question behind it
“Where there is a will there is a way” sounds comforting. It suggests that a strong enough inner force can override fear, conflict, and ambivalence.
Thompson opens the chapter by quietly challenging that assumption. The proverb is not exactly wrong, but it hides a deeper question: what do we mean when we say “will” in the first place?
Because in actual human life, will is rarely just a clean, rational lever. It carries mood, morality, and history. It can sound like duty. It can sound like threat. It can also sound like a parent’s voice that we have learned to speak to ourselves with.
For people seeking therapy, this matters. Many forms of suffering come with an exhausting internal dialogue: I should be different. I need to be better. I have to get control.
Will as virtue, will as “free choice,” and why this history still matters
Part of Thompson’s point is that our modern idea of will did not appear out of nowhere. The “will” has a long philosophical lineage, and it often arrives dressed in moral language.
In very broad strokes, classical ethics tends to link the will to character formation and self-mastery. Religious philosophy tends to link the will to responsibility, temptation, and virtue. Even if we have never read Aristotle or Augustine, many of us have inherited a worldview where willpower is treated as proof of goodness, and failure of will is treated as a personal flaw.
In therapy, those inherited meanings show up as guilt and self-judgment. People do not simply want to change. They often feel they must change in order to deserve care, belonging, or respect.
Existential psychoanalysis does not dismiss responsibility. But it is suspicious of the way “responsibility” becomes a weapon turned inward.
Schopenhauer, and the will we cannot simply command
Thompson turns to Schopenhauer for a remark that lands with a kind of cold clarity: “You can do as you will, but you cannot will as you will.”
It is a short sentence, but it reorganizes the problem. We may be able to force certain behaviors, at least for a while. But we cannot simply choose what we want, or stop wanting what we want, by issuing ourselves a command.
Schopenhauer’s view pushes the will down below the level of conscious intention. The will becomes something more like an underlying drive, closer to desire than to “decision.” If that is true, then “willpower” is not the same as the will. It is more like an executive function, a manager that tries to direct what is already moving.
Clinically, this is one reason a person can “know better” and still repeat the pattern. The knowledge is real. The intention is real. But desire is also real, and it often carries more force than our conscious plans.
Nietzsche and the hunger for a fuller life
Thompson also brings in Nietzsche, especially the riddle of “will to power.” In pop culture, this phrase can sound like domination. But Nietzsche’s point is often closer to vitality than tyranny.
If Schopenhauer emphasizes the way desire operates beneath the self’s proud claims, Nietzsche emphasizes the way desire moves toward intensity, toward aliveness, toward a more fully lived existence.
In therapy, this can be a helpful reframe. Sometimes the “problem behavior” is not merely a failure of control. Sometimes it is a distorted attempt to recover feeling, to break through numbness, to escape the flatness of life lived only through duty.
That does not make every desire wise. But it does remind us that desire is often the place where the person is trying to live.
Why “trying harder” can work, and why it often does not
Modern psychotherapy has many approaches that treat change as a function of volition. In the best versions, this is not simplistic. It can be deeply compassionate. It helps people identify patterns, practice skills, and build stability.
It can also work, especially when someone needs structure, containment, or immediate relief.
Thompson’s critique is not that volition is useless. It is that volition becomes misleading when it is treated as the core of psychic change. A willpower model tends to imagine the self as a commander standing above desire.
Existential psychoanalysis leans in a different direction. It asks: what if the “commander” is itself part of the conflict? What if the manager is not neutral, but frightened? What if “control” is sometimes the price we pay to avoid risk?
This is one reason desire and change are so closely linked. Desire almost always implies exposure. It implies the possibility of disappointment. It implies that we cannot fully guarantee the outcome.
Laing, Sartre, and the problem of changing because you “should”
Thompson draws on R.D. Laing to make a sharp clinical observation: people often attempt change because they “should,” or because they “need to,” but change becomes durable when they genuinely want it.
Laing’s view, as Thompson presents it, is that our selfhood is located in desire rather than in ego or character traits. In that frame, the will has a limited role, it can synthesize, and it can repress.
This matters in the clinic because “the will” is frequently recruited as a defense.
A clear example in the chapter is addiction, but the point extends beyond substances. Many people try to force themselves out of a pattern using an internal voice of obligation, a kind of “introjected parent” that demands compliance. The person fights their desire while also protecting it. They go back and forth, and the struggle becomes a way of life.
Thompson’s deeper point is not moral judgment. It is existential. When we are terrified of the pain that desire brings, we will do almost anything to silence it.
When the will suppresses the pain of desire
Near the end of the chapter, Thompson offers a line that is easy to recognize if you have ever been stuck in a high-functioning version of suffering.
Sometimes the will is what remains when desire has gone quiet. A person can keep going, keep performing, keep achieving, all while feeling that something essential has been buried.
In that condition, willpower can look impressive from the outside. It can lead to success. It can also produce a life that feels strangely empty.
Thompson notes another uncomfortable truth: you do not always need a substance to reduce anxiety. The will can do it. You can tighten down, numb out, and survive. The cost is that desire, which often requires risk, gets treated as dangerous.
When will and desire are at cross purposes, will often wins, at least in the short run. But the victory is rarely satisfying.
And there is a further twist: the will frequently resists change. If the will has become the tool we use to stay safe, it is not eager to surrender its job.
Conclusion
One of Thompson’s most clinically useful suggestions in Chapter 4 is that meaningful change often arrives indirectly. Genuine change comes when we want to change, not because we should, and not because we are trying to force ourselves into compliance.
The function of therapy, in this view, is not to shout louder instructions at the self. It is to use reflection, a form of will, to examine why we repeatedly obstruct our own desire, and to put those defenses into question. We cannot simply will ourselves to drop our defenses, but sustained inquiry can loosen what once seemed rigid.
If you find yourself stuck between duty and desire, or caught in cycles of self-control followed by collapse, this is the kind of work we explore in depth at Free Association Clinic through both psychoanalytic therapy and existential therapy. Clinicians in training who want to engage these questions clinically can also learn more about our training program. To begin a conversation, you can contact Free Association Clinic.
James Norwood, PsyD
Associate Director, New School for Existential Psychoanalysis (https://www.freeassociation.us)
Clinical Director, The Free Association Clinic for Existential Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis (https://www.freeassociationclinic.com)
Founder/CEO, inpersontherapy.com (https://inpersontherapy.com)
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Laing, R. D. (1979). Personal communication.
Nietzsche, F. (2001). Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (J. Norman, Trans.). Cambridge University Press.
Schopenhauer, A. (2012). The World as Will and Representation (E. F. J. Payne, Trans.). Dover Publications.
Thompson, M. G. (1994). The Truth About Freud’s Technique: The Encounter With the Real. New York University Press.
Thompson, M. G. (2020). Existential psychoanalysis: The role of freedom in the clinical encounter. In A. Govrin & J. Mills (Eds.), Innovations in Psychoanalysis: Originality, Development, Progress. Routledge.
Thompson, M. G. (2024). Essays in Existential Psychoanalysis: On the Primacy of Authenticity. Routledge.