PARADIGM (cont): One question that often arises is: Why is Existential psychology called "existential"? The simple explanation is that it focuses on existence in the here and now. Moment by moment, a person is free to choose what he or she will do and be. The most important part of a person is not predicted by genetic inheritance, or how that person has been nurtured or otherwise, but how the person interprets, reacts or responds to the world at a given instant, and the kinds of choices that are made next.

Existential and humanistic psychologies reject the notion that biological or inherited factors are the most important aspects (though such factors have some influence on a person's behaviour). Existential-humanistic thinking rejects the idea that the most important factor in understanding a person is early life experience.