Introduction: the phenomenological and anthropoanalytical humanistic approach considers illness as an answer to the search for meaning of suffering required by life. The aim of the therapeutic intervention deriving from this perspective is to help who is suffering to recognize his condition and to become aware of the possibility of changing. The Sein zum Tode (Being toward death), announced by the existential condition, can inhibit a recognizable trait of the psychopathological condition: the ability to think about the future. The treatment based on a person-centered approach develops as a relational proposal in which the encounter between patient and therapy is directed towards the construction of meanings that can be seen as praxis and poiesis – from work to art. The aim is to give to the patient a new shape concerning his representation of the future and of his biography. This article is focused on a pilot research realized within a territorial psychiatric facility which adopts this line of intervention personalizing it for each patient with the intent to improve the quality and the perception of life for future planning. Participants and inclusion/exclusion criteria: participants are guests of the psychiatric facility and are recruited on a voluntary basis. Seriously ill patients at a somatic level and patients that were not able to carry on a conversation and to tolerate the administration of the testing instruments were excluded. Materials and methods: the study, based on a non-random sampling method (not-RTS) is a descriptive-observational, longitudinal, quantitative and qualitative research. The observation period was eighteen months. Results: a change in the quality of life perception of the patients and an improvement of pathological symptoms was found; particularly relevant is the progress of the terms used by the guests to describe their present existential condition compared to the past one. A relation between the period of stay/frequentation of the facility and death representation was highlighted. Conclusions: a developmental capacity of becoming aware of individual history and an optimistic vision of the future are highlighted. KEYWORDS Humanistic psychiatry, existential condition, death, pathology, health