Logotherapy

Viktor Frankl

• A longtime prisoner in bestial concentration camps

• His father, mother, brother, and his wife died in

camps or were sent to the gas ovens

• Excepting for his sister, his entire family perished

in these camps
 Viktor Frankl

• How could he—every possession lost, every value

destroyed, suffering from hunger, cold and
brutality, hourly expecting extermination—how
could he find life worth preserving?

• A psychiatrist who personally has faced such

extremity is a psychiatrist worth listening to.
 Viktor Frankl

• He, if anyone, should be able to view our human

condition wisely and with compassion.

• Dr. Frankl's words have a profoundly honest ring, for

they rest on experiences too deep for deception.

• He worked as a Medical Faculty of the University of

Vienna, several logo therapy clinics came from his work.
He also had a Neurological Policlinic in Vienna
 Viktor Frankl

• Viktor Frankl's approach to theory and therapy was

compared with the work of his predecessor,
Sigmund Freud.

• Both physicians

• Concern themselves primarily with the nature and

cure of neuroses.
 Viktor Frankl

• Freud finds the root of these distressing disorders in

the anxiety caused by conflicting and unconscious
motives
• Frankl distinguishes several forms of neurosis, and
traces some of them to the failure of the sufferer to
find meaning and a sense of responsibility in his
existence.
• Freud stresses frustration in the sexual life; Frankl,
frustration in the "will-to-meaning."
 Viktor Frankl

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_Cey-UZX-E

• He learns what a human being does when he

suddenly realizes he has "nothing to lose except his
so ridiculously naked life."
 Viktor Frankl

• While in the camp he describes that first comes a cold

detached curiosity concerning one's fate.
• Then comes strategies to preserve the remnants of
one's life, though the chances of surviving are slight.
• Hunger, humiliation, fear and deep anger at injustice
are rendered tolerable by closely guarded images of
beloved persons, by religion, by a grim sense of
humor, and even by glimpses of the healing beauties of
nature—a tree or a sunset.
 Viktor Frankl

• But these moments of comfort do not establish the

will to live unless they help the prisoner make
larger sense out of his apparently senseless
suffering

• The central theme of existentialism: to live is to

suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the
suffering.
 Viktor Frankl

• Frankl is fond of quoting Nietzsche, "He who has a

why to live can bear with almost any how.“

• In the concentration camp every circumstance

conspires to make the prisoner lose his hold.
• All the familiar goals in life are snatched away.
• What alone remains is "the last of human
freedoms"—the ability to "choose one's attitude
in a given set of circumstances."
 Logotherapy

• Logotherapy focuses on the future

• On the meanings to be fulfilled by the patient in his

future

• In comparison with psychoanalysis, this method

less retrospective
 Logotherapy

• Logotherapy defocuses all the vicious-circle

formations and feedback mechanisms which play
such a great role in the development of neuroses.

• The typical self-centeredness of the neurotic is

broken up instead of being continually fostered and
reinforced
 Logotherapy

• The patient is actually confronted with and

reoriented toward the meaning of his life.

• And to make him aware of this meaning can

contribute much to his ability to overcome his
neurosis.
 Logotherapy

• Why the name Logotherapy?

• Logos is a Greek word which denotes "meaning."

• Logotherapy, or, as it has been called by some ,

"The Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy,"
focuses on the meaning of human existence as well
as on man's search for such a meaning.
 Logotherapy

• According to logotherapy, this striving to find a

meaning in one's life is the primary motivational force
in man.

• Frankl stresses on a will to meaning in contrast to the

pleasure principle (or, the will to pleasure) on which
Freudian psychoanalysis is centered as well or to the
will to power on which Adlerian psychology, using the
term "striving for superiority," is focused
 Logotherapy – The Will to
Meaning
• Man's search for meaning is the primary motivation in
his life and not a "secondary rationalization" of
instinctual drives

• This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and

can be fulfilled by him alone

• Only then does it achieve a significance which will

satisfy his own will to meaning.
 Logotherapy – Existential
Frustration
• Man's will to meaning can also be frustrated

• The term "existential" may be used in three ways:

to refer to (1) existence itself, i.e., the specifically
human mode of being; (2) the meaning of
existence; and (3) the striving to find a concrete
meaning in personal existence, that is to say, the
will to meaning
 Logotherapy – Existential
Frustration
• Existential frustration can also result in neuroses.

• For this type of neuroses, logotherapy has coined

the term "noogenic neuroses" in contrast to
neuroses in the traditional sense of the word, i.e.,
psychogenic neuroses
 Logotherapy – Existential
Frustration
• Noogenic neuroses have their origin not in the
psychological but rather in the "noological" (from
the Greek noos meaning mind) dimension of
human existence.

• This is another logotherapeutic term which denotes

anything pertaining to the specifically human
dimension
 Logotherapy – Noogenic
neuroses
• Noogenic neuroses do not emerge from conflicts
between drives and instincts but rather from
existential problems

• Among such problems, the frustration of the will to

meaning plays a large role.
 Logotherapy – Noogenic
neuroses
• Not every conflict is necessarily neurotic; some
amount of conflict is normal and healthy
• In a similar sense suffering is not always a
pathological phenomenon
• Rather than being a symptom of neurosis, suffering
may well be a human achievement, especially if the
suffering grows out of existential frustration.
 Logotherapy – Noogenic
neuroses
• A man's concern, even his despair, over the
worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but
by no means a mental disease

• It may well be that interpreting the first in terms of

the latter motivates a doctor to bury his patient's
existential despair under a heap of tranquilizing
drugs.
 Logotherapy – Noogenic
neuroses
• It is his task, rather, to pilot the patient through his
existential crises of growth and development.

• Logotherapy regards its assignment as that of

assisting the patient to find meaning in his life.
• Logotherapy makes him aware of the hidden logos
of his existence, it is an analytical process
 Logotherapy – Noogenic
neuroses
• Any analysis, however, even when it refrains from
including the noological dimension in its
therapeutic process, tries to make the patient aware
of what he actually longs for in the depth of his
being
 Logotherapy – Noogenic
neuroses
• Logotherapy deviates from psychoanalysis in so far
as
• It considers man a being whose main concern consists in
fulfilling a meaning,
• Rather than in the mere gratification and satisfaction of
drives and instincts, or
• In merely reconciling the conflicting claims of id, ego
and superego, or in the mere adaptation and adjustment
to society and environment
 Logotherapy – Noo-Dynamics

• Man's search for meaning may arouse inner tension

rather than inner equilibrium.

• such tension is an indispensable prerequisite of

mental health
 Logotherapy – Noo-Dynamics

• There is nothing in the world, that would so

effectively help one to survive even the worst
conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning
in one's life.

• There is much wisdom in the words of Nietzsche:

"He who has a why to live for can bear almost any
how."
 Logotherapy – Noo-Dynamics

• In the Nazi concentration camps, one could have

witnessed that those who knew that there was a task
waiting for them to fulfill were most apt to survive

• Same conclusion has since been reached by other

authors of books on concentration camps, and also by
psychiatric investigations into Japanese, North
Korean and North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war
camps.
 Logotherapy – Noo-Dynamics

• When VF was taken to the concentration camp of

Auschwitz, a manuscript of his ready for
publication was confiscated.
• Certainly, his deep desire to write this manuscript
anew helped him to survive the rigors of the camps
he was in
 Logotherapy – Noo-Dynamics

• “ For instance, when in a camp in Bavaria I fell ill

with typhus fever,
• I jotted down on little scraps of paper many notes
intended to enable me to rewrite the manuscript,
should I live to the day of liberation.
• I am sure that this reconstruction of my lost
manuscript in the dark barracks of a Bavarian
concentration camp assisted me in overcoming the
danger of cardiovascular collapse”
 Logotherapy – Noo-Dynamics

• Mental health is based on a certain degree of

tension

• The tension between what one has already

achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, or

• The gap between what one is and what one should

become
 Logotherapy – Noo-Dynamics

• Such a tension is inherent in the human being and

therefore is indispensable to mental well-being.

• One should not, be hesitant about challenging man

with a potential meaning for him to fulfill
 Logotherapy – Noo-Dynamics

• It is only thus that we evoke his will to meaning

from its state of latency.

• VF considered it a dangerous misconception of

mental hygiene to assume that what man needs in
the first place is equilibrium or, as it is called in
biology, "homeostasis," i.e., a tensionless state.
 Logotherapy – Noo-Dynamics

• What man actually needs is not a tensionless state

but rather the striving and struggling for a
worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.

• What he needs is not the discharge of tension at

any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting
to be fulfilled by him.
 Logotherapy – Noo-Dynamics

• What man needs is not homeostasis but what

Frankl call "noo-dynamics," i.e.,

• The existential dynamics in a polar field of tension

where one pole is represented by a meaning that is
to be fulfilled and the other pole by the man who
has to fulfill it
 Logotherapy – Noo-Dynamics

• And one should not think that this holds true only for
normal conditions;

• In neurotic individuals, it is even more valid.

• If architects want to strengthen a decrepit (broken)

arch, they increase the load which is laid upon it, for
thereby the parts are joined more firmly together
 Logotherapy – Noo-Dynamics

• So if therapists wish to foster their patients' mental

health, they should not be afraid to create a sound
amount of tension through a reorientation toward
the meaning of one's life
 Logotherapy – Noo-Dynamics

• Having shown the beneficial impact of meaning

orientation, VF turns to the detrimental influence of
that feeling of which so many patients complain
today, namely, the feeling of the total and
ultimate meaninglessness of their lives
 Logotherapy – Noo-Dynamics

• They lack the awareness of a meaning worth living

for.

• They are haunted by the experience of their inner

emptiness, a void within themselves; they are
caught in that situation which VF has called the
"existential vacuum."
 Logotherapy – The Existential
Vacuum
• The existential vacuum manifests itself mainly in a
state of boredom

• In actual fact, boredom is now causing, and

certainly bringing to psychiatrists, more problems
to solve than distress.
 Logotherapy – The Existential
Vacuum
• "Sunday neurosis,"

• that kind of depression which afflicts people who

become aware of the lack of content in their lives
when the rush of the busy week is over and the
void within themselves becomes manifest
 Logotherapy – The Existential
Vacuum
• Widespread phenomena as depression, aggression
and addiction are not understandable unless we
recognize the existential vacuum underlying them.

• This is also true of the crises of pensioners and

aging people
 Logotherapy – The Meaning of
Life
• The meaning of life usually differs from man to
man, from day to day and from hour to hour.

• What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life

in general but rather the specific meaning of a
person's life at a given moment
Logotherapy – The Meaning of
Suffering
• Another way of finding a meaning in life is by
suffering

• We may also find meaning in life even when

confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a
fate that cannot be changed.
 Logotherapy – The Meaning of
Suffering
• For what then matters is to bear witness to the
uniquely human potential at its best, which is to
transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn
one's predicament into a human achievement

• When we are no longer able to change a situation

— just think of an incurable disease such as
inoperable cancer —we are challenged to change
ourselves.
Logotherapy – The Meaning of
Suffering
• In no way is suffering necessary to find meaning.

• VF only insisted that meaning is possible even in

spite of suffering—provided, certainly, that the
suffering is unavoidable.
 Logotherapy – The Meaning of
Suffering
• In accepting this challenge to suffer bravely, life
has a meaning up to the last moment, and it retains
this meaning literally to the end.

• life's meaning is an unconditional one, for it even

includes the potential meaning of unavoidable
suffering.