Logotherapy

Definition

Logotherapy (Gr. logos - word, reason, meaning; therapeia - healing, care) is a school of psychotherapy created by Viktor Frankl. Frankl described it as “therapy through meaning” - helping people discover the meaning of their own lives. The term first appeared in 1926; Frankl also used the name existential analysis (from 1939).

Three pillars

Frankl built logotherapy on three assumptions:

1. Freedom of will - a person is conditioned biologically, psychologically and socially, but not determined: he or she can always take a stand towards whatever happens.
2. Will to meaning - the basic human motivation is the striving to find and fulfil meaning.
3. Meaning of life - life has meaning under all circumstances, including suffering and death.

Image of the human being

Logotherapy sees the person as a unity of three dimensions: somatic, psychological and noetic (spiritual) - see dimensional ontology. The noetic dimension is the home of freedom, responsibility, conscience, humour and the capacity for self-transcendence. “Spiritual” does not mean religious here - although it does not exclude religion.

How meaning is found

Frankl pointed to three paths to meaning: what we give to the world (creative values), what we receive from it (experiential values), and the attitude we take towards suffering that cannot be avoided (attitudinal values).

Applications

Logotherapy is both a specific therapy (e.g. for anxiety disorders and obsessions - the techniques of paradoxical intention and dereflection) and a non-specific one - accompanying people through crises of meaning, grief, illness, addiction or burnout. Its ideas are used in psycho-oncology, palliative care, suicide prevention, education, pastoral care and counselling.

Logotherapy and other schools

Unlike psychoanalysis, it does not look primarily for causes in the past, but directs attention to what is to be done - to tasks and values in the future. Frankl did not reject the work of Freud and Adler, however: he believed that logotherapy complements psychotherapy with the spiritual dimension - see Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy.