Working with oneself
As in every approach, the therapist works with their own person. Frankl understood logotherapy as widening the boundaries of one's own personality in order to illuminate the sphere of meaning in another's life. The logotherapist therefore needs - at least provisional - answers to questions such as:
- What values give order to my life? What do I live for?
- How do I use my freedom? How does my conscience work?
- What meaning does the work of helping have for me?
Someone who avoids, for example, thinking about death will find it harder to help a patient with it. We walk the path to which we invite others.
Patients bring philosophy
To the charge that he introduced philosophy into therapy, Frankl replied: it is the patients who ask philosophical questions - and answer them themselves. The therapist is open to them. Frankl himself, a doctor of philosophy, said he did not want to be the best philosopher among doctors or the best doctor among philosophers, but simply a good doctor.
Neither guru nor mirror
The logotherapist does not impose their own values, but has their credo - the conviction that there is more in a person than they themselves can see. In the humanistic-existential tradition the therapist may share their own experience (“it moves me that you are thinking of these people”) - the gentlest way of touching the patient's values.
Frankl's words
Frankl hoped that his work would be continued by “independent, inventive, innovative and creative spirits”. Logotherapy makes people aware of their responsibility - and this applies equally to logotherapists themselves.
Sources
V. E. Frankl, The Will to Meaning; Recollections. An Autobiography (Was nicht in meinen Büchern steht); I. D. Yalom, Existential Psychotherapy.