Logotherapy
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After Freud's psychoanalysis and Adler's individual psychology, Logotherapy is the "third Viennese school of psychoanalysis" as developed by neurologist and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl. It is a type of Existential Analysis that focuses on a "will to meaning" as opposed to Adler's doctrine of "will to power" or Freud's of "will to pleasure". A short introduction to this system is introduced in Frankl's most famous book, "Man's Search for Meaning", in which he outlines how his theories helped him to survive his Holocaust experience. His reason to live was to bring logotherapy to the world, and so he used the opportunity to observe up-close the will to live and the dignity of suffering and death amid the most extreme conditions. In this situation, he was able to further develop his ideas with concrete examples. Later, after surviving the war, Frankl was able to help many to realize that they have the ability to overcome any hardship when they find the meaning of their own particular situation.
es:Logoterapia he:לוגותרפיה fi:Logoterapia
External Links
- Logotherapy Institute at Vienna University (http://logotherapy.univie.ac.at/e/indexe.html)
Template:Psych-stub At first glance, Viktor Frankl’s philosophy of Logotherapy would seem a rather pessimistic response to a life marred by the horrors of the Holocaust. After reviewing the basic tenets of his philosophy, however, one can see that he firmly believes in the triumph of the human being. His very first tenet speaks volumes of his belief in endurance, but not just for the sake of survival. He believes that all life has meaning, and that meaning should motivate humans to live and discover that meaning.
The human spirit is referred to in the third tenet and several of the assumptions of Logotherapy, but it should be noted that the use of the term spirit is not “spiritual” or “religious.” In Frankl’s view, the spirit is the will of the human being. Frankl espoused that the “spirit” or “will” of a person affects the person’s health, capacity for love, imagination, and, yes, religious faith. The emphasis, however, is on the search for meaning, not the search for God nor any other supernatural existential being.
Frankl also noted the barriers to humanity’s quest for meaning in life. He warns against “…affluence, hedonism, [and] materialism…” in the search for meaning. The warning is that some may mistake one of the aforementioned as the true meaning of life. Those who have suffered losses due to circumstance, injustice, or man’s seemingly limitless inhumanity to his fellow man, can attest that the search for meaning is not halted by such losses. In some cases, as with Frankl himself, the losses are the very catalysts to reinvigorate the search for meaning.
The following list of tenets represents Frankl’s basic beliefs regarding the philosophy of Logotherapy:
Life has meaning under all circumstances, even the most miserable ones. Our main motivation for living is our will to find meaning in life. We have freedom to find meaning in what we do, and what we experience, or a least in the stand we take when faced with a situation of unchangeable suffering.