Viktor Emil Frankl

The feeling of meaninglessness: A challenge to psychotherapy

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Logos, Paradox, and the Search for Meaning

In a paper presented to the Second World Congress of Logotherapy, Alfried A. Laengle came up with the contention that “by its main term and program, logotherapy is the first cognitive psychotherapy.” In fact, when logotherapy was launched in the late 1920s, the idea behind it was to overcome so-called psychologism, which represents one among the various outgrowths of reductionism, namely, the tendency to interpret a psychological phenomenon by “reducing” it, that is, tracing it back to its alleged emotional origin, thereby totally neglecting the question of its rational validity. As early as in 1925, I cautioned against this one-sided approach by pointing out (Frankl, 1925) that renouncing a priori any dispute of the patient’s Weltanschauung on rational grounds results in giving away one of the most powerful weapons within our therapeutic armamentarium. Anyway, the very name coined to denote the new approach, namely, logotherapy, was intended to signify the shifting emphasis from the affective to the cognitive aspects of human behavior.

Comment On Bulka's Article

The patient had been admitted to the Neuropsychiatric Department of the Poliklinik Hospital of Vienna and was shown to me by my staff in order to discuss the question of diagnosis and therapy. She not only was mentally disturbed and felt &dquo;confused,&dquo; but also was hallucinating. Immediate therapeutic intervention was required, and in view of the obviously somatogenic origin of the psychological symptomatology, I ordered specific pharmacotherapy. But I also wanted to say a few words to her, not as the Head of the Neuropsychiatric Department, but rather as a human being to another human being. As any other member of the medical profession would have done in such a case, I told her that the prognosis was good-a prediction that eventually proved correct. So I gave my patient (who understandably was in utmost despair) some hope-again something that any medical doctor would have felt compelled to do in my situation. But in addition to my efforts to enhance her hope for recovery and restore her capacity to work, I interspersed some remarks aimed at reducing her tendency to what is called &dquo;hyper-reflection&dquo; in logotherapy. In a case like that of Anna’s, hyper-reflection would have caused a psychogenic depression on top of the somatogenic condition. That is why I urged her &dquo;not to brood over herself, not to be concerned&dquo; with the hallucinations haunting her, &dquo;not to watch them, not to fight them.&dquo; Now, if anyone labels as authoritarian the fact that a medical doctor recommends to his patients to the best of his knowledge and for the sake of their recovery what they should do or should not do, I gladly take the blame. And if anyone labels it &dquo;authoritarian&dquo; if a medical doctor truthfully tells the patient that the prognosis is good, I gladly take the

La intención paradójica

La logoterapia, propuesta por Victor Frankl, nace del seno de las terapias humanistas. Se centra en la busqueda del sentido de la existencia humana (Frankl, 1999). Enfoca aspectos como el humor, el sentido de la vida, el sentimiento de libertad, etc. que segun Frankl (1999), son inherentes a la esencia humana que deben ponerse al servicio de la terapia. La logoterapia utiliza algunas tecnicas terapeuticas como la intencion paradojica y la derreflexion. En este ensayo se explica la tecnica intencion paradojica, que por medio de la paradoja y el humor intenta mitigar el sufrimiento que provocan ciertas conductas patologicas.

Science, Man and Meaning

Specialised researchers and clinicians are often confronted with people who ask: Where is that, which we would like to call a holistic medicine? Where is the unity of humanness to be seen? These people are accustomed to deploring the fact that scientists are increasingly specialised. We might define a specialist as someone who no longer sees the forest of reality for the trees of facts. However, we cannot dismiss the specialists. In an age such as ours, an age of information explosion, scientific research is not possible without teamwork and teamwork in turn is not possible without the specialists. However, I do not think that the danger really lies in increasing specialisation but rather in generalisation. Researchers sometimes produce overgeneralised conclusions and consequently overgeneralised statements.

Reply to Rollo May

In his article, &dquo;Is Logotherapy Authoritarian?&dquo; Bulka (1978) presented what he claimed to be a case example of Viktor Frankl’s psychotherapy method. In my response to the article (1978), I accepted Bulka’s representation of the case as psychotherapy. I was deceived. Upon reading Frankl’s (1978) comment on Bulka’s article, I learned that it was a case of organic brain disease &dquo;cured&dquo; by drug therapy, not psychotherapy. I must protest this misrepresentation. It was pointless for the three of us to discuss the issue of responsibility in psychotherapy in regard to what turns out not to be a psychotherapeutic case at all. If indeed the patient