Logotherapy is a method of psychotherapy created by the Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist Viktor Frankl. According to him, the search for meaning is the primary motivation in human life, and when this need is not fulfilled, human beings suffer. In order to describe the specificity of this form of suffering, and to distinguish it from other types of suffering, Frankl introduced several key concepts: “will to meaning”, “existential frustration”, “noogenic neurosis”, “noö-dynamics”, and “existential vacuum”.
To begin with, it is important to clarify that the term “existential” refers to human existence itself and to its meaning. The “will to meaning” is the most fundamental human need for life to be meaningful. And “noogenic neurosis” arises when this need is not satisfied. Unlike the traditional “psychogenic neurosis”, which results from conflicts between different psychic contents, noogenic neurosis originates in the specifically human, or noogenic, dimension of life.
Whereas in psychoanalysis conflict is understood as the clash between instinctual desires and conscious attitudes, in logotherapy it arises from the tension between where a person currently stands and where they feel they ought to be. In this sense, such conflict is not an expression of pathology, but of a healthy striving toward achievement.
“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.”
— Viktor Frankl
During World War II, Frankl was imprisoned in three concentration camps, where he lost his parents, his brother, and his pregnant wife. Before enduring the horrors of the camps, he had already written his book on logotherapy, but the manuscript was confiscated by the Nazis. One of the sources of strength that enabled him to survive the torture and deprivation was his determination to write the lost manuscript anew. What he experienced in the concentration camps only deepened his conviction in the fundamental principles of the therapeutic method he had created.
“There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, 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.’ I can see in these words a motto that holds true for any psychotherapy. In the Nazi concentration camps, one could have witnessed (and this was later confirmed by American psychiatrists both in Japan and Korea) that those who knew that there was a task waiting for them to fulfill were most apt to survive.”
— Viktor Frankl
According to logotherapy, the primary motivation in human life is the will to meaning. This motivation differs both from the pleasure principle and the drive for adaptation to the external world emphasized in psychoanalysis, and from the status drive or will to power central to Adlerian psychology. It refers instead to the basic human need to discover the unique meaning of one’s own life.
Logotherapy is one of the psychotherapeutic approaches toward which I feel a natural affinity and deep sense of connection. It is particularly well suited to people undergoing spiritual crises, because at their core these are crises of meaning, rooted in our relationship with something greater than ourselves.
*“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. 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. What man needs is not homeostasis but what I call ‘noö-dynamics,’ i.e., the spiritual dynamics in a polar field of tension where one pole is represented by a meaning to be fulfilled and the other pole by the man who must fulfill it. And one should not think that this holds true for normal conditions; in neurotic individuals, it is even more valid. If architects want to strengthen a decrepit arch, they increase the load that is laid upon it, for thereby the parts are joined more firmly together. So, if therapists wish to foster their patients’ mental health, they should not be afraid to increase that load through a reorientation toward the meaning of one’s life.”
Vikttor Frankl
All quotations above are taken from Viktor Frankl’s book “Man’s Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy,” which I wholeheartedly recommend.
Kameliya Hadzhiyska
Key concepts:
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Will to meaning: The most fundamental human need for life to be meaningful.
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Existential frustration: The state when the will to meaning is blocked.
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Noogenic neurosis: A neurosis originating from the “noogenic” (spiritual/meaning-based) dimension.
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Noö-dynamics: The healthy tension between what one has achieved and what one still ought to accomplish.
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Existential vacuum: The feeling of emptiness and meaninglessness.
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