Logotherapy

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Logotherapy was developed by neurologist and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl. It is considered the "third Viennese school of psychotherapy"[1] after Freud's psychoanalysis and Adler's individual psychology. It is a type of existentialist analysis that focuses on a will to meaning as opposed to Adler's Nietzschian doctrine of "will to power" or Freud's "will to pleasure."

Contents

[edit] Basic principles

The following list of tenets represents Frankl's basic principles 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 at least in the stand we take when faced with a situation of unchangeable suffering.

The human spirit is referred to in 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. The emphasis, therefore, is on the search for meaning, not the search for God or any other supernatural 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.

[edit] Frankl's Holocaust experience

A short introduction to this system is given 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 and how that experience further developed and reinforced his theories.

[edit] James Charles Crumbaugh

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James Charles Crumbaugh (1912 - 2005), American psychologist and parapsychologist born in Terrell, Texas, was also very influential in cultivation of Logotherapy in the realm of alcoholism. Educated at Baylor University (B.A., 1935), Southern Methodist University (M.A., 1938), and the University of Texas (Ph.D., 1953).

During World War II he served as an assistant psychologist in the U.S. Army Air Force Aviation Cadet Classification Program (1941-45). After the war he became an instructor in psychology at Memphis State University, a post he held while finishing his doctorate (1947-56). He served in the Veterans Administration Post-Doctoral Training Program in Clinical Psychology (1956-57); as chairman of the Department of Psychology, MacMurray College, Jacksonville, Illinois (1957-59), and as research director of the Bradley Center, Columbus, Georgia (1959-64). In 1964 he became a staff psychologist at the VA Hospital at Gulfport, Mississippi.

Crumbaugh used Logotherapy to develop a recovery system for alcoholics and went on to write several books on the subject including "Logotherapy: New Help For Problem Drinkers" and "Everything To Gain."

[edit] References

  1. ^ Gordon W. Allport, from the Preface to Man's Search for Meaning, p. xiv

[edit] Bibliography

Viktor, Frankl. Man's Search for Meaning, Preface by Gordon W. Allport.  Crumbaugh, James C. Logotherapy: New Help for Problem Drinkers. Burnham, Inc. (June 1979)

[edit] External links