Frankl for the Woman and Man of Today
Frankl: The Contribution of Man’s Search for Meaning to our Time
Viktor E. Frankl is well known today as a psychiatrist and philosopher. Frankl was born into a Jewish family in Vienna on March 26, 1905, and died in the same city on September 2, 1997. His most widely published book is Man’s Search for Meaning, in which he narrates with impressive dramatization his stay in the Nazi concentration camps and describes the psychotherapy system he founded: Logotherapy.[1]
Index of contents: Frankl today
- A Life Full of Meaning
- Criticism that does not Consider the “Spiritual” within Psychology
- Logotherapy and Existential Analysis
- Frankl for the Woman and Man of Today
- An attitude towards Illness and Suffering
- Human Love and Sexuality
- Marriage
- Homosexuality
- Depression
- The Value of Life from the Beginning to the End
Summary of Franl’s Thought for today
In the painful experience of the years during the war, Frankl finds confirmation for the central idea of his thought: the “striving to find a meaning in one’s life” as the “primary motivational force in man.”[2] It was the hope that a task, an ideal, a beloved person which awaited prisoners outside the camp would help them to endure the ordeal. In the same way, this desire for meaning, this radical tension to find something or someone to give meaning to one’s life, proves essential for human beings in all circumstances.
The perspective in Man’s Search for Meaning, understood as a mission, as a personal response to that which existence itself hopes for us, will be present in the following considerations. Then we will examine Frankl’s own life; his distancing from the Freudian system; Logotherapy as a synthesis of his ideas; and, finally, some practical consequences and applications.
1. A Life Full of Meaning
The energy that Frankl maintained until the end of his life is striking. For example, at the age of sixty-seven, he took a flying course. He also practiced his favorite sport, mountaineering, until he was well into his seventies. Additionally, he never gave up scientific work. Further proof of the vitality he demonstrated occurred in 1995: after preparing what was to be a doctoral thesis on his ideas, we sent him a summary of the fundamental ideas and received an encouraging letter from him in response.
Frankl’s father, Gabriel, came from Südmähren and got his medical degree after some financial hardship. He did not work as a doctor but as a civil servant in the Ministry of Social Administration. Active in the cultural and political life of his town, his father was murdered in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Frankl’s mother was named Elsa Lion. She came from Prague and also died in a concentration camp.
We know little about Frankl’s childhood. Some indications reveal that it was not easy: in the difficult years of the First World War, he had to beg for bread more than once in the factories. Already during that period, nonetheless, his intellectual restlessness was noticeable. Since middle school he attended applied psychology courses at the People’s University. At the age of fifteen he was able to hypnotize; at sixteen he gave his first lecture on the meaning of life. From that point on, he recognized a responsibility which man should take in response to the questions posed by existence.
The young Frankl
During the interwar period, Frankl read numerous authors and formed his ideas of man and reality. He became an official of the Young Socialist Workers’ Association and, in 1924, became the administrative head of the Austrian Socialist Students during a period which he called the sociological temptation.
Frankl soon focused his interest on Freud’s psychology, first through his disciples and then through epistolary contact. At age nineteen, he had a text published on The mimicry of affirmation and negation, which he sent to Freud.
His next step was in the direction of the Individual Psychology of Adler, in whose journal he published his second paper in 1925, emphasizing meaning and values. The following year he presented a paper at the individual psychology congress in Düsseldorf, at which point he began to distance himself from Adler.
The influence of Rudolf Allers in Frankl
In 1927, Rudolf Allers, a Catholic psychiatrist, and Oswald Schwarz, founder of psychosomatic medicine and medical anthropology, influenced Frankl. Around this time, he became acquainted with the work of Max Scheler, whose work, along with the writings of Karl Jaspers, constitute the most important philosophical basis of Frankl’s ideas. Over the years, personal and direct contact with distinguished contemporary philosophers, such as Heidegger, Martin Buber, and Gabriel Marcel also transpired.
Shortly thereafter, Frankl was expelled from the Society of Individual Psychology. His interest became more practical, and he organized consultation centers for young people with psychological problems. While still a medical student, he worked in Otto Pötzl’s psychotherapy department. In 1930 he obtained his medical degree and in 1936 he specialized in Neurology and Psychiatry, already noticing in his patients the effectiveness of what would be the most original technique of his system – the paradoxical intention – the first description of which appeared in 1939. Frankl becomes director of a psychiatric ward at the Am Steinhof Hospital, known as the “suicidal women’s ward”.
The horrors of World War II
In March 1938, Austria became part of Hitler’s Greater Germany. A Jew, Frankl found himself in difficulty and was unable to leave the country. With the help of Pötzl – who held the confidence of the Nazis – Frankl acquired direction of the neurology department of the Jewish hospital, Rothschild-Spital. Together, they resisted the euthanasia plan promoted by the authorities, which stipulated the death of psychiatric patients; unable to do anything else, Frankl and Pötzl dedicated themselves to changing the diagnoses.
In the midst of these challenges, Frankl wrote his first book, Psychotherapy and Existentialism,[3] which already demonstrated his personal vision of existence and the central points of Logotherapy.
The Nazi persecution soon fell upon Frankl and his family. In 1942, he was interned in a concentration camp – one of several. In Türkheim, where he was ill with typhus, Frankl began a new manuscript of his book. This gave him the strength to live. The final and primary camp was Auschwitz, where the work he had written was lost.
On April 27, 1945, Frankl was liberated by the Americans and returned to Vienna. A few days later, he learned that his parents, his brother, and his wife – Tilly, whom he had married in early 1942 – had died in the camps. Under these intensely emotional circumstances, Frankl wrote, in the span of nine days, the aforementioned book, originally named A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp, and rewrote, for the third time, Psychoanalysis and Existentialism.
The post-war period and Frank’s philosophical studies
After the war, Frankl’s life returned to its normal course. On July 18, 1947, he married Eleonore Katharina Schwindt, a Catholic woman. They remained together and had a daughter, Gabriela.
Frankl then decided to study Philosophy and, in 1949, at the age of forty-four, presented his doctoral thesis: The Unconscious God: Psychotherapy and Theology.[4]
The first written work in which the term Logotherapy appears dates from 1938. This new current began to be known as the Third Viennese school, after Freud and Adler. Designated as such, it arrived in the United States, where Frankl traveled in 1961. Invited to Harvard by Gordon Allport, Frankl aroused great interest. In 1971, he started the Logotherapy Institute at the University of San Diego, California, commencing the birth of similar institutes all over the world, such as the one run in Germany under the direction of Dr. Elizabeth Lukas, Frankl’s most well-known disciple, to whom we must express gratitude for the assistance she has offered in better understanding her teacher.
2. Criticism that does not Consider the “Spiritual” within Psychology
Our era is marked by a remarkable evolution of psychology. Experimental psychology, which focused only on psychic phenomena captured by direct experience in the human machine, gave way to numerous currents in the 20th century. Many of them, while accepting a psychic reality, try to explain everything on the basis of the material, of an organic substrate. Frankl tries to consider a higher principle – the spirit; he wants to re-humanize psychotherapy.
This is the most important key to his thinking: the vision of the person as a spiritual being.[5] He adds a third integral and primordial element, pertaining to the essence of man and to the concept of the human person as a mere unity of the bodily and the psychic. Man is not a compound of separate elements – soul, body, and spirit – but the entirety is one, wherein “it is the spirit that first constitutes this one and it alone guarantees it.”[6] True, there are certain internal and external factors which condition the personality. Nevertheless, on account of the dynamic force of the spirit, freedom is maintained.
Because of their importance and influence, as well as their dispute with the ideas of Frankl, the psychoanalytic notions, which are based on Freudian determinism, are notable. According to Freudian determinism, the development of the personality is solely a function of biological and environmental factors; at any stage a conflict can arise. From this perspective, the unconscious – where innate impulses, desires, feelings, repressed memories lie – is fundament.
Freudian psychoanalysis and Viktor Frankl
The prominent systems that have been most influenced by Psychologism are Sigmund Freud’s Psychoanalysis, Alfred Adler’s Individual Psychology, and the Analytical Psychology developed by Karl Jung.
Depth Psychology, as the psychology of Freud and his followers is called, postulates in human behavior “only the drive for pleasure and instinctive determination, but not the drive for values and orientation towards meaning.”[7] The reference to unconscious, deep motivations at the root – which form the basis for his own postulation – was a step towards the development of Frankl’s own term; however, the originators would not admit that there could be a spiritual struggle behind an apparently psychic illness. Frankl, on the other hand, asked himself: “Is it surprising that an individual who suffers the pressure of spiritual problems and the tension of moral conflicts (…) and not a psychic illness, suffers from insomnia, sweats and trembles, the same as the neurotic?”[8]
The psychoanalytic method became an analysis of impulsivity: the Freudian unconscious is, above all, a storehouse of repressed impulsivity. Man’s will is reduced to the will for pleasure; and all that remains of love is the libido.
Alfred Adler and Viktor Frankl
Adler moves away from Freudian mechanism, which only considers causes, and introduces the social and self-realizing dimension within man, whereby human behavior is determined by an objective or goal. This, however, is nothing more than the tendency to surpass others, under the influence of the feeling of inferiority. The aim is only intra-psychic and does not come from man himself. The main tendency is not the libido, but the effort to assert oneself – the drive for self-assertion or the will to power in the Nietzschean sense.
Carl Jung and Frankl
For Jung’s analytical psychology, there is room for a series of innate predispositions – the archetypes; there is a collective unconscious or memory of the species. The idea of a religious vocation emerges, as well as the question for meaning, which arises more urgently as death approaches. As the human person searches for meaning, the experience of suffering arises when it is not found. Without denying progress, Frankl warns of the error that persists: “to locate this unconscious religiosity where unconscious sexuality is located: that is, in the instinctive unconscious, in the Ego.”[9]
3. Logotherapy and Existential Analysis
Logotherapy seeks to consider the logos, meaning and values in psychotherapy. It is a psychotherapy centered on meaning, which is divided into Logotherapy, entailing therapy from the spiritual, and Existential Analysis, or analysis towards the spiritual. The starting point is the conviction that a human being is truly a human being when he searches for the meaning of his unique and unrepeatable existence.
It rests on three pillars: life as a whole in which every circumstance has meaning; the fact that everyone has a will towards meaning; and man’s freedom to choose how he lives and dies (while there are limits, he can determine his attitude). These foundational principles lead to the categorical imperative of Logotherapy: “Live as if you were already living for the second time and as if you had already acted as wrongly in the first time as you are about to act now.”[10]
It is urgent that man recovers awareness within his conscience of his own responsibility, and the proposal is an analysis of existence with special reference to this need. It is a matter of “making the autonomy of spiritual existence emerge, instead of the automatism of the psychic apparatus.“[11]
Logotherapy techniques
The two main procedures are paradoxical intention and derreflection.[12] The so-called paradoxical intention has been used by many people without knowing either its theory or its name. An example is that of a speaker who feels his hands perspiring and his heart pounding in front of a large audience. Then he thinks: “let’s see if I can make the heart beat louder”, or, “let’s sweat and shake until the podium falls down…”. That simple thought, evidently in opposition to his will, has the effect of relaxing the person and decreasing anxiety.
The paradoxical intention is aimed at breaking the anticipatory anxiety: repetitive fear of what may occur, which every symptom of anxiety, however fleeting and harmless it may be, produces. The fear in turn, reinforces the symptoms that produce the fear in a vicious circle. Logotherapy seeks to break the circle, by activating the human capacity to distance oneself from a situation, from destructive conditioning and also from oneself through self-distancing, wherein good humor is important. Formulas are suggested, humorous when possible, by which – paradoxically – patients desire what they fear.
Utility of self-transcendence
The second technique is derreflection. At its base we find another human capacity: self-transcendence – the essential orientation that makes man “point towards something which is not the same, towards something or towards a meaning to be fulfilled, or towards another human being, whom we go to meet with love.”[13] The aim is to stimulate this capacity and to confront hyper-reflection.
Hyper-reflection – thinking too much about oneself and about one’s own symptoms – is frequent in the insecure and labile psyche. Because of it, the most insignificant problems can become insurmountable. For Logotherapy, hyper-reflection is one of the most pathological attitudes, from the point of view of the psyche. It is accompanied by hyper-intention: an intentionality directed towards oneself and a search for satisfaction which does not consider the existence of other people. Just as it would be pathological to be excessively attentive to unconscious physiological functions – the heartbeat, intestinal movements, etc. – excessive preoccupation with mental activity is also pathological.
4. Frankl for the Woman and Man of Today
The field of application of Logotherapy goes beyond the purely medical. In addition to a way of life, it can be considered a way of seeing the world; it gives its own interpretation to the phenomena of the person and society, emphasizing in everything the positive freedom or the for something: a responsibility of each individual.
We will mention some orientations, useful to overcome an existential vacuum: emptiness that, at a personal level, manifests itself as a feeling of meaninglessness – meaninglessness and indifference, in a more common language – and it can give rise to a pathology: noogenic neurosis.
Life without meaning is experienced as an absurdity; it is reflected in boredom: disinterest in things; and, in indifference: the lack of initiative to improve oneself and to change the world.
An attitude towards Illness and Suffering
Suffering can be transformed into an achievement or, in other words, into something beneficial. Its meaning lies in a change within the suffering person himself, which is a change for the better. Quoting a Hebrew painter, who as a child was taken to a concentration camp, Frankl writes: “pain really makes sense when you yourself become another man.”[14]
To suffer means to strive, to grow, to mature, and to enrich oneself. It hints at a fundamental truth: that this life, passing through pain and illness, ends inexorably in death. Existence becomes, in a certain way, transparent and shows its depths: it discovers and accepts life as a passion, which has been given to us; it reveals the essence of man as a “suffering being: homo patiens.”[15]
Frankl’s meaning of suffering today
The question about the meaning of suffering gives way to a great truth: man, himself, is the one being in question; his role – beyond asking the question – lies in answering it by suffering in a manner that is adequate and in passing the test with flying colors. Personal limitation imposes itself and we must surrender to the transcendence that surpasses us – to believe in the meaning even if we do not understand it. This is the maturity that comes with suffering: a maturity towards truth.
The interest of the person is not to avoid pain at all costs and to obtain maximum pleasure, but to find meaning; “man is ready to suffer on the condition that this suffering has a meaning.”[16]
Those who suffer have before them the possibility of realizing the highest value: the attitude of accepting destiny and facing it with the capacity for suffering. It is necessary to have someone for whom to suffer – someone to whom one can offer oneself in sacrifice. With this motive, love emerges as the foundation. The fullness of meaning will be in sacrificing on account of the highest value, in acceptance out of love for the will of God. Only he who truly loves is capable of enduring adversity; “I can only suffer with meaning if I suffer for something – for love of someone.”[17]
Human Love and Sexuality
Closely linked to sacrifice, as its ultimate reason, we discover love: that spiritual act, which for Frankl constitutes the highest interpersonal relationship, allowing someone to know the person in himself. If it is genuine, it will always be a matter of an “I” that loves a “You”; of something that is above simple affectivity and above the psychophysical.
He distinguishes three types of love. The most primitive, or sexual, which refers to the corporeal. A higher or erotic form that nonetheless reaches the level of the psyche by way of a psychic emotionality or certain character traits connected with falling in love. Finally, an authentic and true love, which is the direct orientation of the spiritual person towards the loved one. This love does not remain in what the loved one has, but in what he is, in his essence. It is the experience of another human being in all the particulars of his life: in his uniqueness and unrepeatability; it is lasting.
Degeneration of love and meaning in Frankl’s view today
When love decays and there is no spiritual person as a focal point, the will for meaning also degenerates. Everything becomes subjective, having value for me only insofar as it is useful. One does not aspire to meaning and absolute value. Such a man is driven by the will to power – power which turns the person into an egoist.
Based on his experience, he warns that “the young person who enters prematurely into an exclusively sexual relationship, consuming his sexual energies before his time, will never find the path that leads to the harmonious synthesis of the sexual and the erotic.”[18] He compares it to entering the working world at an early age, in a way that can impede good professional preparation. In the same way, the one who begins sexual relations as soon as puberty arrives, will not be able to develop internally in order to rise to the higher forms of love life and to a profound experience of love.
Sex education according to Viktor Frankl
With common sense, confirmed by the psychology of development, he speaks of the manner and place for conducting sexual education: “the explanations aimed at initiating youth in sexual matters should never be given collectively (…), there will be the danger that the explanation will be, for some, too premature and leave them perplexed, and for others, on the other hand, too late, thus making themselves look ridiculous. The rational and recommendable method is the individual one.”[19] There must be great confidence, he adds, on the part of the one who teaches, so that the young person knows how to reveal his concerns as well. In order to motivate responsibility, it is necessary to cultivate the young person’s self-confidence during the time of puberty, while at the same time placing confidence in him. It is easy to see that the most appropriate place to address these issues is in the family.
The authentic capacity to love and to orient oneself towards another person not only gives greater fulfilment in sexuality, but also prevents or cures the psychic pathology that surrounds it. True love necessarily enriches the one who loves. Not a few painful situations arise from misunderstood human love.
Marriage
The proper context of the expression of sexuality is marriage. Love “is the only thing capable of transforming marriage, the sexual beings together – ontologically considered – into something human and, from the ethical point of view, capable of consecrating it as worthy of man.”[20]
If the sexual instinct – proper to animals – is a drive towards the same specimen of the opposite sex, then love, on the other hand, at the human level, “is awakened by all that is lovable in the couple, that is, by transcending myself I open myself in an intentional spiritual act, which in the sexual act is only expressed physically, that is, it is incarnated.”[21] Neither one of the couple can be viewed as a means to an end. The relationship with the other goes much further: “in the encounter I contemplate his or her humanity and, in love, his or her uniqueness and singularity.”[22]
indissolubility of marriage according to Frankl
The indissolubility proper to marriage is also emphasized. Human being cannot love temporarily, in a provisional way. He cannot propose love provisionally, as such; “he can at most fall in love at the risk that the object of his love will later prove to be unworthy of him and that the love, therefore, will be extinguished.”[23] True love is not subject to change.
Frankl warns against those who stop at the external and superficial, not thinking of a specific person, but only of a certain type. Both men and women can fall into this error, although it is the woman who often suffers the most. The impersonal woman is sought as a certain ideal before whom there is no room for fidelity: what one possesses can be changed at will. Unfortunately, the woman herself is sometimes satisfied with this treatment. She becomes a woman of the masses who is only interested in getting someone to notice her. She falls into imitating the cinematic world and into the frivolities of fashion; she is content to represent a certain type; she does not give herself or her own “I”. The result is a “woman who can be had without the need to love her.”[24]
Homosexuality
The psychiatrist from Vienna, like many physicians, considers homosexuality a disorder or pathology and notes that many homosexuals seek specialized help.
One of the causes, in his opinion, is the incorrect interpretation of childhood phenomena, which can perpetuate the problem into adulthood. In the stage before puberty, he says that homoeroticism is not infrequent: it is not properly a homosexual tendency, but a reflection of sexual immaturity and of instinct in the developmental stage. At this stage, traumatizing situations may occur that orient one’s behavior towards persons of the same sex, especially sexual abuse by adults. Great importance is given to explaining the genesis of the perversion so as not to attribute the matter to a structural need. The summit of the therapy will be, once again, that the person learns to love, emerge from within himself, and be channeled towards a person of the opposite sex where this love can flourish.
He does not deny that there may be cases of primitive homosexuality – quite rare and infrequent in the medical practice – conditioned by psychotic problems or other organic alterations. When it comes to helping these people, the first thing to do is to study whether the problem is really structural. If it is deeply rooted, it will be convenient to orient the person toward forms of interest – almost always present – other than sex, which can give meaning to life, since the misuse of sexuality will never satisfy the innate desire for a meaningful existence.
Frankl’s objective in the treatment of sexual neurosis summarizes his thinking well: he proposes, “that the individual should have sexual desires only and exclusively when he loves. This fact, he argues, is, in itself, a guarantee of a sexual life worthy of man.”[25]
Depression
Depression, often associated with anxiety, obsession, and other psychic symptomatology, is analyzed in depth by Logotherapy. Frankl points out that there is no real depression in animals although they may suffer metabolic alterations; only man can experience feelings of guilt, reproach, etc., since they spring from what is authentically human – namely, from the conscience. The tension between one’s own being and one’s duty becomes an abyss for the melancholic. Melancholy is a disease that shows a spiritual substratum.
The depressive symptom is like an abnormally low tide that exposes a reef: the patient’s feelings of guilt, rather than the cause of the illness – a cause that a Freudian psychoanalyst might emphasize – are revealed by a downcast mood. When faced with a depressed person all the constitutive elements, both psychic and somatic, must be investigated. As part of the treatment, it should be ensured that, he does not remain in his head, although by his own assessment he is dragged by the depressive current. In other words, the patient should rationally try to pay attention to what the doctors tell him, namely that, in his situation, he cannot see things clearly, as if he had dark glasses or as if there were “a cloud that momentarily hides the sun from our gaze, but without it ceasing to exist, although we do not see it.”[26]
The Value of Life from the Beginning to the End
According to Frankl, every human life has value from the fact of being a life. This affirmation gives rise to a question: is there human life? If there is, abortion, euthanasia and any other similar procedure is not licit.
Frankl refers to the way of speaking that is used to justify euthanasia: the legal destruction of a life unworthy of being lived – useless. According to him, it demonstrates a clear ignorance of the difference between “useful” and dignity. The former can be measured by the vital and social capacity or efficiency of an individual; the latter, on the other hand, transcends this and is inviolable. When every dimension of man is considered, existence has an absolute value beyond any circumstance, including pain; by this account, there is no life that is not worth living.
Rejecting more explicitly any act that devalues life, Frankl states: “the physician is not the one called to judge about the value or lack of value of a human life. Human society entrusts him with the sole mission of helping and of alleviating the pain of the sufferer in those cases where he can do so; of curing, when possible; of caring for the sick, if he is unable to cure them.”[27] Anticipating the current period, Frankl notes: “it would be terrible if the patient did not know at any time whether the physician was approaching his bedside as a doctor or as an executioner.”[28]
Eugenics according to Frankl
Regarding the beginning of life, Frankl opposes eugenics. Speaks, in particular, of mentally retarded children. Comments on the importance of being surrounded by the love of relatives, representative of an object of love that is irreplaceable. Says that this is enough to give meaning to life of a person, even if it is only received. And he adds that often “it is precisely mentally retarded children who, in general, are most loved and pampered by their parents.”[29]
Suicide and Logotherapy
Regarding suicide, Logotherapy concludes that “even the suicidal person believes in a sense, if not of life, at least of the afterlife, of death. If he really did not believe in any sense at all, he would not even be able to lift a finger or make the decision to commit suicide.”[30] Perhaps life or continuing to live has no meaning, but dying, at least, seems to have meaning.
Frankl points out that the physician, when confronted with someone who wants to commit suicide, cannot remain indifferent or neutral, or much less facilitate this action. Nevertheless, the current tendency is to go so far as to defend so-called assisted suicide.
Arguments that could falsely justify the will to make death an act of one’s own freedom are not sustained, nor are the arguments that seek to transform the choice of suicide into a “sacrifice”, or an action with a moral objective. Suicide will only succeed in perpetuating the passing of a person: “instead of erasing from the world a misfortune that has occurred or a disgrace that has been perpetrated, what it erases from the world is the ego.”[31]
The prevention of suicide – and of euthanasia – focuses not only on stopping voluntary death, but on nurturing the voluntary choice to live. It is not easy to say whether suicide is cowardly or courageous; one cannot overlook the extent of the inner struggle that precedes the act; “we have no choice but to say that suicide is courageous in the face of death but cowardly in the face of life.”[32]
5. A Final Call to Responsibility
Frankl’s anthropology emphasizes the consideration that woman and man are traversing the earth, with a mission; the free and responsible person realizes that “life is properly no more than a loan.”[33]
It is essential to seek the meaning of this “loan.” It is not enough to think of a collective meaning, such as procreation to perpetuate the species and eternalize oneself in one’s children. If this were the case, the problem would be passed from generation to generation. Existence, which, in itself, lacks specific meaning does not acquire significance simply by being eternalized. It would be as absurd as passing an unlit torch from hand to hand, hence the expression of the Austrian poet, Wildgans, which Frankl employs: “What is to light must burn”. The person must “be consumed, burn to the end.”[34] This is an end against which the human being often rebels, although he hears about it ubiquitously.
Another expression of existential emptiness is the excessive desire for violence; the morbid interest in chronic tragedies, so much sought after by the media or newspapers. The reason it captivates – Frankl comments – “is the delicious contrast based on the fact that, apparently, it is always the others who die.”[35] It is as if they were fleeing from what they fear most: the certainty of their own death. The fact of growing old is not accepted either. So many do not see anything positive in the later stage of life, nor do they accept the reality that the years pass and entail part of a given destiny.
Death and hope in Frankl today
Death is perpetually on the horizon of every person. This fact is an encouragement to be responsible and to realize value. Death marks the end of the test and the moment of surrendering one’s existence in response to what was expected of us. Not only does death have meaning, but, to a certain extent, it gives meaning. Death does not simply put an end to personal existence in this world – as some authors think – but is the door to a transcendent existence. Death declares the historical character of man and his finiteness; it also allows us to intuit the presence of the Being who has given us the mission.
Frankl’s thought is full of optimism and hope. It does not remain in nor limit happiness to the human realm but leads to the discovery of transcendence: the capacity to love and to move out of oneself towards others, realizing the dimension that goes beyond the human. The meaning of life opens the way to the Super-sense, the human person to the Super-person, and to the search for the Author of everything: ultimately, God.
Wenceslao Vial
Source: Humanitas, n. 40
Frankl’s book notes
[1] Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, trans. Ilse Lasch (London: Rider, 2008). Original Title: Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager.
[2]La idea psicológica del hombre, Rialp, Madrid 1963, pp. 59-60. Original Title: Das Menschenbild der Seelenheilkunde.
[3] Viktor E. Frankl, Psychotherapy and Existentialism: Selected Papers on Logotherapy (New York: Washington Square Press, 1967). Original Title: Ärztliche Seelsorge.
[4] Viktor E. Frankl, The Unconscious God: Psycotheraphy and Theology (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975). Original Title: Der unbewusste Gott.
[5] In his terminology, the word spiritual is not associated with the religious or supernatural sense. To avoid confusion, he often uses the terms noetic or noodynamic when referring to spiritual phenomena.
[6] El hombre incondicionado. Lecciones Metaclínicas, Plantin, Buenos Aires 1955, p. 99. Original Title: Der unbedingte Mensch.
[7] La voluntad de sentido. Conferencias escogidas sobre logoterapia, Herder, Barcelona 1991, pp. 117-118. Original Title: Der Wille zum Sinn. Ausgewählte Vorträge über Logotherapie. It is clear that these quick, synthetic annotations are not intended as a complete critique.
[8] Homo Patiens. Intento de una patodicea, Plantin, Buenos Aires 1955, pp. 21-22. Original Title: Homo Patiens versuch einer Pathodize.
[9] La voluntad de sentido, p. 112.
[10] Man’s Search for Meaning, p. 114.
[11] La voluntad de sentido, p. 48.
[12] Un análisis completo en: Teoria y terapia de las neurosis. Iniciación a la logoterapia y al análisis existencial, herder, Barcelona 1992, pp. 218-250. Original Title: Theorie und Therapie der Neurosen.
[13] Ante el vacio existencial. Hacia una reumanización de la psicoterapia, Herder, Barcelona 1990, p. 17. Original Title: Das Leiden am sinnlosen Leben. Psychotherapie für heute.
[14] La voluntad de sentido, p. 231.
[15] Cfr. Homo Patiens, pp. 98-100.
[16] Man’s Search for Meaning, p. 117.
[17] Homo Patiens, p. 103.
[18] Psicoanálisis existencialismo, Fondo de Cultura Económica, México D.F. 1967, p. 209.
[19] Ibid, p. 215.
[20] El hombre incondicionado, pp. 102-103.
[21] La voluntad de sentido, p. 215.
[22] Ibid, p. 216.
[23] Psicoanálisis existencialismo, p. 177.
[24] Ibid, p. 174.
[25] Cfr. La Psicoterapia en la pràctica médica, Escuela, Buenos Aires 1955. Original Title: Die Psychotherapie in Der Praxis. Eine kasuistiche Einführung für Ärzte.
[26] Psicoanálisis existencialismo, p. 112. One of the traits that Frankl recognizes in the basic personality of patients with obsession, predisposing them to other psychic pathologies, is the inability to live the provisional character of existence, insecurity, and perfectionism. He says it is necessary for them to reach the point of understanding that within every human decision – by the fact of the human limit – exists a margin of error.
[27] Psicoanálisis existencialismo, p. 63.
[28] Ibid.
[29] Ibid, 65-66.
[30] La presencia ignorada de Dios. Psicoterapia y religion, Herder, Barcelona 1991, p. 93.
[31] Psicoanálisis existencialismo, p. 68.
[32] Ibid, nota 11, p. 299.
[33] El hombre incondicionado, p. 101.
[34] Psicoanálisis existencialismo, p. 87.
[35] Ibid, p. 158.
