PART TWO
Logotherapy in a Nutshell
This part, which has been revised and updated, first appeared as "Basic Concepts of Logotherapy" in the 1968 edition of
Man's Search for Meaning.
READERS OF MY SHORT AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL STORY usually ask for a fuller and more direct explanation of my
therapeutic doctrine. Accordingly I added a brief section on logotherapy to the original edition of
From Death-Camp to Existentialism. But that was not enough, and I have been besieged by requests
for a more extended treatment. Therefore in the present edition I have completely rewritten and
considerably expanded my account.
The assignment was not easy. To convey to the reader within a short space all the material which
required twenty volumes in German is an almost hopeless task. I am reminded of the American
doctor who once turned up in my office in Vienna and asked me, "Now, Doctor, are you a
psychoanalyst?" Whereupon I replied, "Not exactly a psychoanalyst; let's say a psychotherapist."
Then he continued questioning me: "What school do you stand for?" I answered, "It is my own
theory; it is called logotherapy." "Can you tell me in one sentence what is meant by logo-therapy?"
he asked. "At least, what is the difference between psychoanalysis and logotherapy?" "Yes," I said,
"but in the first place, can you tell me in one sentence what you think the essence of psychoanalysis
is?" This was his answer: "During psychoanalysis, the patient must lie down on a couch and tell you
things which sometimes are very disagreeable to tell." Whereupon I immediately retorted with the
following improvisation: "Now, in logotherapy the patient may remain sitting erect but he must hear
things which sometimes are very disagreeable to hear."
Of course, this was meant facetiously and not as a capsule version of logotherapy. However, there is
something in it, inasmuch as logotherapy, in comparison with psychoanalysis, is a method less
retrospective and less introspective. Logotherapy focuses rather on the future, that is to say, on the
meanings to be fulfilled by the patient in his future. (Logotherapy, indeed, is a meaning-cantered
psychotherapy.) At the same time, logotherapy defocuses all the vicious-circle formations and
feedback mechanisms which play such a great role in the development of neuroses. Thus, the typical
self-centeredness of the neurotic is broken up instead of being continually fostered and reinforced.
To be sure, this kind of statement is an oversimplification; yet in logotherapy the patient is actually
confronted with and reoriented toward the meaning of his life. And to make him aware of this
meaning can contribute much to his ability to overcome his neurosis.
Let me explain why I have employed the term "logotherapy" as the name for my theory. Logos is a
Greek word which denotes "meaning." Logotherapy, or, as it has been called by some authors, "The
Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy," focuses on the meaning of human existence as well as on
man's search for such a meaning. According to logotherapy, this striving to find a meaning in one's
life is the primary motivational force in man. That is why I speak of a will to meaning in contrast to
the pleasure principle (or, as we could also term it, the will to pleasure) on which Freudian
psychoanalysis is cantered, as well as in contrast to the will to power on which Adlerian psychology,
using the term "striving for superiority," is focused.
THE WILL TO MEANING
Man's search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a "secondary rationalization"
of instinctual drives. This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can be fulfilled by him
alone; only then does it achieve a significance which will satisfy his own will to meaning. There are
some authors who contend that meanings and values are "nothing but defence mechanisms,
reaction formations and sublimations." But as for myself, I would not be willing to live merely for the
sake of my "defence mechanisms," nor would I be ready to die merely for the sake of my "reaction
formations." Man, however, is able to live and even to die for the sake of his ideals and values!
A public-opinion poll was conducted a few years ago in France. The results showed that 89 percent
of the people polled admitted that man needs "something" for the sake of which to live. Moreover,
61 percent conceded that there was something, or someone, in their own lives for whose sake they
were even ready to die. I repeated this poll at my hospital department in Vienna among both the
patients and the personnel, and the outcome was practically the same as among the thousands of
people screened in France; the difference was only 2 percent.
Another statistical survey, of 7,948 students at forty-eight colleges, was conducted by social
scientists from Johns Hopkins University. Their preliminary report is part of a two-year study
sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health. Asked what they considered "very important"
to them now, 16 percent of the students checked "making a lot of money"; 78 percent said their first
goal was "finding a purpose and meaning to my life."
Of course, there may be some cases in which an individual's concern with values is really a
camouflage of hidden inner conflicts; but, if so, they represent the exceptions from the rule rather
than the rule itself. In these cases we have actually to deal with pseudovalues, and as such they have
to be unmasked. Unmasking, however, should stop as soon as one is confronted with what is
authentic and genuine in man, e.g., man's desire for a life that is as meaningful as possible. If it does
not stop then, the only thing that the "unmasking psychologist" really unmasks is his own "hidden
motive"—namely, his unconscious need to debase and depreciate what is genuine, what is genuinely
human, in man.
EXISTENTIAL FRUSTRATION
Man's will to meaning can also be frustrated, in which case logotherapy speaks of "existential
frustration." The term "existential" may be used in three ways: to refer to (1) existence itself, i.e., the
specifically human mode of being; (2) the meaning of existence; and (3) the striving to find a
concrete meaning in personal existence, that is to say, the will to meaning.
Existential frustration can also result in neuroses. For this type of neuroses, logotherapy has coined
the term "noogenic neuroses" in contrast to neuroses in the traditional sense of the word, i.e.,
psychogenic neuroses. Noogenic neuroses have their origin not in the psychological but rather in the
"noological" (from the Greek noos meaning mind) dimension of human existence. This is another
logotherapeutic term which denotes anything pertaining to the specifically human dimension.
NOOGENIC NEUROSES
Noogenic neuroses do not emerge from conflicts between drives and instincts but rather from
existential problems. Among such problems, the frustration of the will to meaning plays a large role.
It is obvious that in noogenic cases the appropriate and adequate therapy is not psychotherapy in
general but rather logotherapy; a therapy, that is, which dares to enter the specifically human
dimension.
Let me quote the following instance: A high-ranking American diplomat came to my office in Vienna
in order to continue psychoanalytic treatment which he had begun five years previously with an
analyst in New York. At the outset I asked him why he thought he should be analyzed, why his
analysis had been started in the first place. It turned out that the patient was discontented with his
career and found it most difficult to comply with American foreign policy. His analyst, however, had
told him again and again that he should try to reconcile himself with his father; because the
government of the U.S. as well as his superiors were "nothing but" father images and, consequently,
his dissatisfaction with his job was due to the hatred he unconsciously harboured toward his father.
Through an analysis lasting five years, the patient had been prompted more and more to accept his
analyst's interpretations until he finally was unable to see the forest of reality for the trees of
symbols and images. After a few interviews, it was clear that his will to meaning was frustrated by
his vocation, and he actually longed to be engaged in some other kind of work. As there was no
reason for not giving up his profession and embarking on a different one, he did so, with most
gratifying results. He has remained contented in this new occupation for over five years, as he
recently reported. I doubt that, in this case, I was dealing with a neurotic condition at all, and that is
why I thought that he did not need any psychotherapy, nor even logotherapy, for the simple reason
that he was not actually a patient. 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. I would strictly deny that one's search for a meaning to
his existence, or even his doubt of it, in every case is derived from, or results in, any disease.
Existential frustration is in itself neither pathological nor pathogenic. A man's concern, even his
despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease. It
may well be that interpreting the first in terms of the latter motivates a doctor to bury his patient's
existential despair under a heap of tranquilizing drugs. It is his task, rather, to pilot the patient
through his existential crises of growth and development.
Logotherapy regards its assignment as that of assisting the patient to find meaning in his life.
Inasmuch as logotherapy makes him aware of the hidden logos of his existence, it is an analytical
process. To this extent, logotherapy resembles psychoanalysis. However, in logotherapy's attempt to
make something conscious again it does not restrict its activity to instinctual facts within the
individual's unconscious but also cares for existential realities, such as the potential meaning of his
existence to be fulfilled as well as his will to meaning. Any analysis, however, even when it refrains
from including the noological dimension in its therapeutic process, tries to make the patient aware
of what he actually longs for in the depth of his being. Logotherapy deviates from psychoanalysis
insofar as it considers man a being whose main concern consists in fulfilling a meaning, rather than
in the mere gratification and satisfaction of drives and instincts, or in merely reconciling the
conflicting claims of id, ego and superego, or in the mere adaptation and adjustment to society and
environment.
NOO-DYNAMICS
To be sure, man's search for meaning may arouse inner tension rather than inner equilibrium.
However, precisely such tension is an indispensable prerequisite of mental health. 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
which holds true for any psychotherapy. In the Nazi concentration camps, one could have witnessed
that those who knew that there was a task waiting for them to fulfil were most apt to survive. The
same conclusion has since been reached by other authors of books on concentration camps, and
also by psychiatric investigations into Japanese, North Korean and North Vietnamese prisoner-ofwar
camps.
As for myself, when I was taken to the concentration camp of Auschwitz, a manuscript of mine ready
for publication was confiscated.1
Certainly, my deep desire to write this manuscript anew helped
me to survive the rigors of the camps I was in. For instance, when in a camp in Bavaria I fell ill with
typhus fever, I jotted down on little scraps of paper many notes intended to enable me to rewrite
the manuscript, should I live to the day of liberation. I am sure that this reconstruction of my lost
manuscript in the dark barracks of a Bavarian concentration camp assisted me in overcoming the
danger of cardiovascular collapse.
1 It was the first version of my first book, the English translation of which was published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York, in
1955, under the title The Doctor and the Soul: An Introduction to Logotherapy.
Thus it can be seen that mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between
what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one
is and what one should become. Such a tension is inherent in the human being and therefore is
indispensable to mental well-being. We should not, then, be hesitant about challenging man with a
potential meaning for him to fulfil. It is only thus that we evoke his will to meaning from its state of
latency. I consider it a dangerous misconception of mental hygiene to assume that what man needs
in the first place is equilibrium or, as it is called in biology, "homeostasis," i.e., a tensionless state.
What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a
worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. 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 "nod-dynamics," i.e., the existential dynamics in a polar field of tension where one pole is
represented by a meaning that is to be fulfilled and the other pole by the man who has to fulfil it.
And one should not think that this holds true only for normal conditions; in neurotic individuals, it is
even more valid. If architects want to strengthen a decrepit arch, they increase the load which 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 create a sound amount of tension through a
reorientation toward the meaning of one's life.
Having shown the beneficial impact of meaning orientation, I turn to the detrimental influence of
that feeling of which so many patients complain today, namely, the feeling of the total and ultimate
meaninglessness of their lives.
They lack the awareness of a meaning worth living for. They are haunted by the experience of their
inner emptiness, a void within themselves; they are caught in that situation which I have called the
"existential vacuum."
THE EXISTENTIAL VACUUM
The existential vacuum is a widespread phenomenon of the twentieth century. This is
understandable; it may be due to a twofold loss which man has had to undergo since he became a
truly human being. At the beginning of human history, man lost some of the basic animal instincts in
which an animal's behaviour is imbedded and by which it is secured. Such security, like Paradise, is
closed to man forever; man has to make choices. In addition to this, however, man has suffered
another loss in his more recent development inasmuch as the traditions which buttressed his
behaviour are now rapidly diminishing. No instinct tells him. what he has to do, and no tradition tells
him what he ought to do; sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead, he
either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people wish him to
do (totalitarianism).
A statistical survey recently revealed that among my European students, 25 percent showed a moreor-less
marked degree of existential vacuum. Among my American students it was not 25 but 60
percent.
The existential vacuum manifests itself mainly in a state of boredom. Now we can understand
Schopenhauer when he said that mankind was apparently doomed to vacillate eternally between
the two extremes of distress and boredom. In actual fact, boredom is now causing, and certainly
bringing to psychiatrists, more problems to solve than distress. And these problems are growing
increasingly crucial, for progressive automation will probably lead to an enormous increase in the
leisure hours available to the average worker. The pity of it is that many of these will not know what
to do with all their newly acquired free time.
Let us consider, for instance, "Sunday neurosis," that kind of depression which afflicts people who
become aware of the lack of content in their lives when the rush of the busy week is over and the
void within themselves becomes manifest. Not a few cases of suicide can be traced back to this
existential vacuum. Such widespread phenomena as depression, aggression and addiction are not
understandable unless we recognize the existential vacuum underlying them. This is also true of the
crises of pensioners and aging people.
Moreover, there are various masks and guises under which the existential vacuum appears.
Sometimes the frustrated will to meaning is vicariously compensated for by a will to power,
including the most primitive form of the will to power, the will to money. In other cases, the place of
frustrated will to meaning is taken by the will to pleasure. That is why existential frustration often
eventuates in sexual compensation. We can observe in such cases that the sexual libido becomes
rampant in the existential vacuum.
An analogous event occurs in neurotic cases. There are certain types of feedback mechanisms and
vicious-circle formations which I will touch upon later. One can observe again and again, however,
that this symptomatology has invaded an existential vacuum wherein it then continues to flourish. In
such patients, what we have to deal with is not a noogenic neurosis. However, we will never succeed
in having the patient overcome his condition if we have not supplemented the psychotherapeutic
treatment with logo-therapy. For by filling the existential vacuum, the patient will be prevented from
suffering further relapses. Therefore, logotherapy is indicated not only in noogenic cases, as pointed
out above, but also in psychogenic cases, and sometimes even the somatogenic (pseudo-) neuroses.
Viewed in this light, a statement once made by Magda B. Arnold is justified: "Every therapy must in
some way, no matter how restricted, also be logotherapy."2
Let us now consider what we can do if a patient asks what the meaning of his life is.
2 Magda B. Arnold and John A. Gasson, The Human Person, Ronald Press, New York, 1954, p. 618.
THE MEANING OF LIFE
I doubt whether a doctor can answer this question in general terms. For the meaning of life differs
from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the
meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment. To
put the question in general terms would be comparable to the question posed to a chess champion:
"Tell me, Master, what is the best move in the world?" There simply is no such thing as the best or
even a good move apart from a particular situation in a game and the particular personality of one's
opponent. The same holds for human existence. One should not search for an abstract meaning of
life. Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment
which demands fulfilment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus,
everyone's task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it.
As each situation in life represents a challenge to man and presents a problem for him to solve, the
question of the meaning of life may actually be reversed. Ultimately, man should not ask what the
meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is
questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only
respond by being responsible. Thus, logotherapy sees in responsibleness the very essence of human
existence.
THE ESSENCE OF EXISTENCE
This emphasis on responsibleness is reflected in the categorical imperative of logotherapy, which is:
"Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as
wrongly as you are about to act now!" It seems to me that there is nothing which would stimulate a
man's sense of responsibleness more than this maxim, which invites him to imagine first that the
present is past and, second, that the past may yet be changed and amended. Such a precept
confronts him with life's finiteness as well as the finality of what he makes out of both his life and
himself.
Logotherapy tries to make the patient fully aware of his own responsibleness; therefore, it must
leave to him the option for what, to what, or to whom he understands himself to be responsible.
That is why a logotherapist is the least tempted of all psychotherapists to impose value judgments
on his patients, for he will never permit the patient to pass to the doctor the responsibility of
judging.
It is, therefore, up to the patient to decide whether he should interpret his life task as being
responsible to society or to his own conscience. There are people, however, who do not interpret
their own lives merely in terms of a task assigned to them but also in terms of the taskmaster who
has assigned it to them.
Logotherapy is neither teaching nor preaching. It is as far removed from logical reasoning as it is
from moral exhortation. To put it figuratively, the role played by a logotherapist is that of an eye
specialist rather than that of a painter. A painter tries to convey to us a picture of the world as he
sees it; an ophthalmologist tries to enable us to see the world as it really is. The logotherapist's role
consists of widening and broadening the visual field of the patient so that the whole spectrum of
potential meaning becomes conscious and visible to him.
By declaring that man is responsible and must actualize the potential meaning of his life, I wish to
stress that the true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or his
own psyche, as though it were a closed system. I have termed this constitutive characteristic "the
self-transcendence of human existence." It denotes the fact that being human always points, and is
directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself—be it a meaning to fulfil or another human
being to encounter. The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to a cause to serve or another
person to love—the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself. What is called selfactualization
is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for
it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of
self-transcendence.
Thus far we have shown that the meaning of life always changes, but that it never ceases to be.
According to logotherapy, we can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by creating
a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; and (3) by the
attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering. The first, the way of achievement or
accomplishment, is quite obvious. The second and third need further elaboration.
The second way of finding a meaning in life is by experiencing something—such as goodness, truth
and beauty —by experiencing nature and culture or, last but not least, by experiencing another
human being in his very uniqueness;—by loving him.
THE MEANING OF LOVE
Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one
can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love
he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees
that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized.
Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these
potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes
these potentialities come true.
In logotherapy, love is not interpreted as a mere epiphenomenon3
of sexual drives and instincts in
the sense of a so-called sublimation. Love is as primary a phenomenon as sex. Normally, sex is a
mode of expression for love. Sex is justified, even sanctified, as soon as, but only as long as, it is a
vehicle of love. Thus love is not understood as a mere side-effect of sex; rather, sex is a way of
expressing the experience of that ultimate togetherness which is called love.
The third way of finding a meaning in life is by suffering.
3 A phenomenon that occurs as the result of a primary phenomenon.
THE MEANING OF SUFFERING
We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless
situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed. For what then matters is to bear witness to the
uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn
one's predicament into a human achievement. When we are no longer able to change a situation—
just think of an incurable disease such as inoperable cancer —we are challenged to change
ourselves.
Let me cite a clear-cut example: Once, an elderly general practitioner consulted me because of his
severe depression. He could not overcome the loss of his wife who had died two years before and
whom he had loved above all else. Now, how could I help him? What should I tell him? Well, I
refrained from telling him anything but instead confronted him with the question, "What would
have happened, Doctor, if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive you?" "Oh,"
he said, "for her this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!" Whereupon I replied,
"You see, Doctor, such a suffering has been spared her, and it was you who have spared her this
suffering—to be sure, at the price that now you have to survive and mourn her." He said no word
but shook my hand and calmly left my office. In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the
moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.
Of course, this was no therapy in the proper sense since, first, his despair was no disease; and
second, I could not change his fate; I could not revive his wife. But in that moment I did succeed in
changing his attitude toward his unalterable fate inasmuch as from that time on he could at least see
a meaning in his suffering. It is one of the basic tenets of logotherapy that man's main concern is not
to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life. That is why man is even
ready to suffer, on the condition, to be sure, that his suffering has a meaning.
But let me make it perfectly clear that in no way is suffering necessary to find meaning. I only insist
that meaning is possible even in spite of suffering—provided, certainly, that the suffering is
unavoidable. If it were avoidable, however, the meaningful thing to do would be to remove its cause,
be it psychological, biological or political. To suffer unnecessarily is masochistic rather than heroic.
Edith Weisskopf-Joelson, before her death professor of psychology at the University of Georgia,
contended, in her article on logotherapy, that "our current mental-hygiene philosophy stresses the
idea that people ought to be happy, that unhappiness is a symptom of maladjustment. Such a value
system might be responsible for the fact that the burden of unavoidable unhappiness is increased by
unhappiness about being unhappy."4
And in another paper she expressed the hope that logotherapy
"may help counteract certain unhealthy trends in the present-day culture of the United States,
where the incurable sufferer is given very little opportunity to be proud of his suffering and to
consider it ennobling rather than degrading" so that "he is not only unhappy, but also ashamed of
being unhappy."5
There are situations in which one is cut off from the opportunity to do one's work or to enjoy one's
life; but what never can be ruled out is the unavoidability of suffering. In accepting this challenge to
suffer bravely, life has a meaning up to the last moment, and it retains this meaning literally to the
end. In other words, life's meaning is an unconditional one, for it even includes the potential
meaning of unavoidable suffering.
Let me recall that which was perhaps the deepest experience I had in the concentration camp. The
odds of surviving the camp were no more than one in twenty-eight, as can easily be verified by exact
statistics. It did not even seem possible, let alone probable, that the manuscript of my first book,
which I had hidden in my coat when I arrived at Auschwitz, would ever be rescued. Thus, I had to
undergo and to overcome the loss of my mental child. And now it seemed as if nothing and no one
would survive me; neither a physical nor a mental child of my own! So I found myself confronted
with the question whether under such circumstances my life was ultimately void of any meaning.
4 "Some Comments on a Viennese School of Psychiatry," The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 51 (1955), pp.
701-3.
5 "Logotherapy and Existential Analysis," Ada Psychotherapeutica,6 (1958), pp.193-204.
Not yet did I notice that an answer to this question with which I was wrestling so passionately was
already in store for me, and that soon thereafter this answer would be given to me. This was the
case when I had to surrender my clothes and in turn inherited the worn-out rags of an inmate who
had already been sent to the gas chamber immediately after his arrival at the Auschwitz railway
station. Instead of the many pages of my manuscript, I found in a pocket of the newly acquired coat
one single page torn out of a Hebrew prayer book, containing the most important Jewish prayer,
Shema Yisrael. How should I have interpreted such a "coincidence" other than as a challenge to live
my thoughts instead of merely putting them on paper?
A bit later, I remember, it seemed to me that I would die in the near future. In this critical situation,
however, my concern was different from that of most of my comrades. Their question was, "Will we
survive the camp? For, if not, all this suffering has no meaning." The question which beset me was,
"Has all this suffering, this dying around us, a meaning? For, if not, then ultimately there is no
meaning to survival; for a life whose meaning depends upon such a happenstance—as whether one
escapes or not—ultimately would not be worth living at all."
META-CLINICAL PROBLEMS
More and more, a psychiatrist is approached today by patients who confront him with human
problems rather than neurotic symptoms. Some of the people who nowadays call on a psychiatrist
would have seen a pastor, priest or rabbi in former days. Now they often refuse to be handed over
to a clergyman and instead confront the doctor with questions such as, "What is the meaning of my
life?"
A LOGODRAMA
I should like to cite the following instance: Once, the mother of a boy who had died at the age of
eleven years was admitted to my hospital department after a suicide attempt. Dr. Kurt Kocourek
invited her to join a therapeutic group, and it happened that I stepped into the room where he was
conducting a psychodrama. She was telling her story. At the death of her boy she was left alone with
another, older son, who was crippled, suffering from the effects of infantile paralysis. The poor boy
had to be moved around in a wheelchair. His mother, however, rebelled against her fate. But when
she tried to commit suicide together with him, it was the crippled son who prevented her from doing
so; he liked living! For him, life had remained meaningful. Why was it not so for his mother? How
could her life still have a meaning? And how could we help her to become aware of it?
Improvising, I participated in the discussion, and questioned another woman in the group. I asked
her how old she was and she answered, "Thirty." I replied, "No, you are not thirty but instead eighty
and lying on your deathbed. And now you are looking back on your life, a life which was childless but
full of financial success and social prestige." And then I invited her to imagine what she would feel in
this situation. "What will you think of it? What will you say to yourself?" Let me quote what she
actually said from a tape which was recorded during that session. "Oh, I married a millionaire, I had
an easy life full of wealth, and I lived it up! I flirted with men; I teased them! But now I am eighty; I
have no children of my own. Looking back as an old woman, I cannot see what all that was for;
actually, I must say, my life was a failure!"
I then invited the mother of the handicapped son to imagine herself similarly looking back over her
life. Let us listen to what she had to say as recorded on the tape: "I wished to have children and this
wish has been granted to me; one boy died; the other, however, the crippled one, would have been
sent to an institution if I had not taken over his care. Though he is crippled and helpless, he is after
all my boy. And so I have made a fuller life possible for him; I have made a better human being out of
my son." At this moment, there was an outburst of tears and, crying, she continued: "As for myself, I
can look back peacefully on my life; for I can say my life was full of meaning, and I have tried hard to
fulfil it; I have done my best—I have done the best for my son. My life was no failure!" Viewing her
life as if from her deathbed, she had suddenly been able to see a meaning in it, a meaning which
even included all of her sufferings. By the same token, however, it had become clear as well that a
life of short duration, like that, for example, of her dead boy, could be so rich in joy and love that it
could contain more meaning than a life lasting eighty years.
After a while I proceeded to another question, this time addressing myself to the whole group. The
question was whether an ape which was being used to develop poliomyelitis serum, and for this
reason punctured again and again, would ever be able to grasp the meaning of its suffering.
Unanimously, the group replied that of course it would not; with its limited intelligence, it could not
enter into the world of man, i.e., the only world in which the meaning of its suffering would be
understandable. Then I pushed forward with the following question: "And what about man? Are you
sure that the human world is a terminal point in the evolution of the cosmos? Is it not conceivable
that there is still another dimension, a world beyond man's world; a world in which the question of
an ultimate meaning of human suffering would find an answer?"
THE SUPER-MEANING
This ultimate meaning necessarily exceeds and surpasses the finite intellectual capacities of man; in
logotherapy, we speak in this context of a super-meaning. What is demanded of man is not, as some
existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his
incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms. Logos is deeper than logic.
A psychiatrist who goes beyond the concept of the super-meaning will sooner or later be
embarrassed by his patients, just as I was when my daughter at about six years of age asked me the
question, "Why do we speak of the good Lord?" Whereupon I said, "Some weeks ago, you were
suffering from measles, and then the good Lord sent you full recovery." However, the little girl was
not content; she retorted, "Well, but please, Daddy, do not forget: in the first place, he had sent me
the measles."
However, when a patient stands on the firm ground of religious belief, there can be no objection to
making use of the therapeutic effect of his religious convictions and thereby drawing upon his
spiritual resources. In order to do so, the psychiatrist may put himself in the place of the patient.
That is exactly what I did once, for instance, when a rabbi from Eastern Europe turned to me and
told me his story. He had lost his first wife and their six children in the concentration camp of
Auschwitz where they were gassed, and now it turned out that his second wife was sterile. I
observed that procreation is not the only meaning of life, for then life in itself would become
meaningless, and something which in itself is meaningless cannot be rendered meaningful merely by
its perpetuation. However, the rabbi evaluated his plight as an orthodox Jew in terms of despair that
there was no son of his own who would ever say Kaddish6
for him after his death.
6 A prayer for the dead.
But I would not give up. I made a last attempt to help him by inquiring whether he did not hope to
see his children again in Heaven. However, my question was followed by an outburst of tears, and
now the true reason for his despair came to the fore: he explained that his children, since they died
as innocent martyrs,7
were thus found worthy of the highest place in Heaven, but as for himself he
could not expect, as an old, sinful man, to be assigned the same place. I did not give up but retorted,
"Is it not conceivable, Rabbi, that precisely this was the meaning of your surviving your children: that
you may be purified through these years of suffering, so that finally you, too, though not innocent
like your children, may become worthy of joining them in Heaven? Is it not written in the Psalms that
God preserves all your tears?8
So perhaps none of your sufferings were in vain." For the first time in
many years he found relief from his suffering through the new point of view which I was able to
open up to him.
7 L'kiddush basbem, i.e., for the sanctification of God's name.
8 "Thou hast kept count of my tossings; put thou my tears in thy bottle! Are they not in thy book?" (Ps. 56, 8.)
LIFE'S TRANSITORINESS
Those things which seem to take meaning away from human life include not only suffering but dying
as well. I never tire of saying that the only really transitory aspects of life are the potentialities; but
as soon as they are actualized, they are rendered realities at that very moment; they are saved and
delivered into the past, wherein they are rescued and preserved from transitoriness. For, in the past,
nothing is irretrievably lost but everything irrevocably stored.
Thus, the transitoriness of our existence in no way makes it meaningless. But it does constitute our
responsibleness; for everything hinges upon our realizing the essentially transitory possibilities. Man
constantly makes his choice concerning the mass of present potentialities; which of these will be
condemned to nonbeing and which will be actualized? Which choice will be made an actuality once
and forever, an immortal "footprint in the sands of time"? At any moment, man must decide, for
better or for worse, what will be the monument of his existence.
Usually, to be sure, man considers only the stubble field of transitoriness and overlooks the full
granaries of the past, wherein he had salvaged once and for all his deeds, his joys and also his
sufferings. Nothing can be undone, and nothing can be done away with. I should say having been is
the surest kind of being.
Logotherapy, keeping in mind the essential transitoriness ,, of human existence, is not pessimistic
but rather activistic. To express this point figuratively we might say: The pessimist resembles a man
who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows
thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life
actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and
carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He
can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has
already lived to the fullest. What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any
reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What
reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future
which is in store for him? "No, thank you," he will think. "Instead of possibilities, I have realities in
my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered.
These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, though these are things which
cannot inspire envy."
LOGOTHERAPY AS A TECHNIQUE
A realistic fear, like the fear of death, cannot be tranquilized away by its psychodynamic
interpretation; on the other hand, a neurotic fear, such as agoraphobia, cannot be cured by
philosophical understanding. However, logotherapy has developed a special technique to handle
such cases, too. To understand what is going on whenever this technique is used, we take as a
starting point a condition which is frequently observed in neurotic individuals, namely, anticipatory
anxiety. It is characteristic of this fear that it produces precisely that of which the patient is afraid.
An individual, for example, who is afraid of blushing when he enters a large room and faces many
people will actually be more prone to blush under these circumstances. In this context, one might
amend the saying "The wish is father to the thought" to "The fear is mother of the event."
Ironically enough, in the same way that fear brings to pass what one is afraid of, likewise a forced
intention makes impossible what one forcibly wishes. This excessive intention, or "hyper-intention,"
as I call it, can be observed particularly in cases of sexual neurosis. The more a man tries to
demonstrate his sexual potency or a woman her ability to experience orgasm, the less they are able
to succeed. Pleasure is, and must remain, a side-effect or by-product, and is destroyed and spoiled
to the degree to which it is made a goal in itself.
In addition to excessive intention as described above, excessive attention, or "hyper-reflection," as it
is called in logotherapy, may also be pathogenic (that is, lead to sickness). The following clinical
report will indicate what I mean: A young woman came to me complaining of being frigid. The case
history showed that in her childhood she had been sexually abused by her father. However, it had
not been this traumatic experience in itself which had eventuated in her sexual neurosis, as could
easily be evidenced. For it turned out that, through reading popular psychoanalytic literature, the
patient had lived constantly with the fearful expectation of the toll which her traumatic experience
would someday take. This anticipatory anxiety resulted both in excessive intention to confirm her
femininity and excessive attention cantered upon herself rather than upon her partner. This was
enough to incapacitate the patient for the peak experience of sexual pleasure, since the orgasm was
made an object of intention, and an object of attention as well, instead of remaining an unintended
effect of unreflected dedication and surrender to the partner. After undergoing short-term
logotherapy, the patient's excessive attention and intention of her ability to experience orgasm had
been "dereflected," to introduce another logo-therapeutic term. When her attention was refocused
toward the proper object, i.e., the partner, orgasm established itself spontaneously.9
9 In order to treat cases of sexual impotence, a specific logotherapeutic technique has been developed, based on the
theory of hyper-intention and hyper-reflection as sketched above (Viktor E. Frankl, "The Pleasure Principle and Sexual
Neurosis," The International Journal of Sexology, Vol. 5, No. 3 [1952], pp. 128-30). Of course, this cannot be dealt with in
this brief presentation of the principles of logotherapy.
Logotherapy bases its technique called "paradoxical intention" on the twofold fact that fear brings
about that which one is afraid of, and that hyper-intention makes impossible what one wishes. In
German I described paradoxical intention as early as 1939.10
In this approach the phobic patient is
invited to intend, even if only for a moment, precisely that which he fears.
10 Viktor E. Frankl, "Zur medikamentosen Unterstiitzung der Psy-chotherapie bei Neurosen," Schweizer Archiv fur
Neurologie und Psychiatrie, Vol. 43, pp. 26-31.
Let me recall a case. A young physician consulted me because of his fear of perspiring. Whenever he
expected an outbreak of perspiration, this anticipatory anxiety was enough to precipitate excessive
sweating. In order to cut this circle formation I advised the patient, in the event that sweating should
recur, to resolve deliberately to show people how much he could sweat. A week later he returned to
report that whenever he met anyone who triggered his anticipatory anxiety, he said to himself, "I
only sweated out a quart before, but now I'm going to pour at least ten quarts!" The result was that,
after suffering from his phobia for four years, he was able, after a single session, to free himself
permanently of it within one week.
The reader will note that this procedure consists of a reversal of the patient's attitude, inasmuch as
his fear is replaced by a paradoxical wish. By this treatment, the wind is taken out of the sails of the
anxiety.
Such a procedure, however, must make use of the specifically human capacity for self-detachment
inherent in a sense of humour. This basic capacity to detach one from oneself is actualized whenever
the logotherapeutic technique called paradoxical intention is applied. At the same time, the patient
is enabled to put himself at a distance from his own neurosis. A statement consistent with this is
found in Gordon W. Allport's book, The Individual and His Religion: "The neurotic who learns to
laugh at himself may be on the way to self-management, perhaps to cure."11
11 New York, The Macmillan Co., 1956, p. 92.
Paradoxical intention is the empirical validation and clinical application of Allport's statement.
A few more case reports may serve to clarify this method further. The following patient was a
bookkeeper who had been treated by many doctors and in several clinics without any therapeutic
success. When he was admitted to my hospital department, he was in extreme despair, confessing
that he was close to suicide. For some years, he had suffered from a writer's cramp which had
recently become so severe that he was in danger of losing his job. Therefore, only immediate shortterm
therapy could alleviate the situation. In starting treatment, Dr. Eva Kozdera recommended to
the patient that he do just the opposite of what he usually had done; namely, instead of trying to
write as neatly and legibly as possible, to write with the worst possible scrawl. He was advised to say
to himself, "Now I will show people what a good scribbler I am!" And at the moment in which he
deliberately tried to scribble, he was unable to do so. "I tried to scrawl but simply could not do it," he
said the next day. Within forty-eight hours the patient was in this way freed from his writer's cramp,
and remained free for the observation period after he had been treated. He is a happy man again
and fully able to work.
A similar case, dealing, however, with speaking rather than writing, was related to me by a colleague
in the Laryngological Department of the Vienna Poliklinik Hospital. It was the most severe case of
stuttering he had come across in his many years of practice. Never in his life, as far as the stutterer
could remember, had he been free from his speech trouble, even for a moment, except once. This
happened when he was twelve years old and had hooked a ride on a streetcar. When caught by the
conductor, he thought that the only way to escape would be to elicit his sympathy, and so he tried
to demonstrate that he was just a poor stuttering boy. At that moment, when he tried to stutter, he
was unable to do it. Without meaning to, he had practiced paradoxical intention, though not for
therapeutic purposes.
However, this presentation should not leave the impression that paradoxical intention is effective
only in mono-symptomatic cases. By means of this logotherapeutic technique, my staff at the Vienna
Poliklinik Hospital has succeeded in bringing relief even in obsessive-compulsive neuroses of a most
severe degree and duration. I refer, for instance, to a woman sixty-five years of age who had
suffered for sixty years from a washing compulsion. Dr. Eva Kozdera started logotherapeutic
treatment by means of paradoxical intention, and two months later the patient was able to lead a
normal life. Before admission to the Neurological Department of the Vienna Poliklinik Hospital, she
had confessed, "Life was hell for me." Handicapped by her compulsion and bacteriophobic
obsession, she finally remained in bed all day unable to do any housework. It would not be accurate
to say that she is now completely free of symptoms, for an obsession may come to her mind.
However, she is able to "joke about it," as she says; in short, to apply paradoxical intention.
Paradoxical intention can also be applied in cases of sleep disturbance. The fear of sleeplessness12
results in a hyper-intention to fall asleep, which, in turn, incapacitates the patient to do so. To
overcome this particular fear, I usually advise the patient not to try to sleep but rather to try to do
just the opposite, that is, to stay awake as long as possible. In other words, the hyper-intention to
fall asleep, arising from the anticipatory anxiety of not being able to do so, must be replaced by the
paradoxical intention not to fall asleep, which soon will be followed by sleep.
12 The fear of sleeplessness is, in the majority of cases, due to the patient's ignorance of the fact that the organism
provides itself by itself with the minimum amount of sleep really needed.
Paradoxical intention is no panacea. Yet it lends itself as a useful tool in treating obsessivecompulsive
and phobic conditions, especially in cases with underlying anticipatory anxiety.
Moreover, it is a short-term therapeutic device. However, one should not conclude that such a
short-term therapy necessarily results in only temporary therapeutic effects. One of "the more
common illusions of Freudian orthodoxy," to quote the late Emil A. Gutheil, "is that the durability of
results corresponds to the length of therapy."13
In my files there is, for instance, the case report of a
patient to whom paradoxical intention was administered more than twenty years ago; the
therapeutic effect proved to be, nevertheless, a permanent one.
13 American Journal of Psychotherapy, 10 (1956), p. 134.
One of the most remarkable facts is that paradoxical intention is effective regardless of the
etiological basis of the case concerned. This confirms a statement once made by Edith WeisskopfJoelson:
"Although traditional psychotherapy has insisted that therapeutic practices have to be
based on findings on etiology, it is possible that certain factors might cause neuroses during early
childhood and that entirely different factors might relieve neuroses during adulthood."14
14 "Some Comments on a Viennese School of Psychiatry," The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 51 (1955), pp.
701-3.
As for the actual causation of neuroses, apart from constitutional elements, whether somatic or
psychic in nature, such feedback mechanisms as anticipatory anxiety seem to be a major pathogenic
factor. A given symptom is responded to by a phobia, the phobia triggers the symptom, and the
symptom, in turn, reinforces the phobia. A similar chain of events, however, can be observed in
obsessive-compulsive cases in which the patient fights the ideas which haunt him15
Thereby,
however, he increases their power to disturb him, since pressure precipitates counter pressure.
Again the symptom is reinforced! On the other hand, as soon as the patient stops fighting his
obsessions and instead tries to ridicule them by dealing with them in an ironical way—by applying
paradoxical intention—the vicious circle is cut, the symptom diminishes and finally atrophies. In the
fortunate case where there is no existential vacuum which invites and elicits the symptom, the
patient will not only succeed in ridiculing his neurotic fear but finally will succeed in completely
ignoring it.
15 This is often motivated by the patient's fear that his obsessionsindicate an imminent or even actual psychosis; the
patient is not aware of the empirical fact that an obsessive-compulsive neurosis is immunizing him against a formal
psychosis rather than endangering him in this direction.
As we see, anticipatory anxiety has to be counteracted by paradoxical intention; hyper-intention as
well as hyper-reflection have to be counteracted by dereflection; dereflection, however, ultimately
is not possible except by the patient's orientation toward his specific vocation and mission in life.16
It is not the neurotic's self-concern, whether pity or contempt, which breaks the circle formation; the
cue to cure is self-transcendence!
16 This conviction is supported by Allport who once said, "As the focus of striving shifts from the conflict to selfless goals,
the life as a whole becomes sounder even though the neurosis may never completely disappear" (op. cit., p. 95).
THE COLLECTIVE NEUROSIS
Every age has its own collective neurosis, and every age needs its own psychotherapy to cope with
it. The existential vacuum which is the mass neurosis of the present time can be described as a
private and personal form of nihilism; for nihilism can be defined as the contention that being has no
meaning. As for psychotherapy, however, it will never be able to cope with this state of affairs on a
mass scale if it does not keep itself free from the impact and influence of the contemporary trends
of a nihilistic philosophy; otherwise it represents a symptom of the mass neurosis rather than its
possible cure. Psychotherapy would not only reflect a nihilistic philosophy but also, even though
unwillingly and unwittingly, transmit to the patient what is actually a caricature rather than a true
picture of man.
First of all, there is a danger inherent in the teaching of man's "nothingbutness," the theory that man
is nothing but the result of biological, psychological and sociological conditions, or the product of
heredity and environment. Such a view of man makes a neurotic believe what he is prone to believe
anyway, namely, that he is the pawn and victim of outer influences or inner circumstances. This
neurotic fatalism is fostered and strengthened by a psychotherapy which denies that man is free.
To be sure, a human being is a finite thing, and his freedom is restricted. It is not freedom from
conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand toward the conditions. As I once put it: "As a professor
in two fields, neurology and psychiatry, I am fully aware of the extent to which man is subject to
biological, psychological and sociological conditions. But in addition to being a professor in two fields
I am a survivor of four camps—concentration camps, that is— and as such I also bear witness to the
unexpected extent to which man is capable of defying and braving even the worst conditions
conceivable."17
17 "Value Dimensions in Teaching," a colour television film produced by Hollywood Animators, Inc., for the California
Junior College Association.
CRITIQUE OF PAN-DETERMINISM
Psychoanalysis has often been blamed for its so-called pan-sexualism. I, for one, doubt whether this
reproach has ever been legitimate. However, there is something which seems to me to be an even
more erroneous and dangerous assumption, namely, that which I call "pan-determinism." By that I
mean the view of man which disregards his capacity to take a stand toward any conditions
whatsoever. Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he
gives in to conditions or stands up to them. In other words, man is ultimately self-determining. Man
does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next
moment.
By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant. Therefore, we can
predict his future only within the large framework of a statistical survey referring to a whole group;
the individual personality, however, remains essentially unpredictable. The basis for any predictions
would be represented by biological, psychological or sociological conditions. Yet one of the main
features of human existence is the capacity to rise above such conditions, to grow beyond them.
Man is capable of changing the world for the better if possible, and of changing himself for the
better if necessary.
Let me cite the case of Dr. J. He was the only man I ever encountered in my whole life whom I would
dare to call a Mephistophelean being, a satanic figure. At that time he was generally called "the mass
murderer of Steinhof" (the large mental hospital in Vienna). When the Nazis started their euthanasia
program, he held all the strings in his hands and was so fanatic in the job assigned to him that he
tried not to let one single psychotic individual escape the gas chamber. After the war, when I came
back to Vienna, I asked what had happened to Dr. J. "He had been imprisoned by the Russians in one
of the isolation cells of Steinhof," they told me. "The next day, however, the door of his cell stood
open and Dr. J. was never seen again."
Later I was convinced that, like others, he had with the help of his comrades made his way to South
America. More recently, however, I was consulted by a former Austrian diplomat who had been
imprisoned behind the Iron Curtain for many years, first in Siberia and then in the famous Lubianka
prison in Moscow. While I was examining him neurologically, he suddenly asked me whether I
happened to know Dr. J. After my affirmative reply he continued: "I made his acquaintance in
Lubianka. There he died, at about the age of forty, from cancer of the urinary bladder. Before he
died, however, he showed himself to be the best comrade you can imagine! He gave consolation to
everybody. He lived up to the highest conceivable moral standard. He was the best friend I ever met
during my long years in prison!"
This is the story of Dr. J., "the mass murderer of Steinhof." How can we dare to predict the behaviour
of man? We may predict the movements of a machine, of an automaton; more than this, we may
even try to predict the mechanisms or "dynamisms" of the human psyche as well. But man is more
than psyche.
Freedom, however, is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth.
Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is
responsibleness. In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is
lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why / recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East
Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.
THE PSYCHIATRIC CREDO
There is nothing conceivable which would so condition a man as to leave him without the slightest
freedom. Therefore, a residue of freedom, however limited it may be, is left to man in neurotic and
even psychotic cases. Indeed, the innermost core of the patient's personality is not even touched by
a psychosis.
An incurably psychotic individual may lose his usefulness but yet retain the dignity of a human being.
This is my psychiatric credo. Without it I should not think it worthwhile to be a psychiatrist. For
whose sake? Just for the sake of a damaged brain machine which cannot be repaired? If the patient
were not definitely more, euthanasia would be justified.
PSYCHIATRY REHUMANIZED
For too long a time—for half a century, in fact—psychiatry tried to interpret the human mind merely
as a mechanism, and consequently the therapy of mental disease merely in terms of a technique. I
believe this dream has been dreamt out. What now begins to loom on the horizon are not the
sketches of a psychologised medicine but rather those of a humanized psychiatry.
A doctor, however, who would still interpret his own role mainly as that of a technician would
confess that he sees in his patient nothing more than a machine, instead of seeing the human being
behind the disease!
A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately
self-determining. What he becomes—within the limits of endowment and environment—he has
made out of himself. In the concentration camps, for example, in this living laboratory and on this
testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others
behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on
decisions but not on conditions.
Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being
who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas
chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.
POSTSCRIPT 1984
The Case for a Tragic Optimism*
Dedicated to the memory of Edith Weisskopf-Joelson, whose pioneering efforts in logotherapy in the United States began
as early as 1955 and whose contributions to the field have been invaluable.
* This chapter is based on a lecture I presented at the Third World Congress of Logotherapy, Regensburg University, West
Germany, June 1983.
LET US FIRST ASK OURSELVES WHAT SHOULD BE understood by "a tragic optimism." In brief it means that
one is, and remains, optimistic in spite of the "tragic triad," as it is called in logotherapy, a triad
which consists of those aspects of human existence which may be circumscribed by: (1) pain; (2)
guilt; and (3) death. This chapter, in fact, raises the question, How is it possible to say yes to life in
spite of all that? How, to pose the question differently, can life retain its potential meaning in spite
of its tragic aspects? After all, "saying yes to life in spite of everything," to use the phrase in which
the title of a German book of mine is couched, presupposes that life is potentially meaningful under
any conditions, even those which are most miserable. And this in turn presupposes the human
capacity to creatively turn life's negative aspects into something positive or constructive. In other
words, what matters is to make the best of any given situation. "The best," however, is that which in
Latin is called optimum—hence the reason I speak of a tragic optimism, that is, an optimism in the
face of tragedy and in view of the human potential which at its best always allows for: (1) turning
suffering into a human achievement and accomplishment; (2) deriving from guilt the opportunity to
change oneself for the better; and (3) deriving from life's transitoriness an incentive to take
responsible action.
It must be kept in mind, however, that optimism is not anything to be commanded or ordered. One
cannot even force oneself to be optimistic indiscriminately, against all odds, against all hope. And
what is true for hope is also true for the other two components of the triad inasmuch as faith and
love cannot be commanded or ordered either.
To the European, it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is
commanded and ordered to "be happy." But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must
have a reason to "be happy." Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically.
As we see, a human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to
become happy, last but not least, through actualizing the potential meaning inherent and dormant
in a given situation.
This need for a reason is similar in another specifically human phenomenon—laughter. If you want
anyone to laugh you have to provide him with a reason, e.g., you have to tell him a joke. In no way is
it possible to evoke real laughter by urging him, or having him urge himself, to laugh. Doing so would
be the same as urging people posed in front of a camera to say "cheese," only to find that in the
finished photographs their faces are frozen in artificial smiles.
In logotherapy, such a behaviour pattern is called "hyper-intention." It plays an important role in the
causation of sexual neurosis, be it frigidity or impotence. The more a patient, instead of forgetting
himself through giving himself, directly strives for orgasm, i.e., sexual pleasure, the more this pursuit
of sexual pleasure becomes self-defeating. Indeed, what is called "the pleasure principle" is, rather, a
fun-spoiler.
Once an individual's search for a meaning is successful, it not only renders him happy but also gives
him the capability to cope with suffering. And what happens if one's groping for a meaning has been
in vain? This may well result in a fatal condition. Let us recall, for instance, what sometimes
happened in extreme situations such as prisoner-of-war camps or concentration camps. In the first,
as I was told by American soldiers, a behaviour pattern crystallized to which they referred as "giveup-itis."
In the concentration camps, this behaviour was paralleled by those who one morning, at
five, refused to get up and go to work and instead stayed in the hut, on the straw wet with urine and
faeces. Nothing—neither warnings nor threats—could induce them to change their minds. And then
something typical occurred: they took out a cigarette from deep down in a pocket where they had
hidden it and started smoking. At that moment we knew that for the next forty-eight hours or so we
would watch them dying. Meaning orientation had subsided, and consequently the seeking of
immediate pleasure had taken over.
Is this not reminiscent of another parallel, a parallel that confronts us day by day? I think of those
youngsters who, on a worldwide scale, refer to themselves as the "no future" generation. To be
sure, it is not just a cigarette to which they resort; it is drugs.
In fact, the drug scene is one aspect of a more general mass phenomenon, namely the feeling of
meaninglessness resulting from a frustration of our existential needs which in turn has become a
universal phenomenon in our industrial societies. Today it is not only logotherapists who claim that
the feeling of meaninglessness plays an ever increasing role in the etiology of neurosis. As Irvin D.
Yalom of Stanford University states in Existential Psychotherapy: "Of forty consecutive patients
applying for therapy at a psychiatric outpatient clinic . . . twelve (30 percent) had some major
problem involving meaning (as adjudged from self-ratings, therapists, or independent judges)."1
Thousands of miles east of Palo Alto, the situation differs only by 1 percent; the most recent
pertinent statistics indicate that in Vienna, 29 percent of the population complain that meaning is
missing from their lives.
1 Basic Books, New York, 1980, p. 448.
As to the causation of the feeling of meaninglessness, one may say, albeit in an oversimplifying vein,
that people have enough to live by but nothing to live for; they have the means but no meaning. To
be sure, some do not even have the means. In particular, I think of the mass of people who are today
unemployed. Fifty years ago, I published a study2
devoted to a specific type of depression I had
diagnosed in cases of young patients suffering from what I called "unemployment neurosis." And I
could show that this neurosis really originated in a twofold erroneous identification: being jobless
was equated with being useless, and being useless was equated with having a meaningless life.
Consequently, whenever I succeeded in persuading the patients to volunteer in youth organizations,
adult education, public libraries and the like—in other words, as soon as they could fill their
abundant free time with some sort of unpaid but meaningful activity—their depression disappeared
although their economic situation had not changed and their hunger was the same. The truth is that
man does not live by welfare alone.
2 "Wirtschaftskrise und Seelenleben vom Standpunkt des Jugend-beraters," Sozialdrztliche Rundschau, Vol. 4 (1933), pp.
43-46.
Along with unemployment neurosis, which is triggered by an individual's socioeconomic situation,
there are other types of depression which are traceable back to psychodynamic or biochemical
conditions, whichever the case may be. Accordingly, psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy are
indicated respectively. Insofar as the feeling of meaninglessness is concerned, however, we should
not overlook and forget that, per se, it is not a matter of pathology; rather than being the sign and
symptom of a neurosis, it is, I would say, the proof of one's humanness. But although it is not caused
by anything pathological, it may well cause a pathological reaction; in other words, it is potentially
pathogenic. Just consider the mass neurotic syndrome so pervasive in the young generation: there is
ample empirical evidence that the three facets of this syndrome—depression, aggression,
addiction—are due to what is called in logo-therapy "the existential vacuum," a feeling of emptiness
and meaninglessness.
It goes without saying that not each and every case of depression is to be traced back to a feeling of
meaninglessness, nor does suicide—in which depression sometimes eventuates—always result from
an existential vacuum. But even if each and every case of suicide had not been undertaken out of a
feeling of meaninglessness, it may well be that an individual's impulse to take his life would have
been overcome had he been aware of some meaning and purpose worth living for.
If, thus, a strong meaning orientation plays a decisive role in the prevention of suicide, what about
intervention in cases in which there is a suicide risk? As a young doctor I spent four years in Austria's
largest state hospital where I was in charge of the pavilion in which severely depressed patients
were accommodated—most of them having been admitted after a suicide attempt. I once calculated
that I must have explored twelve thousand patients during those four years. What accumulated was
quite a store of experience from which I still draw whenever I am confronted with someone who is
prone to suicide. I explain to such a person that patients have repeatedly told me how happy they
were that the suicide attempt had not been successful; weeks, months, years later, they told me, it
turned out that there was a solution to their problem, an answer to their question, a meaning to
their life. "Even if things only take such a good turn in one of a thousand cases," my explanation
continues, "who can guarantee that in your case it will not happen one day, sooner or later? But in
the first place, you have to live to see the day on which it may happen, so you have to survive in
order to see that day dawn, and from now on the responsibility for survival does not leave you."
Regarding the second facet of the mass neurotic syndrome—aggression—let me cite an experiment
once conducted by Carolyn Wood Sherif. She had succeeded in artificially building up mutual
aggressions between groups of boy scouts, and observed that the aggressions only subsided when
the youngsters dedicated themselves to a collective purpose—that is, the joint task of dragging out
of the mud a carriage in which food had to be brought to their camp. Immediately, they were not
only challenged but also united by a meaning they had to fulfil3
3 For further information on this experiment, see Viktor E. Frankl, The Unconscious God, New York, Simon and Schuster,
1978, p. 140;and Viktor E. Frankl, The Unheard Cry for Meaning, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1978, p. 36.
As for the third issue, addiction, I am reminded of the findings presented by Annemarie von
Forstmeyer who noted that, as evidenced by tests and statistics, 90 percent of the alcoholics she
studied had suffered from an abysmal feeling of meaninglessness. Of the drug addicts studied by
Stanley Krippner, 100 percent believed that "things seemed meaningless."4
4 For further information, see The Unconscious God, pp. 97-100; and The Unheard Cry for Meaning, pp. 26-28.
Now let us turn to the question of meaning itself. To begin with, I would like to clarify that, in the
first place, the logotherapist is concerned with the potential meaning inherent and dormant in all
the single situations one has to face throughout his or her life. Therefore, I will not be elaborating
here on the meaning of one's life as a whole, although I do not deny that such a long-range meaning
does exist. To invoke an analogy, consider a movie: it consists of thousands upon thousands of
individual pictures, and each of them makes sense and carries a meaning, yet the meaning of the
whole film cannot be seen before its last sequence is shown. However, we cannot understand the
whole film without having first understood each of its components, each of the individual pictures.
Isn't it the same with life? Doesn't the final meaning of life, too, reveal itself, if at all, only at its end,
on the verge of death? And doesn't this final meaning, too, depend on whether or not the potential
meaning of each single situation has been actualized to the best of the respective individual's
knowledge and belief?
The fact remains that meaning, and its perception, as seen from the logotherapeutic angle, is
completely down to earth rather than afloat in the air or resident in an ivory tower. Sweepingly, I
would locate the cognition of meaning —of the personal meaning of a concrete situation—midway
between an "aha" experience along the lines of Karl Biihler's concept and a Gestalt perception, say,
along the lines of Max Wertheimer's theory. The perception of meaning differs from the classical
concept of Gestalt perception insofar as the latter implies the sudden awareness of a "figure" on a
"ground," whereas the perception of meaning, as I see it, more specifically boils down to becoming
aware of a possibility against the background of reality or, to express it in plain words, to becoming
aware of what can be done about a given situation.
And how does a human being go about finding meaning? As Charlotte Buhler has stated: "All we can
do is study the lives of people who seem to have found their answers to the questions of what
ultimately human life is about as against those who have not."5
In addition to such a biographical
approach, however, we may as well embark on a biological approach. Logotherapy conceives of
conscience as a prompter which, if need be, indicates the direction in which we have to move in a
given life situation. In order to carry out such a task, conscience must apply a measuring stick to the
situation one is confronted with, and this situation has to be evaluated in the light of a set of criteria,
in the light of a hierarchy of values. These values, however, cannot be espoused and adopted by us
on a conscious level—they are something that we are. They have crystallized in the course of the
evolution of our species; they are founded on our biological past and are rooted in our biological
depth. Konrad Lorenz might have had something similar in mind when he developed the concept of
a biological a priori, and when both of us recently discussed my own view on the biological
foundation of the valuing process, he enthusiastically expressed his accord. In any case, if a prereflective
axiological self-understanding exists, we may assume that it is ultimately anchored in our
biological heritage.
5 "Basic Theoretical Concepts of Humanistic Psychology," American Psychologist, XXVI (April 1971), p. 378.
As logotherapy teaches, there are three main avenues on which one arrives at meaning in life. The
first is by creating a work or by doing a deed. The second is by experiencing something or
encountering someone; in other words, meaning can be found not only in work but also in love.
Edith Weisskopf-Joelson observed in this context that the logo-therapeutic "notion that experiencing
can be as valuable as achieving is therapeutic because it compensates for our one-sided emphasis on
the external world of achievement at the expense of the internal world of experience."6
6 "The Place of Logotherapy in the World Today," The International Forum for Logotherapy, Vol. 1, No. 3 (1980), pp. 3-7.
Most important, however, is the third avenue to meaning in life: even the helpless victim of a
hopeless situation, facing a fate he cannot change, may rise above himself, may grow beyond
himself, and by so doing change himself. He may turn a personal tragedy into a triumph. Again it was
Edith Weisskopf-Joelson who, as mentioned on, once expressed the hope that logotherapy "may
help counteract certain unhealthy trends in the present-day culture of the United States, where the
incurable sufferer is given very little opportunity to be proud of his suffering and to consider it
ennobling rather than degrading" so that "he is not only unhappy, but also ashamed of being
unhappy."
For a quarter of a century I ran the neurological department of a general hospital and bore witness
to my patients' capacity to turn their predicaments into human achievements. In addition to such
practical experience, empirical evidence is also available which supports the possibility that one may
find meaning in suffering. Researchers at the Yale University School of Medicine "have been
impressed by the number of prisoners of war of the Vietnam war who explicitly claimed that
although their captivity was extraordinarily stressful—filled with torture, disease, malnutrition, and
solitary confinement—they nevertheless . . . benefited from the captivity experience, seeing it as a
growth experience."7
7 W. H. Sledge, J. A. Boydstun and A. J. Rabe, "Self-Concept Changes Related to War Captivity," Arch. Gen. Psychiatry, 37
(1980), pp. 430-443But
the most powerful arguments in favour of "a tragic optimism" are those which in Latin are called
argumenta ad hominem. Jerry Long, to cite an example, is a living testimony to "the defiant power of
the human spirit," as it is called in logotherapy8
To quote the Texarkana Gazette, "Jerry Long has
been paralyzed from his neck down since a diving accident which rendered him a quadriplegic three
years ago. He was 17 when the accident occurred. Today Long can use his mouth stick to type. He
'attends' two courses at Community College via a special telephone. The intercom allows Long to
both hear and participate in class discussions. He also occupies his time by reading, watching
television and writing." And in a letter I received from him, he writes: "I view my life as being
abundant with meaning and purpose. The attitude that I adopted on that fateful day has become my
personal credo for life: I broke my neck, it didn't break me. I am currently enrolled in my first
psychology course in college. I believe that my handicap will only enhance my ability to help others. I
know that without the suffering, the growth that I have achieved would have been impossible."
8 "The Defiant Power of the Human Spirit" was in fact the title of a paper presented by Long at the Third World Congress of
Logotherapy in June 1983.
Is this to say that suffering is indispensable to the discovery of meaning? In no way. I only insist that
meaning is available in spite of—nay, even through—suffering, provided, as noted in Part Two of this
book, that the suffering is unavoidable. If it is avoidable, the meaningful thing to do is to remove its
cause, for unnecessary suffering is masochistic rather than heroic. If, on the other hand, one cannot
change a situation that causes his suffering, he can still choose his attitude9
Long had not chosen to
break his neck, but he did decide not to let himself be broken by what had happened to him.
9 I won't forget an interview I once heard on Austrian TV, given by a Polish cardiologist who, during World War II, had
helped organize the Warsaw ghetto upheaval. "What a heroic deed," exclaimed the reporter. "Listen," calmly replied the
doctor, "to take a gun and shoot is no great thing; but if the SS leads you to a gas chamber or to a mass grave to execute
you on the spot, and you can't do anything about it—except for going your way with dignity—you see, this is what I would
call heroism." Attitudinal heroism, so to speak.
As we see, the priority stays with creatively changing the situation that causes us to suffer. But the
superiority goes to the "know-how to suffer," if need be. And there is empirical evidence that—
literally—the "man in the street" is of the same opinion. Austrian public-opinion pollsters recently
reported that those held in highest esteem by most of the people interviewed are neither the great
artists nor the great scientists, neither the great statesmen nor the great sports figures, but those
who master a hard lot with their heads held high.
In turning to the second aspect of the tragic triad, namely guilt, I would like to depart from a
theological concept that has always been fascinating to me. I refer to what is called mysterium
iniquitatis, meaning, as I see it, that a crime in the final analysis remains inexplicable inasmuch as it
cannot be fully traced back to biological, psychological and/or sociological factors. Totally explaining
one's crime would be tantamount to explaining away his or her guilt and to seeing in him or her not
a free and responsible human being but a machine to be repaired. Even criminals themselves abhor
this treatment and prefer to be held responsible for their deeds. From a convict serving his sentence
in an Illinois penitentiary I received a letter in which he deplored that "the criminal never has a
chance to explain himself. He is offered a variety of excuses to choose from. Society is blamed and in
many instances the blame is put on the victim." Furthermore, when I addressed the prisoners in San
Quentin, I told them that "you are human beings like me, and as such you were free to commit a
crime, to become guilty. Now, however, you are responsible for overcoming guilt by rising above it,
by growing beyond yourselves, by changing for the better." They felt understood.10
And from Frank
E.W., an ex-prisoner, I received a note which stated that he had "started a logotherapy group for exfelons.
We are 27 strong and the newer ones are staying out of prison through the peer strength of
those of us from the original group. Only one returned— and he is now free."11
10 See also Joseph B. Fabry, The Pursuit of Meaning, New York, Harper and Row, 1980.
11 Cf. Viktor E. Frankl, The Unheard Cry for Meaning, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1978, pp. 42-43.
As for the concept of collective guilt, I personally think that it is totally unjustified to hold one person
responsible for the behaviour of another person or a collective of persons. Since the end of World
War II I have not become weary of publicly arguing against the collective guilt concept.12
Sometimes,
however, it takes a lot of didactic tricks to detach people from their superstitions. An American
woman once confronted me with the reproach, "How can you still write some of your books in
German, Adolf Hitler's language?" In response, I asked her if she had knives in her kitchen, and when
she answered that she did, I acted dismayed and shocked, exclaiming, "How can you still use knives
after so many killers have used them to stab and murder their victims?" She stopped objecting to my
writing books in German.
12 See also Viktor E. Frankl, Psychotherapy and Existentialism, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1967.
The third aspect of the tragic triad concerns death. But it concerns life as well, for at any time each
of the moments of which life consists is dying, and that moment will never recur. And yet is not this
transitoriness a reminder that challenges us to make the best possible use of each moment of our
lives? It certainly is, and hence my imperative: Live as if you were living for the second time and had
acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now.
In fact, the opportunities to act properly, the potentialities to fulfil a meaning, are affected by the
irreversibility of our lives. But also the potentialities alone are so affected. For as soon as we have
used an opportunity and have actualized a potential meaning, we have done so once and for all. We
have rescued it into the past wherein it has been safely delivered and deposited. In the past, nothing
is irretrievably lost, but rather, on the contrary, everything is irrevocably stored and treasured. To be
sure, people tend to see only the stubble fields of transitoriness but overlook and forget the full
granaries of the past into which they have brought the harvest of their lives: the deeds done, the
loves loved, and last but not least, the sufferings they have gone through with courage and dignity.
From this one may see that there is no reason to pity old people. Instead, young people should envy
them. It is true that the old have no opportunities, no possibilities in the future. But they have more
than that. Instead of possibilities in the future, they have realities in the past—the potentialities they
have actualized, the meanings they have fulfilled, the values they have realized—and nothing and
nobody can ever remove these assets from the past.
In view of the possibility of finding meaning in suffering, life's meaning is an unconditional one, at
least potentially. That unconditional meaning, however, is paralleled by the unconditional value of
each and every person. It is that which warrants the indelible quality of the dignity of man. Just as
life remains potentially meaningful under any conditions, even those which are most miserable, so
too does the value of each and every person stay with him or her, and it does so because it is based
on the values that he or she has realized in the past, and is not contingent on the usefulness that he
or she may or may not retain in the present.
More specifically, this usefulness is usually defined in terms of functioning for the benefit of society.
But today's society is characterized by achievement orientation, and consequently it adores people
who are successful and happy and, in particular, it adores the young. It virtually ignores the value of
all those who are otherwise, and in so doing blurs the decisive difference between being valuable in
the sense of dignity and being valuable in the sense of usefulness. If one is not cognizant of this
difference and holds that an individual's value stems only from his present usefulness, then, believe
me, one owes it only to personal inconsistency not to plead for euthanasia along the lines of Hitler's
program, that is to say, "mercy" killing of all those who have lost their social usefulness, be it
because of old age, incurable illness, mental deterioration, or whatever handicap they may suffer.
Confounding the dignity of man with mere usefulness arises from a conceptual confusion that in
turn may be traced back to the contemporary nihilism transmitted on many an academic campus
and many an analytical couch. Even in the setting of training analyses such an indoctrination may
take place. Nihilism does not contend that there is nothing, but it states that everything is
meaningless. And George A. Sargent was right when he promulgated the concept of "learned
meaninglessness." He himself remembered a therapist who said, "George, you must realize that the
world is a joke. There is no justice, everything is random. Only when you realize this will you
understand how silly it is to take yourself seriously. There is no grand purpose in the universe. It just
is. There's no particular meaning in what decision you make today about how to act."13
One must
not generalize such a criticism. In principle, training is indispensable, but if so, therapists should see
their task in immunizing the trainee against nihilism rather than inoculating him with the cynicism
that is a defence mechanism against their own nihilism.
13 "Transference and Counter transference in Logotherapy," The International Forum for Logotherapy, Vol. 5, No. 2
(Fall/Winter 1982),pp. 115-18.
Logotherapists may even conform to some of the training and licensing requirements stipulated by
the other schools of psychotherapy. In other words, one may howl with the wolves, if need be, but
when doing so, one should be, I would urge, a sheep in wolf's clothing. There is no need to become
untrue to the basic concept of man and the principles of the philosophy of life inherent in
logotherapy. Such a loyalty is not hard to maintain in view of the fact that, as Elisabeth S. Lukas once
pointed out, "throughout the history of psychotherapy, there has never been a school as
undogmatic as logotherapy."14
And at the First World Congress of Logotherapy (San Diego,
California, November 6-8, 1980) I argued not only for the rehumanisation of psychotherapy but also
for what I called "the degurufication of logotherapy." My interest does not lie in raising parrots that
just rehash "their master's voice," but rather in passing the torch to "independent and inventive,
innovative and creative spirits."
14 Logotherapy is not imposed on those who are interested in psychotherapy. It is not comparable to an Oriental bazaar
but rather to a supermarket. In the former, the customer is talked into buying something. In the latter, he is shown, and
offered, various things from which he may pick what he deems usable and valuable.
Sigmund Freud once asserted, "Let one attempt to expose a number of the most diverse people
uniformly to hunger.
With the increase of the imperative urge of hunger all individual differences will blur, and in their
stead will appear the uniform expression of the one unstilled urge." Thank heaven, Sigmund Freud
was spared knowing the concentration camps from the inside. His subjects lay on a couch designed
in the plush style of Victorian culture, not in the filth of Auschwitz. There, the "individual differences"
did not "blur" but, on the contrary, people became more different; people unmasked themselves,
both the swine and the saints. And today you need no longer hesitate to use the word "saints": think
of Father Maximilian Kolbe who was starved and finally murdered by an injection of carbolic acid at
Auschwitz and who in 1983 was canonized.
You may be prone to blame me for invoking examples that are the exceptions to the rule. "Sed
omnia praeclara tarn difficilia quam rara sunt" (but everything great is just as difficult to realize as it
is rare to find) reads the last sentence of the Ethics of Spinoza. You may of course ask whether we
really need to refer to "saints." Wouldn't it suffice just to refer to decent people? It is true that they
form a minority. More than that, they always will remain a minority. And yet I see therein the very
challenge to join the minority. For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse
unless each of us does his best.
So, let us be alert—alert in a twofold sense: Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And
since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.
About the Author
Viktor E. Frankl is Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at the University of Vienna Medical School.
He is the founder of what has come to be called the Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy (after
Freud's psychoanalysis and Adler's individual psychology)—the school of logotherapy. His work has
been called "perhaps the most significant thinking since Freud and Adler" by the American Journal of
Psychiatry.
Born in 1905, Dr. Frankl received the degrees of Doctor of Medicine and Doctor of Philosophy from
the University of Vienna. During World War II he spent three years at Auschwitz, Dachau, and other
concentration camps.
Dr. Frankl first published in 1924 in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and has since
published thirty books, which have been translated into twenty-three languages, including Japanese
and Chinese. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard, as well as at universities in Pittsburgh, San
Diego, and Dallas. Honorary doctoral degrees have been conferred upon him by twenty-seven
universities, and the American Psychiatric Association has honoured him with the Oskar Pfister
Award. He has been a guest lecturer at universities throughout the world and has made more than
ninety lecture tours throughout the United States alone.