Logotherapy. Elisabeth Lukas
as this meaning is too big to be grasped by humans, it must always be perceived and sensed anew. It follows that logotherapy is a positive worldview.
“There is no situation in life that is really meaningless. This is because the seemingly negative aspects of human existence, especially the tragic triad which consists of suffering, guilt and death, can also be fashioned into something positive, into an achievement, if only they are faced with the right composure and attitude.”4
The figure shows that each pillar corresponds to a disciplinary form of logotherapy. Freedom of will is the basis for its concept of the human being and shapes its anthropological foundations. The will to meaning is the starting point and pivotal point of its therapeutic approach and therefore pervades all of its psychotherapeutic methods. The meaning of life, that is, belief in the unconditional meaningfulness of human life under any and all circumstances, belongs to its worldview, to its philosophy.
In this textbook of logotherapy we will principally be thinking about logotherapy as a therapeutic approach. To apply its methods successfully, it is essential to get to know at least the main features of its concept of the human being. It is just as essential to apply the worldview of logotherapy to preventative and follow-up care. For this reason, and to provide a broader view of the philosophy of its teachings, a brief description of the anthropological foundations of logotherapy is given first, followed by an explanation of how logotherapy deals with psychic disturbances.
Before we begin, it is appropriate to answer a frequently asked question: how scientific can a structure of thought be, when it is built on two pillars which cannot be empirically verified, as is the case with the first and third pillars? Well, every form of psychotherapy has its own specific axiomatic basis. The entire field of medicine requires at least one such pillar to justify its existence, namely the belief that human life is of value and is to be preserved. Without this axiom there would be no reason to treat sick people, or to operate on them; one could simply allow them to die. It cannot be scientifically proven that there is any advantage in prolonging life, especially in the context of global overpopulation. We should not, however, allow our belief in the fundamental importance and value of human life to be shaken; it resonates deeply within us, and it is strengthened in logotherapy by the elements of meaningfulness.
The problem of freedom of will is even more controversial. But here as well, all forms of psychotherapy must at least agree on the basic assumption that a patient is capable of changing. Without this assumption, therapeutic efforts would be pointless from the outset, and yet such a capacity for change cannot be proved, or if so, only in retrospect.
“Logotherapy and existential analysis are admittedly based on clinical practice, but one cannot evade the fact that they flow into a meta-clinical theory, as all psychotherapies have as an implicit basis; and this theory implies a vision, that is, the vision of a concept of the human being. In this way we come full circle: clinical practice is always determined and influenced to a large extent by the concept of the human being that the doctor brings to the patient, even if it is unconscious and uncontrolled. In fact, every psychotherapy plays itself out against an a priori horizon. There is always an anthropological concept at its base, whether the psychotherapy is conscious of it or not.” 5
The Concept of Dimensional Ontology
Viktor E. Frankl presented his concept of the human being by means of his concept of “dimensional ontology”. He unfolded being human into three dimensions: somatic, psychological, and spiritual. The analogy with the three-dimensionality of space makes it clear that this is not a theory of three “layers”. The human dimensions of being interpenetrate one another as completely as the three dimensions of space: length, height and breadth. For example, it would be ridiculous to say that the spatial dimension “width” begins where the spatial dimension “length” ends. It is the same for human beings: for a human all three dimensions of being meet at every “point”. Frankl spoke of a “unity in spite of diversity”.
The somatic level of a human is easy to define: it corresponds to all physical phenomena. It includes organic cell activity and biological-physiological bodily functions, including all associated chemical and physical processes.
The psychic plane of the human being is to be understood as the sphere of condition: mood, instincts, desires, affects. To these psychic phenomena we add intellectual talent, acquired patterns of behaviour, and social formation. In short, cognition and emotion are “at home” in the psychic dimension.
What is left over for the spiritual plane? An endless amount! The “primal human” aspect, namely the freedom to determine one’s attitudes to body and condition. Independent decision-making (“intentionality”), technical and artistic interests, creative activity, religiosity and ethical sensibility (“conscience”), an understanding of values and love are all located in the spiritual dimension of the human being.
If we were to divide the living beings on earth according to their participation in the different dimensions of being, we would arrive at the following, with a minimal number of transitional forms:
We see that the spiritual plane (which has nothing to do with intelligence or understanding) is the real human one, the “uniquely human” dimension; in logotherapy it is also called the “noetic dimension”, from the Greek word nous (spirit or mind). The other two levels, which humans share with animals, i.e. the somatic and the psychosocial dimensions (animals also have emotions and cognition to a certain extent!), are characterised in logotherapy as the “psychophysical” or the “subnoetic dimensions”.
Because logotherapy focuses primarily on the noetic dimension, Frankl used the formulation: “Logotherapy is a psychotherapy from the spiritual and towards the spiritual.” In this respect, it stands out from the other schools of psychotherapy, which focus more on the psychic dimension, dedicating themselves to the elucidation of buried drives or of human learning and developmental history. The results, particularly those which have been verified experimentally, are by no means questioned by logotherapy, but they are identified as localised on a two-dimensional plane. Frankl’s contribution was to integrate the uniquely human aspects of being human into conventional psychotherapy, which until then had literally been “spiritless” psychotherapy.
“In this three-dimensional schema, it is now apparent from the three-dimensionality of the human being that the uniquely human can only appear when we venture into the spiritual dimension. A human is only visible as a human once we take this “third” dimension into consideration: only then do we see the human as such. While the vegetative life of man can be explained within the bodily dimension, and his animalistic life, if necessary, within the psychic dimension, human existence as such, personal spiritual existence does not fit into this two-dimensional “plane” of mere psychosomatics. Homo humanus can at most be projected onto this two-dimensional plane. In fact, the essence of what we call projection is that one dimension is sacrificed – that is, projected onto the nextlower dimension.
Such a projection has two consequences: It leads to 1. ambiguity and 2. contradictions. In the first case the reason for this consequence is the following: different things are mapped onto the same thing by projection. In the second case, the reason is found in the following fact: one and the same thing maps onto different things in different projections.”6
Psychotherapy with its many different approaches is not exactly lacking in ambiguities and contradictions … with reference to Frankl’s words, it can be assumed that it still suffers from the consequences of improper projections. The most human things in man, like value structures or the inborn desire for meaning, must not be lost in the jungle of psychological interpretations. Logotherapy endeavours to avoid this error by perceiving the spiritual as its own human dimension – the real one, if not the only one – and by investigating whether the influence of the spiritual on the other two dimensions can be used for therapeutic purposes. For this reason,