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Introduction to Logotherapy

Logotherapy is a form of psychotherapy developed by an Austrian psychiatrist named Victor Frankl. The word "logotherapy" comes from the Greek word "logos," which means word, reason or meaning. In short, logotherapy is a psychotherapy that seeks to help its patients discover a meaning to their life.

  1. Victor Frankl

    • Victor Frankl was born in 1905. In 1942, Frankl was arrested by the Nazis and taken to Theresienstadt concentration camp, and then in 1944 he was transported to Auschwitz. He was freed by the Americans in 1945.

      His experience in the concentration camps provided him with the foundation for logotherapy. He wondered why some prisoners had hope and others did not, why some died and others lived. At last he came to the conclusion that the only real difference between these groups of people was that those who survived the brutal realities of the Nazi concentration camps were able to do so because they had a reason to live.

    The Basics of Logotherapy

    • The tenets of logotherapy can be summarized in three points.

      1. Regardless of how horrible conditions get, life always has meaning.

      2. The only way you can survive the most horrible of conditions is by finding meaning to your life.

      3. You can find meaning in your actions, in what you experience or in your moral and religious beliefs.

    Freedom of Action

    • The basis of logotherapy is that the human person is always free. A person's freedom is her most basic spiritual power. Though a person may experience a loss of physical freedom (due to imprisonment or illness), her spiritual freedom remains intact. A person is always free to choose how to act in any circumstance. This freedom of action is largely determined by the meaning she has attached to the circumstance.

    Concrete Meaning

    • Logotherapy teaches that a person must find meaning in objective reality. Within each moment, meaning must be found. The inability to find meaning creates a sense of frustration and emptiness. Thus it stands to reason that the more dire a person's situation, the more imperative it is for him to find meaning in that situation.

    Logotherapy

    • The goal of logotherapy is to help a person find meaning in her life. Logotherapy does not seek to give a person meaning. Rather, logotherapy helps a person examine her concrete situations in order to discover her own meaning in those situations.

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