Concept
Logotherapy
Overview
Logotherapy is a form of existential therapy developed by neurologist and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl. It is founded on the premise that the primary motivational force of individuals is to find meaning in life. Frankl describes it as "the Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy" along with Freud's psychoanalysis and Alfred Adler's individual psychology.
Logotherapy is based on an existential analysis focusing on Kierkegaard's will to meaning as opposed to Adler's Nietzschean doctrine of will to power or Freud's will to pleasure. Rather than power or pleasure, logotherapy is founded upon the belief that striving to find meaning in life is the primary, most powerful motivating and driving force in humans. A short introduction to this system is given in Frankl's most famous book, Man's Search for Meaning (1946), in which he outlines how his theories helped him to survive his Holocaust experience and how that experience further developed and reinforced his theories. Presently, there are a number of logotherapy institutes around the world.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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I mean _mechanical activity_. It is indisputable that a suffering existence can be thereby considerably alleviated. This fact is called to-day by the somewhat ignoble title of the "Blessing of work." The alleviation consists in the attention of the sufferer being absolutely diverted from suffering, in the incessant monopoly of the consciousness by action, so that consequently there is little room left for…
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals The Complete Works, Volume Thirteen, edited by Dr. Oscar Levy.
States what Logotherapy is; the author is tied to Logotherapy in the knowledge graph.
The extreme case would be the man without any power to forget, who is condemned to see "becoming" everywhere. Such a man believes no more in himself or his own existence, he sees everything fly past in an eternal succession, and loses himself in the stream of becoming. At last, like the logical disciple of Heraclitus, he will hardly dare to raise his finger. Forgetfulness is a property of all action; just as not…
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thoughts Out of Season, Part II
The author is tied to Logotherapy in the knowledge graph.
Within the sphere of philosophic thought there have been two typical attempts to provide a working representative of the absolute goal. Both start from the conception of a whole--an absolute--which is "immanent" in human life. The perfect or complete ideal is not a mere ideal; it is operative here and now. But it is present only implicitly, "potentially," or in an enfolded condition.
John Dewey, Democracy and Education
States what Logotherapy is.
Philosophers who discussed Logotherapy
Related ideas
- Friedrich Nietzsche
- Greek language
- Hedonism
- Viktor Frankl
- Positive psychology
- Materialism
- Meaning of life
- Authoritarianism
- Psychoanalysis
- Rollo May
- Sigmund Freud
- Søren Kierkegaard
- Schizophrenia
- Logos
- Nous
- Determinism
- God
- Cognitive behavioral therapy
- Alfred Adler
- Anxiety
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Existentialism.