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Logotherapy, an existential holistic approach developed by Viktor E. Frankl, has been called the third Viennese school of psychotherapyfollowing Freudian psychoanalysis and Adlerian individual psychology. This article presents the philosophy, historical development, current application, and future possibilities of Franklian therapy.
HISTORY OF LOGOTHERAPY
Logotherapy has been called the Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy. The first such school was Psychoanalysis, founded by Sigmund Freud, who around the turn of the century, discovered an important human dimension that was a new consideration in the medical world: the human psyche. He proposed that certain physical sicknesses can originate in the psychological dimension, especially in situations in which a person's will to pleasure is repressed into the unconscious.
The second Viennese school of psychotherapy was founded by Alfred Adler, who was a colleague of Freud. Adler agreed with Freud's premise that neuroses and sickness can be caused by psychological repressions, but maintained that such conditions may be caused not only by a repressed will to pleasure, but also by a repressed will to power. Just as Freud hypothesized that every child has sexual attractions and hostilities toward the parents, so Adler hypothesized that all children have power struggles with their parents. A repressed will to power during childhood may result in an inferiority complex which can lead to a low self image or to overcompensation and a power trip. To cure inferiority-caused sickness, Adler developed his own school of psychotherapy, calling it Individual Psychology, because of his emphasis on the uniqueness of the individual.
The above is, of course, an oversimplification of Freud's and Adler's theories, and is intended only to identify one important aspect in the historical developments that led from Freud to Adler to Frankl. Although Adler was at one time a favorite colleague of Freud, Adler ultimately went theoretically beyond his mentor. Likewise, Frankl was a favorite student of Adler, and Frankl, too, went beyond his mentor to the point that he was excluded from Adler's Society for Individual Psychology.
Frankl hypothesized that not only a repressed will to pleasure or power can lead to sickness, but also that a repressed will to meaning can have similar results. In fact, he placed the will to meaning at a higher level than the other causal...