4 LOGOS AND E X I S T E N C E IN PSYCHOTHERAPY VICTOR E . F R A N K L , M.D., P H . D . * Vienna, Austria Those who wish to understand the current position of existentialanalytic research must turn to its basic position which has been—an opposition. Its object was the ' psychologism'' in psychotherapy. There was one phase in the development of psychology as a science which could be termed, not without reason, "Psychology without Soul.'' This form was outmoded long before the now classic therapeutic systems were evolved. The latter, then, developed into and remained a ' Psychology without Spirit!" Inasmuch as we understand under "psychologism" the lack of differentiation between the spiritual and emotional components of the human personality, the established systems may be termed "psychologists" in their approach. The spirit-less psychology in which they are rooted neglects spiritual values both in the sense of what since Hegel was called the "subjective spirit" and in the sense of the "objective spirit." Their basic mistake is to treat a person as if he were an object. A person is a spiritual entity, a "subjective spirit," which does not lend itself to any form of "objectivization" or materialization. In referring to a person merely as to an object, we tend to overlook his fundamental property. The counterpart to this error which characterizes the psychologists approach consists, however, not only in treating the spiritual person as a thing (turning thus a subject into an object), but also in treating spiritual acts as objects. Spiritual acts are volitional in essence, are directed toward transcendental goals, and thus have, themselves, an object. This object, by necessity, gets out of sight in the moment the acts themselves are considered to be the objects. Their own object—the spiritual goal of the spiritual acts—thus disappears from the visual field whenever these acts are subjected to an only-psychological, i.e., psychologistie analysis. Just as only an existential analysis is capable of safeguarding the subjective character of the spiritual person, only a phenomenonological analysis is capable of maintaining in sight the objective character of the realm of senses and values (the "objective spirit"). The twofold error 6 6 * Authorized translation by Anna Stearns, M.A., Montreal, Canada. 8 LOGOS AND EXISTENCE IN PSYCHOTHERAPY 9 which every psychologistic approach commits lies, on the one hand, in the objectivization of the subject (spiritual person, "subjective spirit"), and, on the other, in treating an object (the transcendental goal of intentional acts) as a subject. This explains why a psychologistic aspect is not only spirit-less, but also value-blind ; whenever it has to deal with the factualness of an evaluating performance, it fails to grasp the correlated spiritual goal. What results from this approach is the recording of an emotional state. No objective "value" is considered, only the subjective '' pleasure.'' Together with the objectivity which henceforth escapes the psychologistic vision, other things like "objective importance," or "rank order," of varying values, are lost, too. What remains in their place is only a "value-indifferent" (gleich-giltig) pleasure. To realize the implications of all this, we have but to think of the freudian psychoanalysis. In its system there is no recognized ethical obligation that would guide the will, but an unconscious "must" that compels the conscious volition. Here man is not confronted by values; behind him are drives, is the id. And all "vis" becomes a "vis a tergo." In the psychoanalytic concept, the goals set up by the ego are only means to an end, an end which the id enforces. According to this view, then, all human motives are somehow non-essential—man as a whole is rendered non-essential. He is not taken quite genuinely, quite seriously. All his strivings, be they esthetic, ethical or religious, are reduced to "nothing more than" mere sublimations. In this way they are stamped as a sort of lie and self-deceit—a point which psychoanalysis does not seem to have taken into consideration. As the originator of the sublimation process, the individual might then be entitled to ask, quite logically: "What is the purpose of maintaining such self-deception? Why sublimate at all?" It is easy to guess the answer psychoanalysis would offer to such an inquiry: "For culture's sake!" And here we could ask, "So there 1 2 1 Cf. Victor E . v. Gebsattel: '' Das Zwielicht des Nurpsychologischen macht alle Katzen grau^ (The twilight of the only-psychological approach makes all cats appear grey). Christentum und Humanismus, Stuttgart, 1947, page 34. 2 It is our opinion that man, in reality, is not driven by urges and instincts a tergo, but is attracted by values and goals before him; every drive (or at least, every normal drive) tends toward a dynamism which is based on such value-determined goals. The drive supplies the energy that feeds this dynamism but does not determine it. 10 AMERICAN JOURNAL OP PSYCHOTHERAPY 9 is something like a * f or-the-sake-of, after all ?'' With this '' f or-thesake-of," psychoanalysis must acknowledge the existence of values— quod erat demonstrandum. Of course, psychoanalysis could have reached this conclusion by a less devious route. It did not have to negate the value-oriented basic character of the human mind, to begin with. Then it would not have to reintroduce, subsequently, the concept of values, of meaning and intentionality of spiritual endeavors in form of a superego. Setting aside all other difficulties of the sublimation theory, the question still exists, "Why should I sublimateV as well as "How can I sublimate V As long as we consider mental life onesidedly as an expression of instinctual strivings and not as an expression of value-directed pursuits, phenomena such as repression, censorship and sublimation must remain inconceivable. Equally unanswerable is the question, "Who represses what?" Do (ego) drives repress (id) drives? We cannot possibly accept such an answer, for we would arrive at the conclusion (actually offered by psychoanalysis) that the ego, genetically derived from the id, built itself up from ego drives. Such an ego concept is illogical and self-contradicting. The same goes for the sublimation of drives as psychoanalysis explains it: or, did anyone ever hear of a river that had built its own power plant! So much about the psychologistic taint of the classic psychotherapeutic systems. To overcome psychologism we have introduced a psychotherapeutic method which we have called Logotherapy, an heuristic opposite to psychotherapy in its hitherto accepted narrow psychologistic sense. Logotherapy is to be understood as a therapy which derives from spiritual sources, and aims toward a spiritual goal. In this, its twofold aspect, logotherapy attempts a correction of the twofold error of all psychologistic methods mentioned in our introduction. Logotherapy proceeds from the spiritual because it not only presupposes Logos as an objective, sensorily-oriented and value-directed concept, but also applies it in the psychotherapeutic procedure. 9 9 3 s I t would be a grave mistake, however, to think that in logotherapy, the therapist applies * 'logic'' to the patient—as though he tried "to talk a patient out" of ideas, the latter had "talked himself into." I t is for this reason that logotherapy has often been erroneously compared with the method of Dubois, the so-called persuasion method. LOGOS AND EXISTENCE IN PSYCHOTHERAPY 11 On the other hand, logotherapy is directed toward a spiritual aim when, in the form of an Existential Analysis, it makes man reflect upon himself as a "spiritual subject," when it points out to him his "subjective spirituality," in short, his "existence." For a better understanding of the above, we must go farther into the past. Up until now, medical psychology differentiated only between psychoses and neuroses. This classification lead, paradoxically, to the designation of somatogenic illnesses as "psychoses," while purely psychogenic disturbances were referred to by the term "neuroses." Paul Haeberlin (Basel), rightly suggests, "We should apply the name 'psychosis' to those truly psychic disturbances which are customarily counted among the neuroses. . . . What we call mental disease (Geistes-Krankheit) is essentially a 'somatosis' not a psychosis. " In fact, psychoses being somatogenic in nature require primarily a somatotherapy, while psychotherapy is prevailingly indicated in cases of neurosis. If the use of the term "psychosis" has been shown to be erroneous, the designation "mental disease," (Geisteskrankheit, in German, literally means "spiritual disease") is even more inaccurate. It is in itself contradictory: for the "spirit" as such cannot become diseased. And the so-called mental (spiritual) diseases are not even diseases of the soul; they are not psychoses but somatoses, and as such they cannot ever become diseases of the mind. Where spiritual values are involved, there can be no question of illness; the categories "healthy vs. sick" cannot be used here. When speaking of the spirit, we cannot refer to pathology in any form; there is no nosological category involved, but only a noologic one, namely, "true vs. false." Where, you might ask, lies the danger of such categorial confusion? Or, in other words, what is the danger of " psychologism" to psychotherapy? As stated before, medical psychological thinking, theretofore, differentiated only between soma and psyche, as 4 5 * Existential analysis has never been presented as an analysis of existence, but of *' existentiality.' An analysis of existence is impossible, simply because existence lends itself neither to analysis nor to synthesis. (Cf. Leo Baeck: "Nothing that exists owes its existence to an assembling.'' "Individuum ineffabile,'' Eranos, Jahrbuch 15, Zurich, 1947, pages 386.) For the same reason it was ill-conceived to replace psychoanalysis by "psychosynthesis," as Poul Bjerre proposed, two decades ago. s Der Gegenstand der Psychiatrie, the Swiss Archives for Psychiatry and Neurology, 60, 1-2, 1947, page 144. 9 12 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PSYCHOTHERAPY though tertium non datur, as though above and beyond that there were no third category—the spiritual. There is great danger that psychotherapy might commit severe misjudgments as long as it does not recognize this spiritual factor in its autonomous right. To mention but a single instance, a psychologistic therapy might see in the metaphysical aspiration of the individual only the symptom of a neurosis. The consecutive psychotherapeutic treatment would then, in the concrete case, encourage a repression of this metaphysical striving. This is tantamount to an education to "metaphysical irresponsibility, '' as Scheler once called it. It now must be clear that a non-psychologistic therapy like logotherapy, and particularly existential analysis, will have to counteract the "metaphysical irresponsibility" in the individual ; and what is more, in some cases where a great spiritual need is camouflaged as emotional suffering, logotherapy will have to go as far as to drive the patient into an existential crisis, to pilot him through his spiritual need. In such a case of spiritual need (not a psychopathological suffering) the psychotherapist's approach to the patient will be, " I shall not leave you until you have found the true meaning of your existence, until you have become truly y ourself." In this manner, logotherapy and every existential-analytic endeavor go beyond a mere treatment of illness. Here man is lead not so much out of a disease as toward a truth. For the sake of truth, however, the patient will have to be dragged through the entire range of his existential problems (instead of ignoring them), in full realization of the possibility that a rude awakening from his metaphysical irresponsibility and the uncovering of his manifold spiritual conflicts may lead the patient to a temporary increase of tension, i.e., to a painful experience. Suffering of this kind must be taken in stride and accepted. For it has been quite some time now that we have stopped to consider restoration of the patient's capacity for work and enjoyment as the only aim of psychotherapy. It is our conviction that psychotherapy has also the task of making the individual capable of enduring pain. This the new psychotherapy will have to accomplish whenever an individual is confronted with necessary suffering, such as that caused by unalterable fate (e.g., an incurable disease), or whenever a crisis of existential maturation develops. A treatment of the covering-up type might be less painful but it also deprives life of much meaning. The principle of "euphoria at any price" as a motivation for LOGOS AND EXISTENCE IN PSYCHOTHERAPY 13 the medical approach must be refuted because "pleasure gain at any price" and "freedom from pain at any price," would be tantamount to partial euthanasia. We believe that just as much as in the words of Rilke, "Man has a right to die his own kind of death"; or as in Scheler's words (which are opposed to naturalistic, criminological concepts), "Every criminal as a human being has a right to atone in his own way for his crime": just as much, we dare to maintain that every man has the right to endure his own kind of suffering. What we have to be sure of, in each individual case, is whether the suffering is really "his"; i.e., whether it represents an existentially meaningful "suffering-through," or whether it is remediable and hence an unnecessary one. A suffering can be meaningful, e.g., when it entails a necessary sacrifice, when it thus represents a suffering "for the sake c-f —." Frequently it will be the aim of existential analysis to clarify the difference between meaningful and meaningless suffering, and to analyze suffering in the life of an individual regarding his capacity for experiencing meaningful suffering. This shows clearly how distant we are from the psychoanalytic concept of the "pleasure principle." We can never accept a "pleasure principle" as a directive of medical function. The pleasure principle has neither validity for the physician nor for mankind in general, for it is neither a psychotherapeutic axiom nor a psychological principle. It is clearly a pathological principle, and even pathognomonic for—the neurosis. Originally, under normal circumstances man never strives for "pleasure" only, but for a "meaning." Pleasure, as a rule, ensues automatically and simultaneously with the reaching of a goal. Pleasure is a sequel, not an aim in itself; it must occur, but cannot 6 7 6 There could not be a greater mistake, however, than to consider such a concept of suffering as suspicious of having a masochistic tinge. There is a marked difference between the spirit of self-sacrifice (which is the same as enduring the act of '' suffering with a meaning'' and the masochistic behavior. We would define this difference as follows: Masochism turns pain into a counterfeit of sensual pleasure. I t thus remains on the plane of psychogenesis and of factualness. In self-sacrifice, however, man transcends the plane of spiritual intentionality, of existentialism. I n the act of sacrifice, pain is transformed, and suffering turned into accomplishment. f The so-called reality principle may be disregarded here inasmuch as it represents a derivative of the pleasure principle. 14 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PSYCHOTHERAPY be endeavored. It is effect, but not intention; it can be effectuated, but not intended. Whenever it is intended, it will always fail. This becomes particularly evident in sexual neuroses; there, man fails just at the moment when he is trying consciously to attain pleasure as a goal, a pleasure which is the natural and automatic outcome of instinctual gratification. For just as in all reflection which turns toward lust, the lust disappears, it also disintegrates whenever man is set upon obtaining it. Such an inversion of "pleasure as effect" into "pleasure as effort" is not only a typically neurotic finding, not only (as stated before) pathognomonic for the neurosis, but also in itself a pathogenic principle: it causes neurosis. This is how psychoanalysis arrived at its theory of "pleasure principle." This typically neurotic inversion (which sooner or later would have become evident anyway) was subsequently generalized without justification. We know, however, that the lust complex is a residue of a psychologistic encroachment. Lust is what remains after an act has been deprived of its intentionality; after it has been emptied of its "meaning." For the total human endeavor is not subject to any pleasure principle, but is oriented according to a higher meaning. It is the task of logotherapy as a psychotherapy which is "derived from the spiritual" and "directed toward the spiritual," to keep this goal in sight. The logotherapist attempts to see man (regardless whether he is really or apparently ill) in his relation to the "objective spirit," i.e., not only in his intentionality but also in his existentiality, that means, he sees in him the spiritual person (the "subjective spirit"). In this manner logotherapy accomplishes the shift to existential analysis. Existential analysis is not a "school doctrine," but a direction of research which is open to cooperation with others as well as to an evolution of its own precepts. It is clear that like other methods it must be, at times, one-sided. When Peter R. Hofstaetter in his excellent Einführung in di€ Tiefenpsychologie (Vienna, 1948, page 183-184) states that, "each of the three psychic instances has found now its psychotherapeutic repre8 8 We have never said, however, that existential analysis or logotherapy might replace hitherto existing psychotherapeutic methods. We maintain that it provides only a very necessary supplement to these methods. The same refers to what we have called "medical ministry to the soul," which was never intended to be a substitute for religious ministry. LOGOS AND EXISTENCE IN PSYCHOTHERAPY 15 sentative, the 'id' in Freud, the 'ego' in Adler, the 'superego' in C. 6. Jung, R. Allers, and V. Frankl," he is in a way correct. Except that we have practiced a certain conscious ecclecticism in psychotherapy. It is appreciated if a "representative," in the interest of his client, is sometimes one-sided; this, after all, is not only his right but his duty. Beyond that, referring to this unavoidable partiality on our part, we hold to what Kierkegaard has so beautifully expressed in his diary: ' One who wants to correct an existing condition, must thoroughly know all its weaknesses and hold up its opposite, one-sidedly, thoroughly one-sidedly. Therein lies the corrective effect and also the self-denial of the one who must do it.'' 6
