Frankl vs. Freud
In the second part of Man‘s Search for Meaning, entitled Logotherapy in a Nutshell, Viktor E. Frankl presents to us the approach of his own school of pyschotherapy, which he named “logotherapy“. What does he mean by “logotherapy“?
“Let me explain why I have employed the term ‘logotherapy‘ as the name for my theory. Logos is a Greek word which denotes ‘meaning.‘ Logotherapy, or, as it has been called by some authors, ‘The Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy,‘ focuses on the meaning of human existence as well as on man‘s search for such a meaning. According to logotherapy, this striving to find a meaning in one‘s life is the primary motivational force in man. That is why I speak of a will to meaning in contrast to the pleasure principle (or, as we could also term it, the will to pleasure) on which Freudian psychoanalysis is centered, as well as in contrast to the will to power on which Adlerian psychology, using the term ‘striving for superiority,‘ is focused.“
Viktor E. Frankl, Man‘s Search for Meaning, Beacon Press Boston, p. 98-99
Psychologists try to understand what motivates and drives human behavior. One can come at answering this question from different angles: Do we primarily seek to reach a state of pleasure for ourselves? Or do we primarily look for feeling powerful, superior to others?
Viktor E. Frankl is – along with Erich Fromm – one of those rare figures in the psychological discourse of the 20th century who keep insisting that there is a “conditio humana“ that substantially and unalterably differs from the situation and nature of every other creature in this universe. If someone holds on to such a notion of a unique and essential human nature, which cannot be reduced to mere biology, and simple instincts, it will inevitably lead him into the realms of metaphysics – into the realms of philosophy, theology, and religion. When Frankl speaks of “the will to meaning“ as the centerpiece of his psychotherapeutic approach, he sides with a long philosophical and theological tradition in the West claiming that man is certainly not just another animal and that reason, free will, meaning, and a higher – transcendent – purpose are part of this “conditio humana“ which no man or woman walking this earth has ever been able to escape.
According to Frankl, his psychotherapeutic method is able to break up the state of neurosis in someone much better than the classical psychoanalytical approaches in the wake of Freud. Insofar as Frankl‘s approach really hits closer at our human nature than Freud‘s view of man does, it should not be surprising, if this were the case. The more accurate any theory of psychology, or any philosophical perspective describes human life and the state of man, and therefore the objective reality of his existence, the better it can help to live a truly human life – to solve the problem of his existence, and overcome the neurosis, “the mental imbalance causing distress“, that rises from the unresolved challenge of life.
“(…) logotherapy, in comparison with psychoanalysis, is a method less retrospective and less introspective. Logotherapy focuses rather on the future, that is to say, on the meanings to be fulfilled by the patient in his future. (…) At the same time, logotherapy defocuses all the vicious-circle formations and feedback mechanisms which play such a great role in the development of neuroses. Thus, the typical self-centeredness of the neurotic is broken up instead of being continually fostered and reinforced.“
Viktor E. Frankl, Man‘s Search for Meaning, Beacon Press Boston, p. 98
Frankl is saying here that the classical psychoanalytic approach is not contributing to overcoming the neurotic state, but instead even “reinforcing“ it. Why? Because the main problem of the neurotic state is the very “self-centeredness“ which will continue to spiral inward on itself under the influence of any psychotherapeutic method that fixates the mind of the neurotic person on his past and on his interior psychological mess. The prison of self-centeredness – which keeps causing depression, anxiety, and all sorts of mental distress in man, because self-centeredness is running contrary to the realization of our human nature and potential – can only be unlocked by looking “outward“ – away from oneself and to the future one still has to live, instead of to the past from where one has inherited one‘s neurosis. This prison can only be unlocked by transcendence – by something beyond oneself and beyond now.
Frankl rebukes the tendency in modern psychology to view man‘s search for meaning as a “secondary rationalization of instinctual drives“ (p. 99) and to uncover meanings and values as “nothing but defense mechanisms, reaction formations and sublimations“ (ibid.):
“But as for myself, I would not be willing to live merely for the sake of my ‘defense mechanisms,‘ nor would I be ready to die merely for the sake of my ‘reaction formations.‘ Man, however, is able to live and even to die for the sake of his ideals and values! (…)
Viktor E. Frankl, Man‘s Search for Meaning, Beacon Press Boston, p. 99-100
Of course, there may be some cases in which an individual‘s concern with values is really a camouflage of hidden inner conflicts; but, if so, they represent the exceptions from the rule rather than the rule itself. In these cases we have actually to deal with pseudovalues, and as such they have to be unmasked. Unmasking, however, should stop as soon as one is confronted with what is authentic and genuine in man, e.g., man‘s desire for a life that is as meaningful as possible. If it does not stop then, the only thing that the ‘unmasking psychologist‘ really unmasks is his own ‘hidden motive‘ – namely, his unconscious need to debase and depraciate what is genuine, what is genuinely human, in man.“
Frankl is thoroughly Anti-Freudian in this respect, and there is no bridge between them: For Freud, the ‘unmasking psychologist’, religion was nothing but an illusion and a “universal compulsion neurosis“, as he once called it, while Frankl, unmasking the morbid lust of the nihilist‘s war on piety, honors religion as something genuinely human, as a source of purpose and values without which a truly human life are impossible.
“Logotherapy deviates from psychoanalysis insofar as it considers man a being whose main concern consists in fulfilling a meaning, rather than in the mere gratification and satisfaction of drives and instincts, or in merely reconciling the conflicting claims of id, ego and superego, or in the mere adaptation and adjustment to society and environment.“
Viktor E. Frankl, Man‘s Search for Meaning, Beacon Press Boston, p. 103
Frankl‘s view of human existence: productive tension
Frankl is a psychologist stating that not everything in human life which is distressing man is a problem requiring specific psychological treatment. He is a doctor telling us that not every kind of suffering is a disease that needs to be eliminated. And therefore we could say: he is one of those rare people who know their limits…
“Man‘s will to meaning can also be frustrated, in which case logotherapy speaks of ‘existential frustration.‘ (…)
Viktor E. Frankl, Man‘s Search for Meaning, Beacon Press Boston, p. 100-103
Not every conflict is necessarily neurotic; some amount of conflict is normal and healthy. In a similar sense suffering is not always a pathological phenomenon; rather than being a symptom of neurosis, suffering may well be a human achievement, especially if the suffering grows out of existential frustration. I would strictly deny that one‘s search for a meaning to his existence, or even his doubt of it, in every case is derived from, or results in, any disease. Existential frustration is in itself neither pathological nor pathogenic. A man‘s concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease. It may well be that interpreting the first in terms of the latter motivates a doctor to bury his patient‘s existential despair under a heap of tranquilizing drugs. It is his task, rather, to pilot the patient through his existential crises of growth and development.“
Modern psychology is not only very prone to claiming some kind of total – unlimited – grasp on human nature and human life, but is at the same time obsessed with the notion of the “psychological equilibrium“ as the sum and summit of man‘s life. Again, this is the Freudian perspective: An equilibrium between id, ego, and superego must be acquired – then one can speak of a “healthy“ individual. “Tranquility“ in the client is the aim of most modern psychotherapeutic approaches. But only recently this view seems to have ruled out every other possible perspective. Some decades ago, at least, there still was the strain of developmental psychology regarding conflict and crises as productive and necessary elements in the growth of the human person. Frankl shares this latter perception:
“To be sure, man‘s search for meaning may arouse inner tension rather than inner equilibrium. However, precisely such tension is an indispensable prerequisite of mental health. There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one‘s life. (…)
Viktor E. Frankl, Man‘s Search for Meaning, Beacon Press Boston, p. 103-105
Thus it can be seen that mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should become. Such a tension is inherent in the human being and therefore is indispensable to mental well-being. We should not, then, be hesitant about challenging man with a potential meaning for him to fulfill. It is only thus that we evoke his will to meaning from its state of latency. I consider it a dangerous misconception of mental hygiene to assume that what man needs in the first place is equilibrium or, as it is called in biology, ‘homeostasis,‘ i.e., a tensionless state. What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him. (…) If architects want to strengthen a decrepit arch, they increase the load which is laid upon it, for thereby the parts are joined more firmly together. So if therapists wish to foster their patients‘ mental health, they should not be afraid to create a sound amount of tension through a reorientation toward the meaning of one‘s life.“
These words of Frankl counter what seems to be the modus operandi of the current mainstream of a behavorialistic psychology that tries to modify human behavior in such a way that tension and conflict – within oneself or with the surrounding circumstances and one’s social environment – are reduced and numbed. Again we can see how Frankl advocates a view of human existence very much in line with the doctrines and practices of the long Judeo-Christian tradition. Human life – between earth and heaven, between animals and angels – takes place in a polar field, resembling a battlefield, and is a continual struggle – between the past and the future, between slavery and freedom, between vice and virtue, between man‘s limitations and man‘s vocation. The goal of our lives is certainly not to live in the homeostasis of an ameba.
Man cannot ever live like an animal or vegetate in unmoved tranquility like a plant – “man has to make choices“ and “no instinct tells him what he has to do“ (p. 106). Frankl recognizes that, with the loss of (religious) traditions in the 20th century, a situation has emerged that may easily lead man into the traps of “conformism“ or “totalitarianism“:
“No instinct tells him what he has to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people wish him to do (totalitarianism).“
Viktor E. Frankl, Man‘s Search for Meaning, Beacon Press Boston, p. 106
He calls this situation “the existential vacuum“ (p. 106). One of the ways in which this vacuum shows itself is “a state of boredom“ (ibid.) – and from this state of a lack of a true and real purpose one strives to fulfill, a whole plethora of soul-destroying behaviors seem to arise:
“Such widespread phenomena as depression, aggression and addiction are not understandable unless we recognize the existential vacuum underlying them. This is also true of the crises of pensioners and aging people. Moreoever, there are various masks and guises under which the existential vacuum appears. Sometimes the frustrated will to meaning is vicariously compensated for by a will to power, including the most primitive form of the will to power, the will to money. In other cases, the place of frustrated will to meaning is taken by the will to pleasure. That is why existential frustration often eventuates in sexual compensation. We can observe in such cases that the sexual libido becomes rampant in the existential vacuum.“
Viktor E. Frankl, Man‘s Search for Meaning, Beacon Press Boston, p. 107
One could say then, that whenever the productive tension of human life, that is given in the striving and struggling for a higher meaningful goal – like the purposes which religion presents to man – , is lost, a man‘s life collapses into a vacuum which he then seeks to fill up with the superficial equilibrium he can experience through amassing power, wealth, or pleasure for himself. These are the drugs, the tranquilizers, of all the existentially frustrated people who are not confined to psychiatric clinics, but rather are running our world.
Frankl on the “meaning of life“
If the “will to meaning“ is the real motivational force active in man, and if its frustration creates an “existential vacuum“ for him with self-destructive consequences, then there also must be an answer to the question of “the meaning of life“. Frankl is assured of the meaningfulness of human existence – one that exists a priori and does not need to artificially be constructed by oneself. This is already a religious notion, and nihilists and Jean Paul Sartre would never agree with it.
Precisely because Frankl assumes this a priori purposefulness of our lives, he can tell us that “one should not search for an abstract meaning of life“ (p. 108).
“Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment which demans fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone‘s task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it.
Viktor E. Frankl, Man‘s Search for Meaning, Beacon Press Boston, p. 109
As each situation in life represents a challenge to man and presents a problem for him to solve, the question of the meaning of life may actually be reversed. Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.“
Easily, one could replace the word “life“ in this passage with “God“, but even if one leaves the wording Frankl chose, it should be quite obvious that what we encounter here is the classical Judeo-Christian understanding of man‘s responsibility – a responsibility inscribed into the created order of things and inescapable. We are questioned – by life, by God: Adam, where art thou? And we have to answer. And the meaning of our life ultimately consists in answering God, not in questioning Him.
Naturally, there is a link between man‘s responsibility and man‘s call to self-transcendence: One who is responsible is someone responding to something or someone beyond himself. He is not a self-sufficient and self-sustaining “island“. What is beyond himself is calling him out of himself.
“By declaring that man is responsible and must actualize the potential meaning of his life, I wish to stress that the true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system. I have termed this constitutive characteristic ‘the self-transcendence of human existence.‘ It denotes the fact that being human always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself – be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself – by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love – the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself. What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.“
Viktor E. Frankl, Man‘s Search for Meaning, Beacon Press Boston, p. 110-111
Frankl states that there are “three different ways“ to “discover this meaning in life“ (p. 111):
“(…) (1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.“
Viktor E. Frankl, Man‘s Search for Meaning, Beacon Press Boston, p. 111
He then elaborates further on the second and third way of discovering meaning in life: the meaning of love, and the meaning of suffering. And once again, we find the philosophical and theological tradition of the West latently present in everything Frankl says.
“Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true.“
Viktor E. Frankl, Man‘s Search for Meaning, Beacon Press Boston, p. 111-112
“In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice. (…)
Viktor E. Frankl, Man‘s Search for Meaning, Beacon Press Boston, p. 113-114
There are situations in which one is cut off from the opportunity to do one‘s work or to enjoy one‘s life; but what never can be ruled out is the unavoidability of suffering. In accepting this challenge to suffer bravely, life has a meaning up to the last moment, and it retains this meaning literally to the end. In other words, life‘s meaning is an unconditional one, for it even includes the potential meaning of unavoidable suffering.“
Frankl tells a story from his time at the Auschwitz concentration camp. When he arrived there, he had hidden inside his coat the manuscript of his first book – but both the coat and the manuscript were, as it was for all the prisoners, taken away from him on entering the camp.
“(…) I had to surrender my clothes and in turn inherited the worn-out rags of an inmate who had already been sent to the gas chamber immediately after his arrival at the Auschwitz railway station. Instead of the many pages of my manuscript, I found in a pocket of the newly acquired coat one single page torn out of a Hebrew prayer book, containing the most important Jewish prayer, Shema Yisrael. How should I have interpreted such a ‘coincidence‘ other than as a challenge to live my thoughts instead of merely putting them on paper?“
Viktor E. Frankl, Man‘s Search for Meaning, Beacon Press Boston, p. 115
All of this said, Frankl concludes that “some of the people who nowadays call on a psychiatrist would have seen a pastor, priest or rabbi in former days“ (p. 116). Man is ultimately searching for “the super-meaning“:
“This ultimate meaning necessarily exceeds and surpasses the finite intellectual capacities of man; in logotherapy, we speak in this context of a super-meaning. What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms. Logos is deeper than logic.“
Viktor E. Frankl, Man‘s Search for Meaning, Beacon Press Boston, p. 118
The fact that we have to die – “the transitoriness of our existence“ – “constitute(s) our responsibleness; for everything hinges upon our realizing the essentially transitory possibilities“ (p. 120-121). While Frankl urges us to look out into the future in order to constantly strive to fulfill the meaning of our lives, he is also sure that looking back on the past can be of great comfort for us:
“Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, though these are things which cannot inspire envy.“
Viktor E. Frankl, Man‘s Search for Meaning, Beacon Press Boston, p. 122
“The collective neurosis“, and man‘s freedom
On the final pages of Logotherapy in a Nutshell, Frankl vehemently defends the idea that every human being possesses the irrevocable dignity of human freedom, and that all determinism, so prevalent in modern psychology and sociology, is to be rejected. He once again makes clear that he sees himself as a psychiatrist, who knows his limits as well as the boundaries of his discipline, and who affirms the core principles of the Judeo-Christian understanding of human personhood:
“Every age has its own collective neurosis, and every age needs its own psychotherapy to cope with it. The existential vacuum which is the mass neurosis of the present time can be described as a private and personal form of nihilism; for nihilism can be defined as the contention that being has no meaning. As for psychotherapy, however, it will never be able to cope with this state of affairs on a mass scale if it does not keep itself free from the impact and influence of the contemporary trends of a nihilistic philosophy; otherwise it represents a symptom of the mass neurosis rather than its possible cure. (…)
Viktor E. Frankl, Man‘s Search for Meaning, Beacon Press Boston, p. 129-133
First of all, there is a danger inherent in the teaching of man‘s ‘nothingbutness,‘ the theory that man is nothing but the result of biological, psychological and sociological conditions, or the product of heredity and environment. Such a view of man makes a neurotic believe what he is prone to believe anyway, namely, that he is the pawn and victim of outer influences or inner cirumstances. This neurotic fatalism is fostered and strengthened by a psychotherapy which denies that man is free. (…)
Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them. In other words, man is ultimately self-determining. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment.
By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant. (…) How can we dare to predict the behavior of man? We may predict the movements of a machine, of an automaton; more than this, we may even try to predict the mechanisms or ‘dynamisms‘ of the human psyche as well. But man is more than psyche. (…)
There is nothing conceivable which would so condition a man as to leave him without the slightest freedom. Therefore, a residue of freedom, however limited it may be, is left to man in neurotic and even psychotic cases. Indeed, the innermost core of the patient‘s personality is not even touched by a psychosis. An incurably psychotic individual may lose his usefulness but yet retain the dignity of a human being. This is my psychiatric credo. Without it I should not think it worthwhile to be a psychiatrist. For whose sake? Just for the sake of a damaged brain machine which cannot be repaired? If the patient were not definitely more, euthanasia would be justified.“
Frankl‘s life after surviving the holocaust
About Man‘s Search for Meaning, Harold S. Kushner writes in his foreword to Frankl‘s book:
“We have come to recognize that this is a profoundly religious book. It insists that life is meaningful and that we must learn to see life as meaningful despite our circumstances. It emphasizes that there is an ultimate purpose to life. And in its original version, before a postscript was added, it concluded with one of the most religious sentences written in the twentieth century.“
Harold S. Kushner, Foreword, in: Viktor E. Frankl, Man‘s Search for Meaning, Beacon Press Boston, p. XII
And what is this concluding sentence of the second part of the book, of Logotherapy in a Nutshell?
“Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord‘s Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.“
Viktor E. Frankl, Man‘s Search for Meaning, Beacon Press Boston, p. 134
These are the words of a man who survived several concentration camps only to learn, when he returned to his home town Vienna in August 1945, that his pregnant Jewish wife Tilly had died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Despite it all, he stayed in Vienna for the rest of his life, marrying his second wife in the year 1947: the Catholic nurse Elly.