Why do people go for therapy, pastoral counseling, coaching or any kind of assistance? What makes them stay away?
Before answering I want to share three interesting conversations I had recently. One was with a life coach who, referring to different approaches to counseling said, “We’re all basically doing the same thing.” “Well, not exactly,” I thought to myself. The other conversation was with a young person who said, “Me and my friends hate anything to do with psychology.”
In the third conversation a logotherapy student talked about a critique she had heard of logotherapy, in which the writer claimed that while Viktor Frankl says his approach is not about self-actualization and self-fulfillment, all his talk about uniqueness proves that he is making self-actualization the goal.
What does Frankl himself say about logotherapy and what sets it apart from the rest of psychology?
“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.” (Man’s Search for Meaning, pp. 125-6)
Logotherapy starts from the assumption that the main thing you’re looking for is not self-gratification or a way to adjust yourself to your conflicts with yourself or with the world. The main thing you’re looking for is to live with a sense of purpose, meaning that you’re interested in finding a way to connect to ideals and values you care about.
So it can happen that the problem you’re seeking help for is existential frustration, and the logotherapist will recognize it as such and understand that your suffering is not pathological. There is nothing wrong with you for having lost touch with your passion – your inner longing and zest for life. It just means you need to find and reclaim what is yours.
Is that inner longing and passion a selfish need? Together with inborn talents and acquired life experience, every person has a unique inborn longing that fuels the unique gift you have to give to the world. When we get in touch with our depth, we find within us a desire to love and to give. The uniqueness that each of us express is in how we long to love and how we each manifest our love differently. This is what the writer who critiqued logotherapy didn’t understand about the meaning of uniqueness. Self-actualization is only a side-effect, not the aim of therapy.
Marketing is about finding your audience, which is to say finding those people who want what you have to offer. If you don’t know what you have to give or you don’t know who wants it you’ll be frustrated.
My guess is that the young person who said he and his friends hate psychology had a bad experience with it. He probably noticed that when he talked too much about his problems the problems got entrenched. He didn’t find it helpful. But if he could see his problems in terms of what he has to give to the world it would change his whole perspective and it would make him come alive.