The Doctor and the Soul is a book about logotherapy, but mostly it is a book about how to understand the human creature we want to help.
Frankl opens his book telling us that Freud and Adler each had a partial view of man, and each of them was only partially true.
By the final chapter the reader understands Frankl’s image of the circle and the square, and the difference it makes to view them as two-dimensional pictures with no interface between them, or from a three-dimensional perspective, where we realize they are both part of the same cylinder.
It turns out that the pictures we originally viewed as contradictory and fragmented were only projections of something whole.
Similarly, psychoanalysis with its emphasis on drives or instincts and behaviorism with its emphasis on conditioning does not show the whole picture.
Seen holistically, a person acts with reason. Causes determine; reasons motivate.
What is the difference between reasons and causes?
“Reasons motivate me to act in the way I choose. Causes determine my behavior unwillingly and unwittingly, whether I know it or not. When I cut onions I weep. My tears have a cause. But I have no reason to weep. When a loved one dies I have a reason to weep.” (p. 295)
To be human is to be capable of transcending causes and being motivated by reasons and meanings instead.
We need to listen for the reasons to hear the unheard cry for meaning. (287 – 301)
Thus ends our summary of The Doctor and the Soul.