Meir Schneider used to read books using Braille. He had a certificate of disability that said on it “legally blind,” a document meant to be permanent. Today he reads using his eyes and even drives a car. He accomplished this transformation through various relaxation and massage exercises.
More importantly, he healed himself with his attitude. He explains in the video: Medicine isn’t healing; it’s fixing. They can give you a new heart valve or a replacement arm or eye lens. They can fix the broken part. But they can’t heal.
Part and parcel of the “part-fixing” mind-set is the attitude that one has to “fight” illness. It is sometimes said after someone has died that “she fought to the end.” Instead of fighting the illness we need to be responsive to our body. Our problem, Schneider says is that we don’t know how to be in our bodies and to have a feel for what is going on in our bodies. We should not be treating illness as the enemy. Illness is part of us.
To refrain from fighting does not mean you sit back and don’t do anything. You do a lot. But you are not wasting energy fighting. You’re listening to what your body is telling you and responding to it.
Schneider is believable and convincing when he says this, because he did what he is telling others to do. He listened and was responsive to his body. He put many hours into doing whatever it took to heal himself. He is right when he says that to be alive requires newness and so we have to renew ourselves and expand our abilities.
What is striking about this story is the parallel between medicine and psychotherapy. The same way medicine only “fixes” the broken parts, psychotherapy fixes parts of the psyche or cognition or behavior. Viktor Frankl took issue with the psychotherapy field and its reductionistic attitude towards man, because it broke the person up into parts that needed fixing and lost sight of the whole of who the person is. As healing is to medicine, logotherapy is to psychotherapy. Emotional, as physical well being comes as a result of seeing the person as a whole.
Alongside Viktor Frankl’s unique perspective on the whole of a person was his holistic view of reality. Everything happens for a reason. Although we may not always know what the reason is, problems, illnesses and challenges are not meaningless or arbitrary. They happen for a reason.
This stands in contrast to the perspective that basically the world is against you, problems are freak accidents (because you are “entitled” to a problem-free life) and of course what is left for you to do is fight.
This is not to say that logotherapists don’t try to solve problems. They do, but they look at the meaning this problem has in the context of who is the person sitting in front of them. The challenge life gives you to deal with is part of who you are, and when you embrace it for the commission it gives you, you become a specialist.
This is how Meir Schneider became a specialist in eye health. He refused to let dogmas determine his life, and he listened and responded to his body. As a result of believing in his body’s capacity to heal, he has helped people the world over to heal themselves.
Responsiveness comes as a result of being in a positive relationship. Meir Schneider was responsive to his body because he had a relationship with it. What does it mean to have a “relationship with your body” or a “relationship with life”?
In a positive relationship there is recognition, respect, acknowledgment and consideration for an “other.” You are engaged in dialogue and you listen, not merely out of politeness but to hear an important and helpful message. Genuine constructive dialogue takes place in a face-to-face encounter that is based in a common quest for good. It is only when you feel life is on your side that you will care to be responsive to its provocations.
This is very different from fighting. When you fight, it’s because you are facing a deadly, faceless enemy with whom dialogue is not possible. It’s an adversarial relationship. Some people say “It’s my body; I’ll do what I want with it” and then they hurt themselves. Their body may belong to them, but do they belong in their body? Do they feel “at home” there?
Your body is not the enemy. If you get a stomach ache from eating something that doesn’t agree with you, your body is telling you something. If you listen you’ll learn how to treat your stomach more kindly.
Thus we arrive at the point of logotherapy. Viktor Frankl calls logotherapy an “education in responsibility.” We can only respond once we have listened, and we can only listen to that which we regard as a friendly invitation. It was actually the person-centered psychologist Carl Rogers who said “The facts are always friendly.” What allows us to see the facts as friendly is the belief that life is on our side. The dialogue takes place within the context of a loving relationship.
How can we respond to life’s invitations? This is logotherapy.