I always complain that people read Man’s Search for Meaning and never get to the second half of the book, where Frankl describes his psychotherapeutic approach called logotherapy.
The truth is, if people would read the first half of the book with a different ear they would learn his psychotherapeutic approach from there as well.
Every theory has its principles and constructs based on what the theorist thinks human nature is like. Unlike any other psychotherapeutic theory that I know of, logotherapy grew out of the rich soil of human experience. Not only did Frankl ponder human nature. He witnessed it, and he himself lived his life in a very human way.
In the way Frankl approached every challenge in the concentration camps, in the way he looked at his ordeal with an all-encompassing view from above, and in the way he reached out to give comfort to others and observed the latent and revealed human potential for courage, kindness, compassion and freedom midst suffering and cruelty all serve as potent lessons in how to be a mensch, a human being.
By “human” I don’t mean the dark side, as in “I’m only human” but the side of light, the side that sets human beings apart from the rest of creation as spirit-beings.
The assumption often made is that humans are made up of two poles engaged in a continual war. I agree that there is a struggle, but the forces of good and the forces of evil are not equal parts. We are pure in essence. We struggle against the evil that threatens to invade our purity. The power of good is stronger than the power of evil and destruction.
The greatest proof of the effectiveness of logotherapy lies in the empirical evidence of its truths.