“Man lives in three dimensions: the somatic, the mental and the spiritual. The spiritual dimension cannot be ignored, for it is what makes us human.”
To be fair, I can see my colleague’s point of view. Just because values make us human does not make them the purview of psychologists. Distinct fields of study exist because they each focus on one particular aspect of life. Let each discipline deal with its area of expertise.
Yet, Frankl goes on to explain why psychology should concern itself with what makes us human. If we wish to help human beings, we have to understand what human beings are about and how they function. Granted, people are interested in pleasure and in power, but can we afford to ignore that which most deeply inspires people? Can we really be of help if we blind ourselves to the innate desire of human beings to actualize as many values as possible? If we do, then we give away one of a person’s most valuable assets, what Frankl calls the will-to-meaning.
At the heart of the difference between logotherapy and other theoretical approaches in psychology is how they define what it means to be human. Musar for Moderns, by Rav Elyakim Krumbein explores the study of how to live and how to be fully human within the context of modernity. In contrast to the “vogue of obsessive self-realization,” he explains the goal of Jewish spiritual growth. He says, “Our aim is for the individual to live the need for service to others, to loathe the prospect of a life experientially concerned only with the next meal or the next million dollars, to feel within himself the greatness – and the smallness – implied by the Divine imperative to man. The need for higher living is not only to be objectively assessed, but subjectively experienced. Our claim is that this is human nature. (p. 78)
If this is human nature, why should we settle for motivating someone with his more basic biological and psychological concerns when we can appeal to that aspect of humanity that is burning to be expressed, that maturity and authenticity that is longing to flower?
Frankl’s viewpoint on what it means to be human is more compatible with a religious perspective than a psychological one, yet Frankl is not presenting logotherapy as a religious doctrine, and it is available to an atheistic point of view as well. This gets him into trouble both with the religious and the secular for different reasons.
Frankl’s theory interfaces psychology, philosophy and religion not because he is promulgating any one of their world-views per ce but because he touches on the rock-bottom foundation of all the disciplines, that is, with what it means to be human in a higher sense. (see The Doctor and the Soul, p. xvi)