My mother-in-law recently wanted to visit her friend who had just recently lost her husband. My husband and I doubted she could make the trip by bus, since she walks with difficulty. But she insisted on going, and nothing could stop her. We were glad in the end that she went. She felt good, her friend felt good, and it was the right thing to do.
Where did her determination come from?
To answer this, we have to clarify what it means to be human. Arthur Shnitzler, a poet who was a contemporary of Frankl, named courage, objectivity and responsibility as the three human virtues.
To make his point about what it means to be human, Frankl picked up on Shnitzler’s formulation and attributed each of these virtues to a different psychotherapeutic approach.
Adler represented the virtue of courage, psychoanalysis represented objectivity and Frankl’s existential approach represented responsibility.
However, his comparison was not without criticism towards Freudian psychoanalysis. By examining the parts, writes Frankl, psychoanalysis lost sight of the whole.
People felt that their impulses and habits had a mind of their own, being unconscious processes over which a person has no control.
This is where logotherapy came in, asserting that a person is autonomous. The different aspects of self are pliable, and you are capable of molding and directing your energies as you wish.
The key word in logotherapy is responsibility, because this one word defines what it means to be human.
So while the goal of psychoanalysis was to make people conscious of their id or their ego drives, the goal of logotherapy was to make people conscious of their responsibility.
Just as instincts are unconscious, one’s sense of responsibility can also sometimes be unconscious.
Think of responsibility as being or becoming conscious that you are being asked a question, the very question you may want to ask, which is: What is the meaning of life?
Instead, the meaning of responsibility is realizing that you are the one being asked. And you need to answer the question in the form of action, in the here-and-now.
Conscious of your responsibility you think to yourself, “If this is what I am meant to do, there must be a way to do it.” This awareness allows a person to overcome huge obstacles, which explains why mother-in-law was so determined.
To be human is to be responsible; hence, to become conscious of responsibility is to become conscious not of one’s instincts but of one’s self. (pp. 23-24)