Frankl proposes that logotherapy lies along the “great divide” between medicine and religion. Although I wholeheartedly agree with his conclusion that logotherapy is a “land of promise,” I differ with Frankl’s conception of the challenge to logotherapy.
Logotherapy operates not along the “great divide,” but within the “great underpinning” of therapy and religion.
The claim that logotherapy treads on dangerous ground by bringing values into the therapy room stems from a basic error – the presumption that one must choose between organized religion and individual conscience, since one contradicts the other.
Individual conscience does not present an alternative to organized religion, nor does organized religion come to supplant individual conscience.
Rather, for both fields, individual conscience and responsibility are preconditions.
In religion, the demand for individual conscience and “understanding of the heart” (see Pirkei Kinyan Da’at) is a prerequisite for following divine law. Refined character traits are a prerequisite for divine guidance. (see Netivot Shalom introduction) To be religious, you cannot follow religious dictates robotically. “God desires the heart,” the Talmud says. You must be a person first. Only then can you “know God in all of your ways” and discern the demand for ethical excellence outside and not just inside a religious framework.
In therapy as well, you cannot even begin to solve a problem if you don’t know how to evaluate it. You will end up following the advice of one person or another and you will be perpetually dissatisfied. First, you need to know yourself, your role and what the situation demands, and then you can find a solution that is right for you.
To restate what I said at the beginning, logotherapy operates within the “great underpinning” of therapy and religion: the demand that you become a human being.
This conceptualization casts problems in a different light, requiring that we change our paradigm.
The problem is distressful; the problem is challenging. But the goal is not to solve the problem.
The goal is to become a person who is capable of solving the problem; the problem is only a pretext for your emergence as a deciding being.
Why should you solve the problem to begin with? Is it only because you want to feel better? Frankl’s post-operative patient certainly wanted to feel better. But what struck home for the person was his reminder of the value of being human.
What struck and hit a chord was the consciousness that remains after all the misperceptions and fears and despair fall away: love of self and other.
So we are back to values, only this time explained confidently and not apologetically.
Therapy is about emerging as a person. Values are essential to that emergence. Values force you to relate to the problem and how it appears in the context of your past experience, present challenge and future opportunities. In short, it forces you to face yourself, evaluate who you are and who you can become, to learn, to make choices, to set meaningful goals and ultimately to emerge as an evaluating, deciding being, who freely recognizes, chooses and strives for everlasting values.