the possibilities that a young person has, the
future which is in store for him? "No, thank
you," he will think. "Instead of possibilities, I
have realities in my past, not only the reality of
work done and of love loved, but of sufferings
bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the
things of which I am most proud, though these
are things which cannot inspire envy."
LOGOTHERAPY AS A TECHNIQUE
A realistic fear, like the fear of death, cannot
be tran-quilized away by its psychodynamic
interpretation; on the other hand, a neurotic fear,
such as agoraphobia, cannot be cured by
philosophical understanding. However,
logotherapy has developed a special technique to
handle such cases, too. To understand what is
going on whenever this technique is used, we
take as a starting point a condition which is
frequently observed in neurotic individuals,
namely, anticipatory anxiety. It is characteristic
of this fear that it produces precisely that of
which the patient is afraid. An individual, for
example, who is afraid of blushing when he
enters a large room and faces many people will
actually be more prone to blush under these
circumstances. In this context, one might
amend the saying "The wish is father to the
thought" to "The fear is mother of the event."
Ironically enough, in the same way that
fear brings to pass what one is afraid of,
likewise a forced intention makes impossible
what one forcibly wishes. This excessive
intention, or "hyper-intention," as I call it, can
be observed particularly in cases of sexual
neurosis. The more a man tries to demonstrate
his sexual potency or a woman her ability to
experience orgasm, the less they are able to
succeed. Pleasure is, and must remain, a side-
effect or by-product, and is destroyed and
spoiled to the degree to which it is made a
goal in itself.
126 Man's Search for Meaning
Logotherapy in a Nutshell 127
In addition to excessive intention as
described above, excessive attention, or
"hyper-reflection," as it is called in
logotherapy, may also be pathogenic (that is,
lead to sickness). The following clinical
report will indicate what I mean: A young
woman came to me complaining of being
frigid. The case history showed that in her
childhood she had been sexually abused by
her father. However, it had not been this
traumatic experience in itself which had
eventuated in her sexual neurosis, as could
easily be evidenced. For it turned out that,
through reading popular psychoanalytic
literature, the patient had lived constantly
with the fearful expectation of the toll which
her traumatic experience would someday
take. This anticipatory anxiety resulted both
in excessive intention to confirm her feminin
ity and excessive attention centered upon
herself rather than upon her partner. This was
enough to incapacitate the patient for the
peak experience of sexual pleasure, since the
orgasm was made an object of intention, and
an object of attention as well, instead of
remaining an unintended effect
of
unreflected dedication and surrender to the
partner.
After undergoing short-term
logotherapy, the patient's excessive attention
and intention of her ability to experience
orgasm had been "dereflected," to introduce
another logo-therapeutic term. When her
attention was refocused toward the proper
object, i.e., the partner, orgasm established
itself spontaneously.
9
Logotherapy bases its technique called
"paradoxical intention" on the twofold fact
that fear brings about that which one is
afraid of, and that hyper-intention makes
impossible what one wishes. In German I
described paradoxi-
9 In order to treat cases of sexual impotence, a
specific logothera-peutic technique has been
developed, based on the theory of hyper-intention and
hyper-reflection as sketched above (Viktor E. Frankl,
"The Pleasure Principle and Sexual Neurosis," The
International Journal of Sexology, Vol. 5, No. 3 [1952],
pp. 128-30). Of course, this cannot be dealt with in this
brief presentation of the principles of logotherapy.
cal intention as early as 1939.
10
In this approach
the phobic patient is invited to intend, even if
only for a moment, precisely that which he
fears.
Let me recall a case. A young physician
consulted me because of his fear of perspiring.
Whenever he expected an outbreak of
perspiration, this anticipatory anxiety was
enough to precipitate excessive sweating. In
order to cut this circle formation I advised the
patient, in the event that sweating should recur,
to resolve deliberately to show people how
much he could sweat. A week later he returned
to report that whenever he met anyone who
triggered his anticipatory anxiety, he said to
himself, "I only sweated out a quart before,
but now I'm going to pour at least ten
quarts!" The result was that, after suffering
from his phobia for four years, he was able,
after a single session, to free himself
permanently of it within one week.
The reader will note that this procedure
consists of a reversal of the patient's attitude,
inasmuch as his fear is replaced by a
paradoxical wish. By this treatment, the wind
is taken out of the sails of the anxiety.
Such a procedure, however, must make use
of the specifically human capacity for self-
detachment inherent in a sense of humor.
This basic capacity to detach one from
oneself is actualized whenever the
logotherapeutic technique called paradoxical
intention is applied. At the same time, the
patient is enabled to put himself at a
distance from his own neurosis. A statement
consistent with this is found in Gordon W.
Allport's book, The Individual and His
Religion: "The neurotic who learns to laugh
at himself may be on the way to self-
management, perhaps to cure."
11
18Viktor E. Frankl, "Zur medikamentosen
Unterstiitzung der Psy-
chotherapie bei Neurosen," Schweizer Archiv fur
Neurologie und Psy-
chiatrie, Vol. 43, pp. 26-31.
19New York, The Macmillan Co., 1956, p. 92.
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