turb him, since pressure precipitates
counterpressure. Again the symptom is
reinforced! On the other hand, as soon as
the patient stops fighting his obsessions and
instead tries to ridicule them by dealing with
them in an ironical way—by applying
paradoxical intention—the vicious circle is
cut, the symptom diminishes and finally
atrophies. In the fortunate case where there
is no existential vacuum which invites and
elicits the symptom, the patient will not only
succeed in ridiculing his neurotic fear but
finally will succeed in completely ignoring it.
As we see, anticipatory anxiety has to be
counteracted by paradoxical intention; hyper-
intention as well as hyper-reflection have to
be counteracted by dereflection; dereflec-tion,
however, ultimately is not possible except by
the patient's orientation toward his specific
vocation and mission in life.
16
It is not the neurotic's self-concern,
whether pity or contempt, which breaks the
circle formation; the cue to cure is self-
transcendence!
THE COLLECTIVE NEUROSIS
Every age has its own collective neurosis,
and every age needs its own psychotherapy to
cope with it. The existential vacuum which is
the mass neurosis of the present time can be
described as a private and personal form of
nihilism; for nihilism can be defined as the
contention that being has no meaning. As
for psychotherapy, however, it will never be
able to cope with this state of affairs on a
mass scale if it does not keep itself free
from the impact and influence of
ing him against a formal psychosis rather than
endangering him in this direction.
16 This conviction is supported by Allport who
once said, "As the focus of striving shifts from the
conflict to selfless goals, the life as a whole becomes
sounder even though the neurosis may never completely
disappear" (op. cit., p. 95).
132 Man's Search for Meaning
Logotherapy in a Nutshell 133
the contemporary trends of a nihilistic
philosophy; otherwise it represents a
symptom of the mass neurosis rather than its
possible cure. Psychotherapy would not only
reflect a nihilistic philosophy but also, even
though unwillingly
and unwittingly,
transmit to the patient what is actually a
caricature rather than a true picture of man.
First of all, there is a danger inherent in the
teaching of man's "nothingbutness," the
theory that man is nothing but the result of
biological, psychological and sociological
conditions, or the product of heredity and
environment. Such a view of man makes a
neurotic believe what he is prone to believe
anyway, namely, that he is the pawn and
victim of outer influences or inner
circumstances. This neurotic fatalism is
fostered and strengthened by a psychotherapy
which denies that man is free.
To be sure, a human being is a finite
thing, and his freedom is restricted. It is not
freedom from conditions, but it is freedom
to take a stand toward the conditions. As I
once put it: "As a professor in two fields,
neurology and psychiatry, I am fully aware of
the extent to which man is subject to
biological, psychological and sociological
conditions. But in addition to being a
professor in two fields I am a survivor of
four camps—concentration camps, that is—
and as such I also bear witness to the
unexpected extent to which man is capable of
defying and braving even the worst conditions
conceivable."
17
CRITIQUE OF PAN-DETERMINISM
Psychoanalysis has often been blamed for its
so-called pan-sexualism. I, for one, doubt
whether this reproach has ever
17 "Value Dimensions in Teaching," a color
television film produced by Hollywood Animators,
Inc., for the California Junior College Association.
been legitimate. However, there is
something which seems to me to be an even
more erroneous and dangerous assumption,
namely, that which I call "pan-
determinism." By that I mean the view of
man which disregards his capacity to take a
stand toward any conditions whatsoever.
Man is not fully conditioned and determined
but rather determines himself whether he
gives in to conditions or stands up to them.
In other words, man is ultimately self-
determining. Man does not simply exist but
always decides what his existence will be,
what he will become in the next moment.
By the same token, every human being
has the freedom to change at any instant.
Therefore, we can predict his future only
within the large framework of a statistical
survey referring to a whole group; the
individual personality, however, remains
essentially unpredictable. The basis for any
predictions would be represented by
biological, psychological or sociological
conditions. Yet one of the main features of
human existence is the capacity to rise above
such conditions, to grow beyond them. Man
is capable of changing the world for the
better if possible, and of changing himself
for the better if necessary.
Let me cite the case of Dr. J. He was the
only man I ever encountered in my whole life
whom I would dare to call a
Mephistophelean being, a satanic figure. At
that time he was generally called "the mass
murderer of Steinhof" (the large mental
hospital in Vienna). When the Nazis started
their euthanasia program, he held all the
strings in his hands and was so fanatic in the
job assigned to him that he tried not to let
one single psychotic individual escape the
gas chamber. After the war, when I came
back to Vienna, I asked what had happened
to Dr. J. "He had been imprisoned by the
Russians in one of the isolation cells of
Steinhof," they told me. "The next day,
however, the door of his cell stood open
and Dr. J. was never seen again."
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