Hugendubel.info - Die B2B Online-Buchhandlung 

Merkliste
Die Merkliste ist leer.
Bitte warten - die Druckansicht der Seite wird vorbereitet.
Der Druckdialog öffnet sich, sobald die Seite vollständig geladen wurde.
Sollte die Druckvorschau unvollständig sein, bitte schliessen und "Erneut drucken" wählen.

Logotherapy

E-BookEPUBePub WasserzeichenE-Book
296 Seiten
Englisch
Elisabeth-Lukas-Archiv GmBHerschienen am11.09.2020
Viktor Emil Frankl, the founder of logotherapy, ranks amongst the twentieth century's most important researchers into the human condition. He developed a form of psychotherapy with an intriguingly dignified concept of human beings and the world which has an impressive track record of rapid success in practical application. Numerous universities around the world have honoured Frankl for his achievements. The present book provides a structured insight into his work. It explains the anthropological foundation of logotherapy and the healing concepts that are built on this foundation.

Univ.-Prof. h.c. Dr. phil. habil. Elisabeth Lukas ist Schülerin von Viktor E. Frankl, Klinische Psychologin, appr. Psy-chotherapeutin, Supervisorin, Referentin, emerit. Dozentin im Fach 'originäre Logotherapie nach Viktor E. Frankl', Autorin zahlreicher Fachbücher, die in 18 Fremdsprachen übersetzt worden sind. Diverse Ehrungen seitens Universitäten und der Stadt Wien für ihre Verdienste um die Weiterentwicklung und Verbreitung des logotherapeutischen Gedankengutes.mehr
Verfügbare Formate
BuchKartoniert, Paperback
EUR19,00
BuchKartoniert, Paperback
EUR19,00
E-BookEPUBePub WasserzeichenE-Book
EUR12,00

Produkt

KlappentextViktor Emil Frankl, the founder of logotherapy, ranks amongst the twentieth century's most important researchers into the human condition. He developed a form of psychotherapy with an intriguingly dignified concept of human beings and the world which has an impressive track record of rapid success in practical application. Numerous universities around the world have honoured Frankl for his achievements. The present book provides a structured insight into his work. It explains the anthropological foundation of logotherapy and the healing concepts that are built on this foundation.

Univ.-Prof. h.c. Dr. phil. habil. Elisabeth Lukas ist Schülerin von Viktor E. Frankl, Klinische Psychologin, appr. Psy-chotherapeutin, Supervisorin, Referentin, emerit. Dozentin im Fach 'originäre Logotherapie nach Viktor E. Frankl', Autorin zahlreicher Fachbücher, die in 18 Fremdsprachen übersetzt worden sind. Diverse Ehrungen seitens Universitäten und der Stadt Wien für ihre Verdienste um die Weiterentwicklung und Verbreitung des logotherapeutischen Gedankengutes.
Details
Weitere ISBN/GTIN9783000666797
ProduktartE-Book
EinbandartE-Book
FormatEPUB
Format HinweisePub Wasserzeichen
FormatE101
Erscheinungsjahr2020
Erscheinungsdatum11.09.2020
ReiheLiving Logotherapy
Reihen-Nr.2
Seiten296 Seiten
SpracheEnglisch
Dateigrösse6392 Kbytes
Artikel-Nr.10118203
Rubriken
Genre9201

Inhalt/Kritik

Leseprobe


THE LOGOTHERAPEUTIC
FORM OF CONVERSATION

 

Keywords as a Guarantee
Against the Imposition of Values

We have already seen that logotherapy is not confined within a narrow psychotherapeutic space. Its domain of applicability is not limited to anxiety disorders, affective disorders, addictions, sexual deviations, personality disorders and behavioural disorders. Logotherapy can support young people in their difficult metamorphosis to adulthood, and old people in the process of looking back on life and preparing for their departure. It can pilot lovers and family members through conflicts, assist working people with overload and unemployed people with a lack of challenge in their daily lives. Yes, it can even straighten the backs of people who have been bent over by pain and grief, and lead people who have been made ideologically homeless back to their ideational roots. If necessary, it can counteract the spirit of an entire age and raise objections to discrimination against human beings.

All this can be achieved by logotherapy through the medium of language alone. Apart from its substantive assertions, it is a therapeutic / pedagogical / philosophical / pastoral form of conversation. This brings it close to other forms of conversation designed for a similar purpose, in particular the client-centred conversational psychotherapy developed by Carl R. Rogers. In fact, in comparing them, one finds some striking similarities. Both aim to create an empathic, trust-building communication climate, and both call on the therapist to accept the patient s person and authenticity of self unconditionally. However, there are also important differences. In logotherapy, acceptance of the patient does not necessarily entail acceptance of what the patient says. Logotherapy is not value neutral. On the contrary, it considers an examination of what has been said, with regard to its value, its relation to reality and its accountability, to be essential. For example, in the 1930s, Viktor E. Frankl often heard from unemployed people that they were useless and therefore their lives were pointless. He did not hesitate to expose this remark as a double misidentification because it is simply incorrect. Unemployed people do not need to be useless, they can do a lot of useful things. And if someone were too handicapped to be useful, that person would not lose either dignity or meaningfulness of existence.

To be sure, the careful testing of what has been said by the patient does not constitute indoctrination by the therapist. It takes place in dialogue. Dialogue, however, means more than an exchange of words. Dialogue is a exchange of thoughts which engages with the patient s words in a two-way effort to understand and achieve consensus about a piece of truth. In logotherapy, the therapist does not perform a mirror function to enable the patient to achieve a better self-understanding, but, in Frankl s words, a catalyst function , to enable the patient to achieve a better understanding of the meaningful possibilities that exist for him or her in the world. To achieve this, the therapist introduces ideas, helps to reflect on consequences, lends not only an ear, but also what is now called emotional intelligence, in short, thinks and feels in the place of the patient in order to provide spiritual stimulation. (Incidentally, value neutrality would also mean never to give praise in the therapeutic conversation, never to recognise the progress of the patient, and so on, which would lead to a very impersonal discussion.)

However, everything can be abused, every medication and every form of conversation. Value neutrality entails the risk of irrelevant discussions. A shift away from value neutrality, in turn, entails the danger of an imposition of values, namely, the danger that the therapist could make judgements about right and wrong in the life of the patient and thus force a system of values on him or her. Frankl warned against this several times. It was absolutely contrary to his intentions to impose values on the patient s values from outside. According to his understanding, what human beings, and therefore also patients, are at the deepest level is the system of values they use to measure their lives, and in treating and supporting them in their illness, it is only a question of protecting them from distorting and betraying their being, their true being.


If we assume that conscience is a sort of meaning organ, it is like a souffleur who inputs the direction in which we have to move, the direction in which we must proceed, to arrive at the possibility for meaning that a particular situation calls on us to realise. We must always, however, apply a specific measure to this situation, namely a measure of value. However, the values by which it is measured are so deeply rooted in our selves that if we do not want to be unfaithful to ourselves, if we do not want to betray ourselves, we cannot help but follow them, simply because we have always been them. 22


Optimal success in therapy would therefore mean that the patient would not be able to (or want to) do anything else but follow the conscience calibrated to his or her inner measures of value. A student of mine, who works in mission, once shared a saying with me from the crisis-laden African country of Rwanda; it fits wonderfully and proves how intercultural this view of Frankl is. The saying is: A friend is one who knows the melody of your heart and reminds you of it when you forget it.

Logotherapy would like to be a friend like this. If what the patient says contains ethically or psycho-hygienically questionable elements, elements which create or perpetuate disorders, this is brought before the conscience of the patient. It is, so to speak, brought before a court in which the patient is judge and jury, and the therapist, if necessary, is a lawyer and defender of psychic health and human dignity.

I have encountered a counterexample in therapeutic practice. A 46-year-old woman turned to a Munich psychiatrist for help with her depression. As the patient stated on questioning that she had detested her stepfather as a child, her problematic relationship with the stepfather was discussed, although she had not seen him as much as a dozen times during the past 20 years. As the woman admitted after further questioning that she suffered more frequently from depressive moods, a possible rhythm of mood cycles in her history was looked for. She was asked to assess the severity of remembered bad phases by means of questionnaires. The end result was that she was prescribed an antidepressant, and took it regularly for one year. The year ended with a suicide attempt by the patient.

After waking up in the clinic, the woman confessed to her husband that she had carried on an intimate relationship with an older man for a year. It had weighed on her, and yet she had not gotten rid of it. The constant invention of assorted lies to explain their evening sorties, and the solicitude of the unsuspecting husband, who had always waited up for her at night, had strangled her heart. She had seen no way out. The husband, a tolerant and loving man, talked to me and then agreed with his wife on a future style of comradely cohabitation which left the way open to a renewal of their marital relationship.

From a specialist point of view, this case is a perfect example of therapeutic malpractice. For a full year, an antidepressant was prescribed for a case of existential guilt, and the result was just what one might expect! How could this happen? This is what happens when patients conceal something, and therapists do not discover what has been hidden, when amongst the discordant harmonies they are not able to hear the melody that they need to recall to the patient s memory. During a full year of therapeutic sessions and check-ups has not a single word been spoken that would indicate the true reasons for the woman s depression? This is difficult to believe. It is more likely that it was not picked up on because another course was pursued: the course bad childhood , or the course endogenous cyclothymia . Also, questionnaires do not call forth the melody of a human heart.

So in all work with human beings, and especially with psychically disturbed human beings, it is necessary to listen for words that open the chamber of the heart in which sorrow is hidden. It is the chamber of the patient s own system of values, against which the patient measures his or her life - at least in part. If a keyword opens the door, then its values shimmer through, then the whisper of the patient s conscience is more audible, and therapeutic reasoning can stimulate behavioural and attitudinal corrections that address its concerns and are thus genuinely helpful.

There is one more thing to consider regarding a possible imposition of values: To recommend medication is also an imposition, if the patient does not know how suitable or unsuitable they are in his or her case. To focus on a specific topic of conversation is an imposition, if the patient cannot assess how important or unimportant this topic is for his or her progress. The logotherapist is in no greater danger than any other psychotherapist of imposing something of him or herself on the person with whom he or she is professionally involved. The best guarantee of avoiding this danger is always careful, sympathetic listening before speaking. In logotherapy, which is meaning-oriented and value-oriented support for life, this means careful, sympathetic listening to signals from the depth or height of the...

mehr

Autor

Univ.-Prof. h.c. Dr. phil. habil. Elisabeth Lukas ist Schülerin von Viktor E. Frankl, Klinische Psychologin, appr. Psy-chotherapeutin, Supervisorin, Referentin, emerit. Dozentin im Fach "originäre Logotherapie nach Viktor E. Frankl", Autorin zahlreicher Fachbücher, die in 18 Fremdsprachen übersetzt worden sind. Diverse Ehrungen seitens Universitäten und der Stadt Wien für ihre Verdienste um die Weiterentwicklung und Verbreitung des logotherapeutischen Gedankengutes.
Weitere Artikel von
David Nolland
Übersetzung