Can everyone make their life meaningful, and how is the search for meaning connected to happiness? Logotherapy helps to find answers to these questions.
Definition
Logotherapy is a branch of psychotherapy based on the belief that each of us has an inherent desire to make our lives more meaningful. And everyone can achieve this — regardless of gender, age, level of intelligence, education, character, social environment and religious beliefs. When we do not realize this need, a state of spiritual emptiness (existential vacuum) arises, which provokes apathy, depression, loss of interest in life.
Operating principle
The approach focuses on the disclosure and development of a person’s abilities to perceive, freely and fully experience ongoing events, take authentic positions and implement them through meaningful actions. Through the expansion and deepening of the dialogue with oneself and the world, a person «introduces himself into the game of being» and comes to existence — a responsible and free living of life, to life with «internal consent». The central element of the work is human experiences. The method helps to determine our own position in relation to circumstances that we cannot change.
Progress
The therapist has an open dialogue with the patient. It is important that the style of communication, the depth of the topics and issues discussed leave a person with the feeling that he is understood — not only professionally, but also humanly. During therapy, the patient learns to ask himself meaningful questions, to pay attention to what gives rise to a sense of agreement with his own life, no matter how difficult it may be. It is possible to use “paradoxical intention”: the psychotherapist in a humorous form invites the patient to do what he is afraid of or does not dare to do. This move provides an opportunity to take a detached position in relation to oneself, one’s fears and master the situation. During the sessions, in the dialogue, the patient gets the opportunity to explore how this or that event affects him, to understand the “requests” that life makes him, and to work out the best “response” to the situation.