About
Logotherapy
The Viktor Frankl Centre is the newest of 147 accredited centres across 45 countries. It is the first, and currently only organisation of its kind in Northern Ireland.
Videos on Logotherapy
As a meaning-centred psychotherapeutic approach, Logotherapy is both internationally acknowledged and empirically based, and is existential and humanistic.
It has a wide range of applications from the clinical to the pastoral and beyond. It is typically used in a clinical setting to deal with depression, anxiety, phobias, trauma, and more.
In the pastoral setting it can assist those who are questioning or exploring the meaning of life, death, relationships, work or study. Moreover, Logotherapy can help to re-orientate individuals experiencing meaninglessness, boredom, emptiness, despair or feeling frustrated in their quest to reach their full potential in their lives.
Whatever the setting, Logotherapy posits that there are three different ways to realise meaning:
- By creating a work or engaging in a task
- By experiencing something fully or by loving someone
- By the attitude one adopts toward unavoidable suffering
Logotherapy understands that, as each one is unique, so too is our life task. Our ultimate freedom lies in the fact that we can choose how to respond to any given situation, and that we are responsible for the stance that we take in that respect.
In Logotherapy we explore the meaning of work, suffering, and love. The approach we take is grounded in the philosophical but is therapeutic and practical in its application. Consider Frankl’s understanding of love as articulated in ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’:
“The truth—that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way —an honourable way—in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfilment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, “The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.”
These ‘epiphany moments’ are important in Logotherapy and allow us to ask and reframe pertinent questions of meaning.
Logotherapy is both pragmatic and eclectic in its use of therapeutic techniques. It can be used as a stand-alone therapy or an adjunct approach. In any case, there are three core techniques that Logotherapists use with their clients:
- Paradoxical intention: self-distancing and humorous exaggeration.
- Dereflection: drawing the client’s attention away from their symptoms as an antidote to hyper-reflection.
- Socratic dialogue and attitude modification: asking/framing questions that assist a client in finding meaning in a specific experience or a particular challenge.
As a meaning-centred psychotherapeutic approach, Logotherapy is both internationally acknowledged and empirically based, and is existential and humanistic.
It has a wide range of applications from the clinical to the pastoral and beyond. It is typically used in a clinical setting to deal with depression, anxiety, phobias, trauma, and more.
In the pastoral setting it can assist those who are questioning or exploring the meaning of life, death, relationships, work or study. Moreover, Logotherapy can help to re-orientate individuals experiencing meaninglessness, boredom, emptiness, despair or feeling frustrated in their quest to reach their full potential in their lives.
Whatever the setting, Logotherapy posits that there are three different ways to realise meaning:
- By creating a work or engaging in a task
- By experiencing something fully or by loving someone
- By the attitude one adopts toward unavoidable suffering
Logotherapy understands that, as each one is unique, so too is our life task. Our ultimate freedom lies in the fact that we can choose how to respond to any given situation, and that we are responsible for the stance that we take in that respect.
In Logotherapy we explore the meaning of work, suffering, and love. The approach we take is grounded in the philosophical but is therapeutic and practical in its application. Consider Frankl’s understanding of love as articulated in ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’:
“The truth—that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way —an honourable way—in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfilment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, “The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.”
These ‘epiphany moments’ are important in Logotherapy and allow us to ask and reframe pertinent questions of meaning.
Logotherapy is both pragmatic and eclectic in its use of therapeutic techniques. It can be used as a stand-alone therapy or an adjunct approach. In any case, there are three core techniques that Logotherapists use with their clients:
- Paradoxical intention: self-distancing and humorous exaggeration.
- Dereflection: drawing the client’s attention away from their symptoms as an antidote to hyper-reflection.
- Socratic dialogue and attitude modification: asking/framing questions that assist a client in finding meaning in a specific experience or a particular challenge.