man-s-search-for-meaning

MAN'S SEARCH FOR MEANING
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 Paradoxical
intention is the empirical validation and clinical
application of Allport's statement.
A few more case reports may serve to clarify this
method further. The following patient was a bookkeeper
who had been treated by many doctors and in
several clinics without any therapeutic success. When
he was admitted to my hospital department, he was in
extreme despair, confessing that he was close to suicide.
For some years, he had suffered from a writer's
cramp which had recently become so severe that he
was in danger of losing his job. Therefore, only immediate
short-term therapy could alleviate the situation.
In starting treatment, Dr. Eva Kozdera recommended
to the patient that he do just the opposite of what he
usually had done; namely, instead of trying to write as
neatly and legibly as possible, to write with the worst
possible scrawl. He was advised to say to himself,
"Now I will show people what a good scribbler I am!"
And at the moment in which he deliberately tried to
scribble, he was unable to do so. "I tried to scrawl but
simply could not do it," he said the next day. Within
forty-eight hours the patient was in this way freed
from his writer's cramp, and remained free for the
11 New York, The Macmillan Co., 1956, p. 92.
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