Man's Search For Meaning - Viktor E. Frankl

LOGOTHERAPY IN A NUTSHELLto whom paradoxical intention was administered morethan twenty years ago; the therapeutic effect proved tobe, nevertheless, a permanent one.One of the most remarkable facts is that paradoxicalintention is effective regardless of the etiological basisof the case concerned. This confirms a statement oncemade by Edith Weisskopf-Joelson: "Although traditionalpsychotherapy has insisted that therapeuticpractices have to be based on findings on etiology, it ispossible that certain factors might cause neurosesduring early childhood and that entirely different factorsmight relieve neuroses during adulthood." 14As for the actual causation of neuroses, apart fromconstitutional elements, whether somatic or psychic innature, such feedback mechanisms as anticipatoryanxiety seem to be a major pathogenic factor. A givensymptom is responded to by a phobia, the phobiatriggers the symptom, and the symptom, in turn, reinforcesthe phobia. A similar chain of events, however,can be observed in obsessive-compulsive cases inwhich the patient fights the ideas which haunt him. 15Thereby, however, he increases their power to disturbhim, since pressure precipitates counterpressure.Again the symptom is reinforced! On the other hand,as soon as the patient stops fighting his obsessions andinstead tries to ridicule them by dealing with them inl4 "Some Comments on a Viennese School of Psychiatry," TheJournal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 51 (1955), pp. 701-3."This is often motivated by the patient's fear that his obsessionsindicate an imminent or even actual psychosis; the patient is notaware of the empirical fact that an obsessive-compulsive neurosis isimmunizing him against a formal psychosis rather than endangeringhim in this direction.151