I am not a psychologist or a psychiatrist. I have never been in therapy. I do have a friend who is a psychologist and he often answers questions about psychology that I have. What I do have is a strong interest in psychology, especially how it relates to a philosophy and theology of the human person.
Looking back at my education, I think that one big mistake that I made was not taking a special course in counseling that was available when I was a young priest. To take the course would involve a three-year commitment, classes every Friday for three hours.
The course interested me but the way the course was explained to me, it did not seem to be worth the three-year commitment. Looking back I think I made the wrong judgment. One of my friends took the course, and I was amazed at how much it helped him in his ministry.
Recently I had the opportunity of comparing the views of psychiatrists Sigmund Freud and Viktor Frankl, the author of a really marvelous book, “Man’s Search for Meaning” (A Clarion Book, Simon and Schuster, 1959, 145 pp.).
I think Freud was a genius. He spent his life trying to help people deal with emotional problems. He was basically trying to help them become more free. However, the only philosophy with which Freud was familiar was mechanistic. When he tried to explain his theories, this man who spent his life freeing people, denied that people were free.
It is a classic example of a genius not understanding how he was spending his life. I think the influence of mechanism prevented Freud from understanding how he was liberating people. If Freud had been familiar with the philosophy of existentialism, I think he might have reached a better understanding of what he was accomplishing with his clients.
Gordon W. Allport, who had been a professor of psychology at Harvard, in his preface to Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning,” wrote the following:
“In this book, Dr. Frankl explains the experience which led to his discovery of logotherapy. As a longtime prisoner in bestial concentration camps, he found himself stripped to native existence. His father, mother, brother, and his wife died in camps or were sent to the gas ovens, so that, excepting for his sister, his entire family perished in these camps.
“How could he — every possession lost, every value destroyed, suffering from hunger, cold and brutality, hourly expecting extermination — how could he find life worth preserving? A psychiatrist who personally has faced such extremity is a psychiatrist worth listening to. He, if anyone, should be able to view our human condition wisely and with compassion” (p. x1).
My guess is that through courses in philosophy I have taught, I have had more than 1,000 college students read Frankl’s book. Most claimed it was one of the best books that they had ever read.
What is this therapy which Frankl calls logotherapy or meaningtherapy? I will try to explain it through an example. Imagine a man whose stomach is bleeding. His surgeon tells him that he has lost most of his stomach through surgery. He should seek help through counseling.
The patient visits Dr. Frankl and after an hour interview, Dr. Frankl discovers that the man hates his father but he cannot face that he hates his father and so he is causing himself to bleed. When the interview ends, does Dr. Frankl tell the patient that he hates his father and rather than face that he hates his father is causing himself to bleed?
I hope not. If Dr. Frankl were to do that, the patient might bleed to death right in front of him. During many sessions together, Frankl tries to introduce to the patient many other meanings that eventually might enable the patient to calmly face his problem with his father.
The patient should freely do this. If the patient refuses to accept the new meanings that will help him handle his relationship with his father and so cause the bleeding to stop, there is nothing Dr. Frankl can do. The patient must freely choose to be healed.
I like much in Dr. Frankl’s logotherapy, especially the emphasis on the patient’s freedom. Frankl quotes the existentialist philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900): “He who has a ‘why’ to live can bear with almost any ‘how’ ”(p. x1). I believe that is true.
Frankl’ s emphasis on meaning fits in nicely with my personal philosophy. I do not believe that we are the total cause of the meanings in our life, but I do think that we have some influence over what meanings predominate in our lives.
How we spend our time, our vocation and job, those who are close to us, what books and magazines and newspapers we read, and many other influences that we choose influence the meanings that are most real to us. To some extent all of us shape our lives.
Father Lauder is a philosophy professor at St. John’s University, Jamaica. He presents two 15-minute talks from his lecture series on the Catholic Novel, 10:30 a.m. Monday through Friday on NET-TV.