Quotes About Frankl

Logotherapy, or, as it has been called by some authors, "The Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy," focuses on the meaning of human existence as well as on man's search for such a meaning.

Love is as primary a phenomenon as sex. Normally, sex is a mode of expression for love. Sex is justified, even sanctified, as soon as, but only as long as, it is a vehicle of love.

Suddenly I drew back the hand which was ready to shake him, frightened at the thing I was about to do. At that moment I became intensely conscious of the fact that no dream, no matter how horrible, could be as bad as the reality of the camp which surrounded us, and to which I was about to recall him.

Man's intrinsically human capacity to take a stand to whatever may confront him includes his capacity to choose his attitude toward himself, more specifically, to take a stand towards his own somatic and psychic conditions and determinants.

There is determinism in the psychological dimension, and freedom in the noological dimension which is the human dimension, the dimension of human phenomena.

knowledge, Tilly did volunteer and, for whatever reasons, was approved for transport.

Indeed, it is the lack of discrimination between causes and conditions that allows reductionism to deduce a human phenomenon from, and reduce it to, a sub-human phenomenon. Indeed, reductionism may be called sub-humanism. However, by being derived from a sub-human phenomenon the human phenomenon is turned into a mere epiphenomenon.

The more comprehensive the meaning, the less comprehensible it is. Infinite meaning is necessarily beyond the comprehension of a finite being. Here is the point at which science gives up and wisdom takes over.

There are some authors who contend that meanings and values are nothing but defense mechanisms, reaction formations and sublimations. But as for myself, I would not be willing to live merely for the sake of my defense mechanisms, nor would I be ready to die merely for the sake of my reaction formations.

While Freud wrote of the drive toward pleasure or sex, and Adler of a drive toward power, Frankl believed that the human will to meaning was at least as strong a force in making us into who we are. While

Frankl's brand of therapy is sometimes considered, after Freud's psychoanalysis and Adler's individual psychology, to be the third school of Viennese psychotherapy, and The Will to Meaning clearly points out the differences between his ideas and those of his compatriots. It

Frankl asserts that the potentialities of life are not indifferent possibilities, but must be seen in the light of meaning and values. Such meaning and values cannot be imposed; each individual must seek out for himself or herself the meaning of each situation and the implications the present moment may have for the future.

Whereas Freud believed that people are driven to seek pleasure and avoid pain (his famous pleasure principle), Frankl maintained that people's primary drive isn't toward pleasure but toward finding meaning in their lives.

El deseo de significado. Victor Frankl llevaba razón cuando cuestionó las teorías de Sigmund Freud al aventurar que el principal deseo del hombre no es encontrar placer sino sentido.

Frankl went on to say it wasn't pleasure mankind was looking for, that men only sought pleasure when they couldn't find meaning. If a man has no sense of meaning, Frankl argued, he will numb himself with pleasure.