Logotherapy Can Do More

By Dr. Stephan Peeck 

Institut für Logotherapie und Existenzanalyse Hamburg-Bergedorf, Germany

Translated by Tom Edmondson for Meaning in Ministry: Logotherapy with Pastoral Care

Translation notes:

1. In this English translation I have attempted to be faithful to Viktor Frankl’s insistence that the English word “spiritual” has religious connotations not present in the German word Geist. In most instances I have rendered Dr. Peeck’s use of Geist as noëtic (Frankl’s chosen term from the Greek, νοῦς/νοöς), with the corresponding inflected forms, noögenic, and noölogical. I have made an exception, however, when the English calls for the word “spirituality.” In this case I have decided that the word “spirituality” is acceptable because it is becoming more and more the case that a clear distinction is drawn between the words “spirituality” and “religion.”  Many people today identify as spiritual but not religious. A person, such as an atheist or agnostic, can also be spiritual without being religious.

2. The word “imagination” in the German term wertorientierte imagination has a unique meaning. It does not refer to a faculty of the mind or a fantasy. Rather, it refers to a technique of bringing a conscious client into their subconscious and waiting/watching for the images that the subconscious produces. The client does not produce the images, rather, the images appear on their own. Wertorientierte imagination is a technique that was developed by Uwe Böschemeyer, a student of Viktor Frankl. It is widely practiced in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, but practically unknown outside of the German speaking world. In this paper I have chosen to stay with the usual rendering of the term into English as Value-oriented Imagination with italics to indicate to the reader that it is a technical term with a proprietary meaning.
   

Logotherapy is More Than Just a Guide to Meaning

Logotherapy is sometimes understood merely as a complement to psychotherapy. Again and again, at least in Germany, it is heard from colleagues that Logotherapy is primarily applies to the field of prophylaxis, and in the therapeutic context only for very specific, clearly defined indications. [It is characterized in the following way]: Logotherapy as a specific form of therapy should be used, for example, in the case of an existential vacuum or its pathological form, i.e. in the case of noögenic depression. Logotherapy is also a specific therapy for dealing with an irreversible fate and is also suitable for the avoidance of so-called iatrogenic neurosis, i.e. a neurosis that is based on the fact that a doctor or psychologist encounters a person from a reductive image of the human being and understands the interlocutor only as a psychophysicum and accordingly does not include the noëtic dimension in the conversation or treatment. Otherwise, Logotherapy is rather a non-specific form of therapy, which can be included in psychotherapy if necessary.

In my opinion, this understanding of logotherapy is far too one-sided, too limited, and too reductive. Logotherapy can do more and it is more. It is by no means only responsible for the above-mentioned very limited range of indications. Rather, it is a completely independent form of therapeutic work with people that can be applied to all possible problem areas, e.g. for people with depression, fears, addictions, compulsions, psychosomatic disorders, suicidal hazards, traumatic experiences and much more. In all of this, Logotherapy is – as already mentioned – not just a supplementary measure in the context of other psychotherapeutic procedures, but an original, independent therapy.

Frankl himself writes in one of his books: Logotherapy not only recognizes the causes (the conditions) of a mental disorder, but it also recognizes the true causes of such a disorder. And this true cause of a disorder is the noëtic person who takes a stand on all the causes (conditions).  However, if Logotherapy recognizes not only the causes of disorders, but also their true causes, then it is also a causal therapy for all possible disorders. So much for Frankl.

Concretely: the real reason, for example, of an obsessive-compulsive neurosis is ultimately not an overly strict parental home, which then manifests itself later as an overly strict superego in the obsessive-compulsive ill person, which in turn is then significantly involved in the coercive event, among other things. No, the real cause of obsessive-compulsive neurosis is ultimately the inner noëtic person, who comments on all the internalized influences (conditions). And – it may be added – the real reason for such a disturbance lies altogether in a lack of access to the positive, life-sustaining noëtic forces, such as goodness, freedom, etc. All these noëtic powers are indestructibly part of every human life. However, they can be heavily buried or very blocked.

A few years ago I organized a Logotherapeutic training course in Breklum (which is located in northern Germany) at a psychosomatic clinic with some psychiatrists and psychologists. The psychiatric chief physician of this clinic at the time, who took part in the training, summed up his opinion on the relationship between psychotherapy and logotherapy as follows. He asked: "What actually has to be integrated into what: Does logotherapy have to be integrated into psychotherapy – or is it not rather the case that psychotherapy must be integrated into Logotherapy?" He was of the opinion that psychotherapy had to be integrated into Logotherapy. And he justified his opinion as follows: Logotherapy is richer and wider than psychotherapy by a whole dimension, namely the noëtic dimension. Therefore, it is only logical that Logotherapy integrates psychotherapy and not the other way around. He even went a step further in his statement. He not only saw Logotherapy as an independent, fully comprehensive form of therapy, but he even postulated in a certain way a leading position for Logotherapy in psychotherapy as a whole.

This is now the basic concern of my lecture: I would like to unfold for you my understanding of Logotherapy as an independent form of psychotherapy, an understanding of Logotherapy that does not see it as a mere supplement or appendage of psychotherapy, but as a form of therapy that, with the integration of various elements from psychotherapy, is responsible for the entire spectrum of mental disorders. In the following I would like to unfold the basic outlines elements of such a Logotherapy as vividly and practically as possible.

The Center of Logotherapeutic Work is the Perceived Awareness of the Forces of the Noëtic Unconscious

At the center of Existential Analysis’s anthropology is the phenomenon of nous (Geist). In doing so, Frankl once again differentiates between conscious and unconscious spirituality and relates the two as follows. The source and root layer of all conscious spirituality is the unconscious nous. The core of the existential analytical image of man is thus – to put it more precisely –"unconscious spirituality". All noëtic phenomena such as freedom, responsibility, love, hope, trust, courage, the genuine personal conscience, the knowledge of the security of life in God (one could also say: religiosity), creativity, intuition and many more are ultimately based in the depth of the noëtic unconscious and from here – more in the case of some and less – rise into consciousness.

If, however, the center of Existential Analysis’s anthropology is unconscious spirituality, then it is entirely logical that the help for the felt awareness of the unconscious noëtic forces must be the center of Logotherapeutic work. The proprium of this direction of therapy will therefore have to consist precisely in this: to help the suffering and help-seeking person to feel and experience his unconscious noëtic powers as deeply as possible, and to help him to make these forces fruitful for his everyday life. With great regularity in my therapeutic work, I experience that the "turn for the better" in the conversations is centrally related to the experience of these unconscious noëtic forces.

The Value Imagination as a Way of Access to the Noëtic Unconscious

In practice, however, one is now immediately faced with the question: "How does this work, this felt awareness of the unconscious noëtic powers? How does it work in concrete terms?” Since the unconscious noëtic forces are naturally forces that reside in the unconscious, all paths that move solely on the noëtic-based and rational level will not help.

To put it another way, appeals such as, "You are a free person, you just have to seize it," or rapturous and emphatic speeches about the inescapability of inner freedom and the meaningfulness of life, or even argumentative interventions in which it is explained to the interlocutor why he does not have to be afraid but can be courageous -- all this does not help much in a therapeutic process. The interlocutor's response to such interventions is usually, "Yes, yes, I know that I could be free, and I know that I don't have to be afraid, but I still have it." Approaches in conversation that ultimately remain in the rational-cognitive realm do not go deep enough--at least not in my experience.

How, then, can one touch the unconscious noëtic forces in the depths through conversation in such a way that a person really begins to experience them during the conversation?

I have been working on this since the beginning of the 90s with the "Value-oriented Imagination" originally developed by Uwe Böschemeyer. From a methodological point of view, the Value-oriented Imagination is my best horse in the stable, so to speak. It is a procedure with the help of which an interlocutor can penetrate far into his unconscious depths and tangibly experience the energies that are available here.

What are Value Imaginations?

Before I get specific, I want to briefly explain what Value-oriented Imaginations are. The Value-oriented Imagination is about a deep immersion into the inner images, or rather, into the inner world of symbols. These images, or symbols, are in no way merely imagined or fantasized images. Value-oriented Imaginations are therefore not fantasy journeys. Rather, it is about the fact that an interlocutor waits in a state of relative relaxation for the inner world of symbols to begin to unfold in his inner eye on their own. These symbols are by no means just images, they are inner energies captured in the form of a picture, inner emotional powers; they are energetic images. At the same time, they transport the forces of which the picture speaks into the conscious attitude of life.

During a Value-oriented Imagination the interlocutor closes his eyes and keeps them closed throughout the experience. Both therapist and client remain in conversation during the imagination, i.e. the client briefly tells what he sees, and the therapist suggests what he can do. As long as an imagining client can let himself fall deep enough into the imagination, he experiences the whole thing up close, as if he were actually in the action (similar to the case in dreams). Before you start imagining values, you agree with your interlocutor on a destination to which you would like to explore.

Case study 1: Anxiety and panic attacks

But what does the whole thing look like in concrete terms? I exemplify various problem areas. I'm thinking of a woman, about 40 years old, working in management consulting. She comes because of a massive anxiety and panic disorder. More and more often she was plagued with panic attacks, she trembles, becomes paralyzed by anxiety, has seizures, then has to find a toilet within a few seconds, etc. On the one hand, the background to this problem is massive experiences of violence in the parental home. Additionally, she had been used for child pornography. Her grandfather would pick her up often as a child and drive her out into the country to a certain house, where she had to undress in a small room and play naked with toys. Then men came and touched her. Even today, she can't stand it when her husband just wants to caress her tenderly.

Of course, we didn't start with the imaginations right away in this series of conversations. It took a long time before this was even possible. But then we started. Here I shall describe an exemplary imagination that initiated a change for the better.

After the relaxation phase, the client sees a jungle (a symbol for the deep unconscious). She sees it far from above (she still keeps her distance from her depth). I ask her to let her inner feet get heavier and let themselves slide down into the forest very gently. She complies. Then she lands down in the woods. After a short time, threatening feelings creep up on her in an undifferentiated way. I ask her to place her inner feet firmly on the inner ground and to straighten herself up inwardly (she takes a stand on her fear through this symbolic action, she distances herself from her fear, we try to mobilize the person taking a stand). The fear remains, but it is easier to bear after a while. I ask the client to call on the good inner light for help. Nothing happens for a long time. She breathes loudly and tries to withstand the fear. Then she says: "There's something coming..." Silence. "It's getting closer". Silence. I want to know what is coming. It takes time for her to respond. Then she says, "It's something shining, like a rainbow." What does the light radiate, I ask her. Silence, then: "It makes me calmer." (So she doesn't answer the question about radiation but describes the effect of radiation right away). I ask her to stretch out her inner hands to this luminous one (i.e., she aligns herself with something other than her fear, she transcends herself towards the luminous). Again a long silence. Then she says, "The light begins to envelop me, it envelops me." I ask her how it feels to her. After a while, she says, "Sure, I feel safe."  Silence, she doesn't think about security now, she feels and experiences it. I suggest to her that she ask the light to simply flow and flush through her mind and body. She shouldn't even ask how it works, but just let it happen. It happens, her breathing becomes easier and freer. How she feels, I ask her: "It's like a cleansing – I'm becoming wide and free..." She remains in this experience for a long time. Then she comes back.

What happened in this imagination? The client is first deeply immersed in her unconscious (jungle). That's when the fear came. The inner person takes a stand against fear by straightening up the client internally. So she doesn't put up with everything from her fear. Then she aligns herself with the good inner light. This is where the intentionality of the mind comes into play: it aligns itself with a value. This value then comes to her in a luminous form. But what is this value? She describes the light as a rainbow. The rainbow is, after all, a deeply religious symbol. It stands for God's peace with man, it stands for God's love. The client thus experiences a symbol that can be assigned to the sphere of the spiritual unconscious. She experiences first-hand what Frankl describes in his book: "The Unconscious God." There, Frankl says in essence that every human being has a relationship with God, no matter how unconscious it may be. This woman did not consider herself religious in her consciousness. And of course, in the context of Logotherapy, it is not permitted to proselytize a person. Therapy is not a mission and does not involve stealing souls. Rather, it is about the client experiencing the energy contained in this symbol as deeply as possible because this energy has a healing effect. For her, imaginations like these caused anxiety and panic attacks to dissolve more and more into pleasure. For a long time now, these attacks have not played a role for her.

Case study 2: Burn-out Syndrome (exhaustion depression)

I'm thinking of a woman in her early 40s, living alone. In the past, she had already completed a lengthy depth psychological therapy for anorexia nervosa. She had overcome this problem. She comes to this interview because she feels chronically exhausted, empty, powerless, and tired. The stresses and strains at work (shift work at the same time on different screens) are getting her down, privately she had built a small house for herself, whereby the associated trouble with the construction company had literally drained her strength. Living alone without a partner also bothered her, as well as the question: Where should I go professionally in the future? At the time, she was working a job far below her level, which made her feel quite meaningless.

Again, I just want to present a distillation of a journey into the unconscious taken from a longer series of conversations that was typical of the recovery process. It is an imagination to the inner healer (this is a symbol of a person's self-healing powers).

After a short period of relaxation, the client finds herself on a beach. She lets herself fall deeper and deeper until she feels like she's really there. She feels the sand under her feet, the warm air, the sea washing softly and calmly on the beach. 

Then the weather starts to change. It becomes cloudy, the heat disappears. I ask the client to ask her mind to bring up the inner healer. But he doesn't come. Instead, it gets darker and darker on the beach and a kind of mythical creature appears: a primeval bird with iron claws on its feet and an extremely pointed beak (symbol of the self-aggressive powers). This primeval bird radiates an extreme threat, making her downright afraid of annihilation. She feels that she is shrinking and getting smaller and smaller. Again, I ask her to stand up straight in the face of this monster (personal statement towards these destructive inner forces). She tries but she doesn't quite succeed. 

I ask her to turn around 180 degrees in the other direction as best she can. She succeeds with great effort. I asked her to wait again for the inner healer to come from there. Nothing happens for a long time. Then, very faintly, a figure begins to appear. After a long silence, she says: “This is a woman, completely unknown to me.” I direct her focus to this woman and ask her to come closer (intentionality of mind, alignment with a value). Very slowly, this succeeds. She now directs her inner attention to this female figure and describes it: “She is brightly dressed and somehow full of light and completely unknown and looks timeless (this figure is a force field, which in turn can be assigned to the spiritual unconscious).” I want to know what this figure radiates. "A lot of warmth, a lot of love..." Then she falls silent and begins to cry. I want to know what those tears are. "It's like a release from this pressure," she says – referring to the pressure that came from the primeval bird on the one hand and all the pressure from her everyday life. 

For a long time she stands in front of the female figure. In her breathing, posture, facial expressions and gestures you can literally see how she straightens up inwardly and becomes freer, how the energy of this figure moves into her and spreads. After a long time, I ask her to turn back to the primordial bird, but with the inner healer at her side. This animal is still very threatening and are getting bigger and bigger. I tell her to ask the healer to put a hand on her back and the two of them together stand up straight in front of this bird. The healer is completely relaxed, the client is still tense. After a long trial of testing its strength, the primeval bird begins to flag, shrinks, becomes smaller and smaller, and moves away. 

On her own, the client could not cope with the destructive elemental force of this bird. It was simply not possible to make a personal statement. Supported by the forces of the spiritual unconscious, however, she was able to hold her own against these destructive energies. They withdrew. The client stays on the beach for a long time, bright sunlight, and warmth flood over her. Then she comes back from the imagination.

Case study 3: Psychosomatics

A young woman, whose mother had died some time ago comes to talk. A short time after her mother's death, she felt a lump in her chest that just wouldn't go away. She was sure that this lump was related to the death of her mother and the mourning over her.

Now, in the imagination, one can also wander into the body. First, we did a little relaxation exercise again and then I asked the client without asking how it works, to just look into this lump. It took some time and then she saw her mother's death room. Her mother lay dead on the bed, the atmosphere in the room dark and sad. Then, without having called her, an older female figure, completely unknown to her, appeared. She radiated wisdom, kindness, and comfort (all emotional forces that can be attributed to the spiritual unconscious). I ask the client to focus only on this old wise woman (focus on a value, intentionality of the mind) and let her take the reins. Then the following story happened.

The old wise woman takes the mother, who is suddenly alive again, and the client by the hand. Then she leads them through a very long dark corridor, at the end of which is a fireproof, heavy iron door. The old wise woman opens that door. Behind it, it is bright white. The client intuitively feels: I'm not going to go through this. Then, piece by piece, a bridge is formed out of the white; a white bridge. This bridge leads into a beautiful, light, free, green country. The mother detaches herself from the hand of the old wise woman and, without turning back, walks lightly, freely, and joyfully across the bridge into this country. Then the old wise woman literally slams the door shut again, looks at the client and leads her back to the dying room. There, all heaviness has given way to a friendly, bright atmosphere. Then the client comes back from the imagination.

Not long after this imagination, the lump of grief in the client's breast disappeared permanently. What had happened in the imagination? In the form of the old wise woman, the client has again encountered the forces of her spiritual unconscious: forces of kindness and wisdom. One could also say that the client encountered forces of the wisdom unconscious, forces in their depths that know much more about life and death than consciousness. Not coming to her from the outside, but coming from within, her own unconscious tells her where life goes in death. It's not going into a big black hole, but into a free, completely new country. Here, too, it is not a matter of indoctrinating a person in an ideological way about a possible life after death. Rather, it is about the client experiencing these wisdom powers of her noëtic unconscious as tangibly as possible. What she then makes of it ideologically in her consciousness is her business and is only explicitly addressed if she expressly wishes it. Only then should it be made an issue.

Summary

I could give many other examples from imaginative work with a wide variety of problem areas, e.g. with suicidal, obsessive-compulsive disorder, addicted people, and many other problems. Unfortunately, this is not possible within our timeframe.

Let me recap what I wanted to show you with these three small, very simple examples. In all three cases – as in many other cases – the decisive factor for overcoming the problems with great regularity was the deep emotional, conscious experience of the powers of the noëtic unconscious by means of a Value-oriented Imagination. This regularly brought the "turnaround" into the conversation.

The following elements are substantial components of the imaginative process: The intentionality of the mind is addressed. This is, for example, the orientation towards a certain goal in the imagination. It is also important to take a personal stance on the phenomena that arise, for example, straightening up in the face of the feeling of fear. This is equivalent to self-distancing. The alignment with a value figure (such as the healer) corresponds to self-transcendence, i.e. the alignment with a value other than fear. And finally, it is important that the person taking the position is supported by the supra-individual, unsurpassably strong collective forces of the noëtic unconscious in their attitude towards the destructive, unhealthy energies. Left to its own devices, the inner person is sometimes overwhelmed by this. Sometimes the destructive energies are simply too strong for that.

Far beyond these three small examples, one can now let other noëtic feelings come as value figures in the Value-oriented Imagination: goodness, freedom, love, joy, hope, the supporting reason for life (i.e. the good supporting hand) and many more. Basically, in this way you can let any anthropologically relevant feeling come as a form and thus feel and experience it in a very dense way.

It goes without saying that healing or a change for the better does not happen through one or two Value-oriented Imaginations, but usually through a multitude of them within a series of conversations. And of course, it goes without saying that in the context of a series of conversations, you don't just imagine. However, in my experience, a Value-oriented Imagination is the deepest, most immediate, and therefore easiest way to make the powers of the spiritual unconscious tangible.

The Processing of Resistance

Now one can ask whether the imaginative immersion into the world of the noëtic unconscious is really so easy. Is it really true that – especially with mentally disturbed people – they just have to go to the imagination to experience all these wonderful powers that we have just mentioned? Obviously, it's not that simple.

As a rule, in the imaginative process with mentally disturbed people – just as with mentally healthy people – there is always resistance; with some more, others less. How do these resistances become visible on an imaginative level? As shown in one of the examples above, they also appear in symbolic form, i.e. also in picture form, whereby these images are also anything but mere images. They are also inner forces captured in the picture. What do these images look like? For example, as shown above, there are mythical monsters, dragons, nasty spiders, sneering witches, brutal robbers and much more. Symbols of this kind come, in the words of C.G. Jung, from the collective unconscious. In other words, there are obviously negative energies in the depths of the unconscious that can no longer be derived from life history, but that are common to all people. Likewise, there are resistances that come from a person's life story. They appear, for example, in the form of the wounded inner child who sits huddled together in the corner of a dark cave, in parental figures radiating threat, etc.

The concrete work now shows that there is often no real progress without paying heed to these resistances. The contact with the positive unconscious noëtic forces does not really come about sustainably if one simply ignores the resistances.

I will briefly exemplify using the example of the wounded inner child. Again and again, this symbol appears in imaginations and reflects old life-history injuries that negatively influence one’s current attitude to life. I think of a client who suffered from the fact that she often woke up suddenly and drenched in sweat at night with a racing pulse. She had spent her childhood and adolescence in a rather neglected home, with her parents drinking a lot.

It is true that all attempts to journey with her to the positive forces of the noëtic unconscious did not fail. She came into contact with these forces, but there was no lasting effect. The symptom didn't want to go away. Then, in an imagination, we let the inner healer (power of the spiritual unconscious) come and give her an assignment. He would lead the client from where she was being roused from sleep. He immediately set off, dragging the client behind him in a frenzied hurry, until both were standing in a winter landscape in front of a frozen lake (lake = symbol for myself). The healer indicated to the client that he wanted to dive down to the bottom of the lake with her. The client was terrified of it but agreed (personal statement on fear). 

They went down into dizzying black depths. Arriving at the bottom of the lake, she suddenly found herself in her parents' house. Then she saw a little girl sitting under the sofa in the living room. What was particularly striking about this girl was the wildly protruding red hair. The closer she gets to the girl, the more she feels her incredible anger (the red hair already indicated this anger). At my suggestion, she asks the girl if she wants to show her anything. Then the girl comes out from under the sofa and points angrily and resignedly at the same time to the completely chaotic-looking apartment of her parents.  I ask her to allow this girl to let herself run free. And then the redeeming thing happened: the little girl finally let go of her anger. In an enormous outburst she smashed the furniture. After this outburst of anger one could no longer speak of a furnished apartment. 

Then the picture changed. The healer and an exhausted but very relaxed girl sat on the beach. The healer smiled at both her and the girl lovingly and kindly, as if to finally say, “well done.” A short time later, the startling nocturnal attacks disappeared and have not reappeared to this day. The series of talks was at least four or five years ago. As far as I know, she is still fine.

Perhaps, because it is so beautifully illustrative, I will add another, very short example, from the very early days of my work. A severely depressed woman comes to talk. She had a so-called psychogenic depression, i.e. a depression that had been laid down in childhood. She was a teacher, but in the meantime, she was unable to work and took early retirement. After she had complained to me about her suffering during the first few hours, I now wanted to work with her Logotherapeutically towards the so-called positive, i.e. looking for new meaning and supporting values that should help her out of the depression. I announced this plan to her at the end of an hour and then the next hour came. She opened the conversation by telling a dream she had after the last lesson. It went like this: I built a new house together with her on a huge mountain of garbage. A very tender green lawn sprouted out of the ground, and we built a kind of wooden frame house. The wood looked really good and smelled like wood. So everything was good. Except for one small detail. Near the house, one arm protruded from the pile of garbage, just one arm. She still thought in her dreams: Oh dear, there is still a corpse buried. That was the dream.

The interpretation was clear to both of us very quickly: You don't build new houses on mountains of rubbish. First of all, it is necessary to take care of the inner psychic garbage of this woman, to work on the so-called corpses in the basement. Only then will the new house be built. So this dream was a correction for my rather daring announcement at the end of the previous hour that we have to get to the positive straight away.

What do I want to show with these examples? I would like to make it clear that Logotherapy cannot dispense with resistance and coming to terms with the past work either. Both must not be banished from Logotherapy but must have their place in it. As long as it can be done without this work, it is of course all well and good. Then, of course, one should not pay much attention to the resistances and old wounds. In the case of mentally disturbed people, however, resistance always plays a significant role and must therefore be included in the work.

Specifically, the old pain, the sadness, the anger, the resignation, the old fear, and other things must also be allowed to come to the surface. And there has to be room to talk about all this, to understand it in its contexts of origin and effects. In this case, Logotherapy basically engages in psychotherapy, if that means that it helps the client to illuminate and understand psychodynamic relationships.

And even in the case of mentally healthy people who only want to do prophylactic work with themselves, I think it makes sense to at least keep an eye on the resistance area, as the resistance is also noticeable over and over. Many a person who must by no means be classified in the pathological area, can otherwise easily become a victim of e.g. his will to power without the confrontation with his shadow area and thus thoroughly harass himself and others. Logotherapists are not immune to this either.

In summary: In my 27 years of logotherapeutic work thus far, my experience is that healing or alleviation of psychological problems does not come solely by analyzing the problem more deeply and thoroughly and by working more and more to uncover the problem. In order for a person to experience healing or alleviation of mental disorders, something new must be added to the old. And this novelty is, at its core, the conscious, felt experience of the forces of the noëtic unconscious. However, at least in the therapeutic area, healing is often not possible without dealing with resistance. I have found the formula for myself here: As much alignment with the forces of the noëtic unconscious as possible and as much resistance work as necessary. Exactly what this relationship looks like will vary from person to person. Here it is important to respect the uniqueness and singularity of the human being.

Logotherapeutic Dream Work

Another method is Logotherapeutic dream work. It has a closeness to Value-oriented Imagination work. The closeness results from the fact that both imagination symbols and dream symbols come from the same source, namely, the unconscious. In contrast to the Value-oriented Imagination, however, a person cannot consciously influence what is happening in a dream, because he is in a deep sleep. This does not mean, however, that the noëtic person is not active here. It is active, but deep in its unconscious roots. Of course, Logotherapeutic dream work makes use of all the knowledge that exists in dream interpretation. Its specificity, however, lies in the fact that it looks at dreams with a particular regard to phenomena of the nous. Here are a few brief examples.

In a dream, a person with a severe obsessive-compulsive disorder finds himself in a cemetery on a pitch-black night. He crouches behind a tombstone. Then he can't believe his eyes. In the middle of the cemetery, a light event suddenly appears. And then this person experiences the resurrection of Jesus in his dream. Even in his dreams, he hears himself say: Then the whole thing is true after all.

Here, again, the unconscious noëtic dimension comes to the fore and tells this person about the deep, comforting connections of life. However, since this person adhered to a fervent atheistic belief, he did not attach any importance to this dream and the dream could not really unfold its effect.

It's different with another man. He was seriously ill with cancer and was heading for major professional bankruptcy. He dreams that he is climbing a hill. From the other side, he is met by his worst enemy, who has driven him into bankruptcy. The weather is stormy, rainy, and cloudy. Just before they meet at the top of the hill, the sky starts to glow. Then the dreamer sees a very loving and comforting look from the face of Mary. He feels deeply secure and comforted. For him, this dream had great meaning. His fear and worries were not gone, not at all. But, in spite of everything, he felt wonderfully protected by good powers.

Another example: A woman dreams that she is in the house where she lives. Everything is the same as usual. Only on one wall there is something different than in reality. There's a door in the wall that isn't usually there. Curious, she opens this door and is amazed. Behind the door, the house continues. And there is a beautiful, wide room, sun-drenched – but not yet further furnished. Even in her dream, she thinks: you absolutely have to use this room. The interpretation is obvious. The dream wants to tell her: new possibilities of meaning are waiting for you, beautiful wide interiors that have not yet been used, please enter them, and use them. What it meant in concrete terms had to be worked out in conversation.

And finally, a woman who was very successful in her career asked herself, “Should I continue on my professional path as before or should I do something else?” Then she dreams that a long line of cars is driving slowly up a rising mountain. And then they slowly descend again on the sloping side. Only a few cars swerved out of the convoy and drove cross-country. Somehow, she was fascinated by these swerving cars. In this dream, her deep inner conscience speaks to her (again a phenomenon of unconscious spirituality) and shows her what is meaningful to her in the coming years and what is not: she should deviate from the career path and go new ways.

Just as with the Value-oriented Imagination work, the same applies to the dream-work: as far as possible, in the conversation about the dreams, it is necessary to go into the noëtic potentials that the dream flushes to the surface. However, as far as necessary, the resistances that become visible in dreams must also be addressed and dealt with.

Work in the Unconscious Realm Must be Linked to Work in the Conscious Realm

In order to counteract the impression that Logotherapy, as I understand it, is only about working with the unconscious area, I would like to point out that I do not just imagine or talk about dreams with my interlocutors. Imagining must always be closely linked to the conversation conducted entirely in consciousness. If you only imagine, then there is a danger that a parallel world to normal everyday life will build up, as it were. One world would then be the wondrous world of imagination and the other world would be the real outside world in which the client spends most of his time. This must be avoided at all costs.

The effect of imaginations is primarily that the imaginations continue to have an effect underground. It opens up – not through a single imagination – but very much through a series of imaginations, the channel from the spiritual unconscious to the conscious opens up a little more. In this way, the life-sustaining spiritual emotional forces are deposited a little more on the ground of the conscious feeling for life and are always a little more available to the client, even without him having to think about the imagination again and again after the lesson.

Nevertheless, it is very important to talk to the interlocutor in a very concrete way about how what he has experienced in his imagination can be translated into his everyday life. So if he encounters the figure of deep inner trust in his imagination and is deeply touched by this encounter, it is very important to talk to him now about what it would mean in concrete terms to risk more trust in his everyday life than before. And then he has to do it! Imagination alone will not change anything. It always requires taking action. For example, he must also dare to make decisions and implement them, i.e. to do them. Or he has to dare to get involved with another person in a truly loving way instead of retreating again and again into his schizoid shell.

Experience now shows that a client, even if he has had a wonderful, profound experience with trust in his imagination, can by no means approach life with confidence in his real everyday life. On the contrary, often when it comes to the acid test, he first feels the old fear, the well-known mistrust, etc., again. And then, at least cognitively remembering the imagination, he just has to dare. He has to dare to try the new, whatever it may be in detail, even without the emotional backing that he has experienced in the imagination. When the two come together: the good experiences in the inner world with the real daring new action in the outer world, then the work moves forward. Then, in the long run, one works from the inside out and the other from the outside in. And that makes you strong.

In sum, working with a client only in the inner world falls short; working with a client only in the outside world also falls short. The work in the inner world must be closely intertwined with the work in the very concrete outer world; the work in the unconscious must be closely intertwined with the work in the conscious. The dovetailing of work in these different areas leads to very positive interactions and enables progress in the work in the best possible way in his real, everyday life that easily.

The Appreciative, Dense Conversation

Another method I work with is the Appreciative, Dense Conversation, originally developed by Uwe Böschemeyer. The dense conversation assumes that people don't always truly express themselves in the words they say. It assumes that people also like to release a lot of verbal noise out of their mouths, with which they tend to cover up rather than bringing up what they actually mean, think, and feel.

The dense conversation is always used in the course of the conversation when the therapist has the feeling that the client is not really speaking up. He then simply holds out what has been said to him again with the silent - or even out loud - question: "Is what you are saying, what you really mean and think and feel?" Both the client and the therapist then follow the client's path of words until it becomes clear what the client really wants to say. Only then is it possible to continue the conversation without the two of them talking at cross purposes.

I'll illustrate this with a short fictitious example. Let's say a therapist has a client. I'll call him Peter. Peter is a client who is very afraid of other people. The therapist gave him a small homework assignment for the next lesson. He dared him to go into a coffee shop all by himself and sit down in the middle of the coffee shop in a highly visible position, shout loudly and audibly to the waiter and place his order loudly. The purpose of the exercise should be to overcome the fear of unpleasant attention. Now he comes back and the therapist asks him how it went with the homework.

Here is a very short sample dialogue for a dense conversation. The client answers the therapist's question about how it went:

Client.: "Oh, there wasn't any time to practice it. The week was just too short and there was way too much to do."

Therapist: "Hm... no time at all... The week too short..."  Therapist remains silent for a longer period of time.

Client.: "No, that was really like being bewitched. I just didn't get around to it."

Therapist: "Just didn't get around to it..."

Client looks at the therapist slightly uncertain and asks: "What do you mean by that?"

Therapist: "How do I put it: You mean to say that you just didn't get around to it? Is this what you want to say? So was that it?

Client is silent for a long time, then: "Oh, that's what you mean – you think I should have taken time to do it."

Therapist: "Would you have?"

Client slightly embarrassed: "Well, somehow it would have worked, but to be honest I was just too scared of it."

Therapist: "I can understand that better now. So there wasn't just too little time and neither did anyone bewitch in any way or simply shorten a week, but you still had a little too much fear. That makes sense to me right away. After all, it was also a very heavy exercise."

"No time" and "week too short", were just the superficial word noise that the client made at first. Actually, and in reality, he said: “I'm still too scared.”

The purpose of the dense conversation is not only to help the client to express what he really means and thinks and feels. It is also the aim of a close conversation to help the client to feel value options in a condensed way, in order to enable him to make his own personal decision of conscience for one and against the other possibility. Feeling value, value judgements, and value realization are therefore also the goals of the dense conversation. In order to illustrate this as vividly as possible, I will continue the fictitious dialogue with the client that I started above. Purely for reasons of time, I shorten the dialogues a lot, in real situations they are more detailed and much longer.

Therapist: "Was there a lot of fear?"

Client.: "Well, it was much worse a while ago, but it was there."

Therapist: "And besides the fear, was there no other feeling?"

Client.: "Yes, I was still thinking about our imaginations. Conversations about how I actually want to be braver and so..."

Therapist: "Why don't you pronounce the word 'courage' again calmly, slowly and loudly."

Client.: after a moment's hesitation: "Courage."

Therapist: "Calm down one more time."

Client.: "Courage, Courage..."

Therapist: "Where do you feel the word when you say it?"

Client.: "It's buzzing and vibrating in my abdomen."

Therapist: "Does that feel good?"

Client.: "That feels strong."

Therapist: "Let this strong feeling continue to sink in."

Client.  Repeats the exercise a few more times, sitting up straighter in his chair without noticing.

Therapist: "Would you like to stand up straight?"

Client does that.

Therapist: Why don't you stretch your right arm very slowly and with a clenched fist and say it again: “Courage"

Client obeys.

Therapist: "How do you feel now?"

Client.: "Pretty pithy..."

Therapist: "Why don't you let anything come to you that gives you courage?"

Client: after a few initial difficulties, starts to associate: power, strength, standing up, taking a deep breath, being wide, being free, doing what I want, finally go to this shitty coffee shop, get the waiter, talk to the sexy woman at the next table... Client continues to associate for a while, then sits down again.

Therapist: "How do you feel now?"

Client.: "Ready to go..."

Therapist: "For what?"

Client.: "For life"

Therapist: "Just do it in your imagination, go boldly into your life into it..."

Client.: hesitates and says: "Look, there's that brake again. Now comes this stupid thing again … Inhibition, I feel that right. It's kind of getting tighter in the feeling."

Therapist: "Is there any image that comes to mind about this inhibition?"

Client.: "I see myself standing there right now."

Therapist: "How are you standing there?"

Client.: "Shy, looking at the floor, shoulders pulled up..."

Therapist: "What does this fearful Peter you see there radiate right now?" 

Client.: "Fear. He is simply afraid."

Therapist: "Stay with him inside. How does it make you feel?"

Client.: "He annoys me, I don't like him."

Therapist: "Nothing else?"

Client.: is silent for a long time, then: "Well, I'm sorry for this guy too."

Therapist: "Do you feel that compassion for him?

Client.: after a long time: "Yes, I do..."

Therapist: "What does this fearful Peter need now that they see him in front of them?"

Client.: "You just have to take him in your arms and warm him and stroke him..."

Therapist: "Now that you're with him, do you want to do that?"

Client.: hesitates longer, then: "Yes, I do."

Therapist: "Leave a lot of time, just be with him"

Client.: Has been silent for a long time now and is becoming more and more immersed in this idea.

Therapist: "Is that good for him, our fearful Peter?"

Client.: "And how. And me too. It's like a liberating cry inside," exhaling deeply.

Therapist: "Wait and see if the brave Peter in your imagination will come to you."

Client.: "He’s already here."

Therapist: "What does he look like and what does he radiate?"

Client.: "He's just sovereign, he's standing very straight but also very friendly in front of me."

Therapist: "Why don't you let him work on you for a long time?"

Client.: does so and is silent for a long time, takes a deep breath and breathes freely, then: "That felt good."

Therapist: "What do you think, which Peter do you want to develop more and more towards?"

Client.: "That's clear. And one thing's for sure: I'm going to order something from the café next week."

What happened in the conversation? First of all, the therapist helped the client to say what he really felt, which is fear. Then, on the one hand, the client approached the noëtic phenomenon of "courage". The therapist did not talk to him about courage but tried to make courage tangible through a phenomenological circling of the phenomenon. In the same way, the resistance, in this case the psychological feeling of fear, was worked on to a small extent by the fact that the client, instead of rejecting it, accepted it, thus taking the fearful Peter in his arms. And finally, the client was led to the decision: which life or value option he wanted to choose, fear or courage? Of course, such conversation takes much longer in real therapy situations, but that would have gone too far here.

Typological work

In addition to the methods mentioned so far, I also work with a typology, more precisely with the typology of the Enneagram. Nine different basic personality types are described there. Now it is completely clear to me that Logotherapy and typology are first and foremost natural enemies. Logotherapy is based on the uniqueness of the human being. The typology focuses on the supra-individual, the typical. Why do I still work with a typology in a Logotherapeutic context and how can the two be reconciled?

My perspective is that working with the Enneagram in as unprejudiced a way as possible simply shows that the basic personality types described there can be found very clearly in reality in an impressively frequent way. When working with people, it is easy to see that they are not only unique and one-of-a-kind, but despite their uniqueness and one-of-a-kindness, they also have supra-individual, typical traits in common with many other people. This may offend one or the other, but at least in my opinion it is so.

But what is a basic personality type? In analogy to behavioral therapy, which speaks of "patterns of behavior", one could say that such a basic personality type is a "pattern of being". This pattern permeates all areas of life: thinking, feeling, acting, sensory perception and more. But is a person determined, as it were, by their type? Such an impression could arise, but it is wrong.

A person is first and foremost a mystery and remains so. It is never even remotely transparent and never will be. Human existence is simply too big and too wonderful for that. And it is also true that a human being is not a type, but he has a type. Although its typological structure imposes certain limits on him, just as it opens up certain possibilities for him, he is always more than his typological structure. He is not absorbed in it. And he doesn't lose his individuality just because he has a certain basic personality type. Rather, his individuality is expressed in the way he shapes himself within this structure, how he works on the problem aspects of his structure and develops himself towards the possibilities associated with his structure in a special way.

Under these conditions, typological work in the context of Logotherapy is so helpful because, on the one hand, it makes it possible to concentrate with a person in the work on the very few but very elementary problem areas that the typological structure entails. On the surface, it often looks as if a person has many different construction sites and problems: at work, in the partnership, in himself, with his fellow human beings, etc. etc. A closer look, however, very often shows that the multitude of his problems is an ever new and repeating expression of a very few but very deep-seated basic problems of his personality structure. And we need to work on them. In other words, typological work can be used to make work extraordinarily elementary.

And secondly, the Enneagram also describes very basic meaning options for the respective personality type. Of course, this does not refer to external options for meaning, but to inner values and feelings of worth. And you can also work towards these in a very elementary way. I would love to illustrate these thoughts for you using a small example. Unfortunately, time no longer permits this.

Development of a Logotherapeutic Discussion Series

I would now like to briefly outline an ideal-typical structure of a Logotherapeutic discussion series.

It begins with the client presenting the problem. They simply tell us as best they can what is bothering them and what is hurting them. This usually takes up the first hour. Then, in the following hour, we talk about his typical nature completely independently of his problem. I ask him to simply talk: Typical "you", you in your nature, strengths, and weaknesses. What would you say about yourself and what do other people who are well-disposed towards you but also open to criticism say? Self-image and external image. This process usually takes up the second hour. Then comes the target analysis. By this I mean the question: Which person do you want to develop into, which person do you want to develop out of yourself? It is worth spelling out the various areas of your life in concrete terms: Who do you want to become: personally in yourself, socially at work, physically, mentally, etc.? Finally, go through your life story: How did you become who you are today? What were the strong, good aspects of your life story so far and what was difficult and painful? All these steps together usually take four hours. Then we draw a conclusion: What are the central problems that need to be addressed? Where do they probably originate: in the typological structure, in the life history, in current life structures? Possible physical sources of psychological problems should also be investigated and, if necessary, a specialist should be consulted.

And in the same way, it is necessary to ask: Which inner noëtic potentials are to be worked on in a special way: on the ability to love, courage, patience and serenity, inner clarity and honesty, humility, balance, goodness, or others, and then essentially with the methods shown above, the processing phase begins. The center of the following work is to help the client to experience as deeply as possible the life-sustaining, positive forces of his noëtic unconscious. Of course, how long it lasts varies from case to case. But there is one thing I always tell my clients right at the beginning of a series of conversations, when they ask how long it will take. I always tell them it's going to take longer rather than shorter. So it's more like half a year instead of a quarter, a year rather than half a year. And then I quote C.G. Jung, who once said: The human soul changes just as quietly as a fully loaded oil tanker turns around its own axis in port: very slowly. In my experience, Logotherapy does not change this.

The Therapist-Client Relationship

At the very end, I would like to take a brief look at the relationship between the logotherapist and his client. What are the key features here?

The Logotherapist is a real interlocutor to his client and not just a faceless and genderless projection surface for the problems of his counterpart; and also not merely mirror for what the client says.  In other words, the Logotherapeutic conversation is a real dialogue and not a monologue a deux, as Frankl once put it.

The basic task of the Logotherapist in conversation is to help his counterpart to be able to experience the powers of his noëtic unconscious as far as possible, to help him to find his values that make sense for him, to help him to feel the voice of his real personal conscience.

In all this, I consider a warm-hearted, loving objectivity of the therapist towards the client to be a very appropriate basic attitude in conversation. This attitude includes that the therapist is allowed to give the client encouragement, but is also allowed to ask him unpleasant questions and - if not him, but parts of him - may question him, challenge him, may also hold out his own opinion on certain topics to him, so that the client can work out his own contours more and more sharply in weighing the pros and cons. However, there is one thing the therapist must not do under any circumstances: he must not and cannot know what is right or wrong for the other person. To sense and decide this in the end is solely the task and the possibility of the conversation partner.

I Summarize My Understanding of Logotherapy as Outlined in this Talk:

Logotherapy is not merely a complement to psychotherapy. It is a completely independent form of therapeutic work, originally responsible for the entire variety of disorders. Exceptions prove the rule here.

The center of Logotherapeutic work is the palpable awareness of the powers of the noëtic unconscious.

Methodological approaches to the powers of the noëtic unconscious are excellently suited to Value-oriented Imaginations, Logotherapeutic dream work and also the Dense, value-sensitive conversation.

Logotherapy does not exclude the resistance work from its conversation with the client but includes it in the conversation. The basic rule is: as much potential orientation as possible, as much resistance work as necessary.

In her work, she links the work in the unconscious realm with the work in the conscious realm. And it dovetails the work in the inner world with the work in the concrete outer world.

Logotherapy, as I understand and practice it, is open to typological thinking. The inclusion of typological work in Logotherapy makes it possible to focus the work. In this way, you can work very specifically towards the core problems and work out the basic possibilities associated with the personality type in a very targeted way.

The logotherapeutic conversation is a real dialogue and not a monologue of the client, in which a second person, namely the therapist, is present in a silent or mirroring way. An appropriate basic attitude of the therapist in conversation is a loving, warm-hearted objectivity.