“The therapeutic relationship in the context of client-centered psychotherapy and Logotherapy.”

by Wolfram Kurz, Institut für Logotherapie und Existenzanalyse, Tübingen/Wien.

Click here for the original German article.

Translated with permission by Tom Edmondson for Meaninginministry.com.

1. The fundamental importance of the therapeutic relationship in the context of client-centered psychotherapy.

When reflecting on the problems associated with the therapeutic relationship, one should not overlook the relevant postulates of the client-centered psychotherapy designed by C. R. Rogers because, for Rogers, the quality of the therapeutic relationship is crucial for positive change in the client.

As early as 1957, Rogers presented six conditions relating to the therapeutic relationship, which he understood as necessary and sufficient in the context of the desired client behavior and client experience. Even then he explained: "No other conditions are necessary.  If these six conditions are present and last for a while, that is sufficient.

The process of constructive personality change will follow." [1] The six conditions in question are as follows:

(1) Two people have psychological contact with each other

(2) The first, whom we call the client, is in a state of incongruence, he is vulnerable

       and anxious

(3) The second person, whom we call the therapist, is congruent or integrated in the

       relationship.

(4) The therapist experiences unconditional positive regard towards the client.

(5) The therapist experiences an empathic understanding of the client's inner frame

       of reference and endeavors to communicate what he or she has experienced.

(6) The client perceives, at least to a small extent, that the therapist shows empathic

       understanding and unconditional positive attention. [2]

For Rogers, it is not the therapist's knowledge, experience, training or therapeutic techniques that are decisive for therapeutic success, but rather the quality of the relationship. In this context, the therapeutic variables mentioned in theses 3 to 6 play the decisive role: Congruence, appreciation, empathy and the client's perception of these three elements.

The therapist is congruent when he "is what he is, when he is genuine and without façade in the relationship with the client, when he openly realizes the feelings and attitudes that are flowing in him at that particular moment." [3] Behaving congruently means "that the feelings the counselor experiences are available to him, to his consciousness; that he is able to live these feelings, to be them in the relationship and to communicate them if indicated. It means that he comes into a direct personal encounter with his client, that he meets him person to person." [4]

According to Rogers, a high degree of authenticity is crucial for a high degree of therapeutic success. It is also important that not only positive but also negative feelings of the therapist are made transparent to the client in line with the principle of congruence. However, a possible misunderstanding should be pointed out here. Behaving congruently as a therapist does not mean communicating every positive or negative feeling that arises in the communication flow to the client. Rogers writes:

I am not saying that it is helpful to blurt out every passing feeling and accusation under the cozy pretense of being real. Being real involves the difficult task of familiarizing yourself with the flow of experiences that are going on inside you; a flow that is predominantly characterized by complexity and constant change. So if I realize that I feel bored by my interactions with this student, and if that feeling persists, then I owe it to him and our relationship to share that feeling with him. Again, though, I want to be in touch with what's going on inside of me. If it is me, I will realize that it is my feeling of boredom that I am expressing and not some assumed fact about him being a boring person. When I express it as my own reaction, this provides the possibility for a deeper relationship. [5]

Consequently, the longer-lasting emotional configurations that arise in the therapist during the course of therapy are decisive. They should be played over for the client.

Appreciation is the second therapist variable. It manifests itself as a positive, warm, accepting attitude towards the client. Appreciation means that the therapist values his client as a person ... regardless of how the client is behaving at the moment. It means that the therapist cares for his client in a non-possessive way ... What I am describing is a feeling that is neither paternalistic nor sentimental or superficially social and pleasant. It respects the other as a separate individual and does not possess them. It is a kind of liking and liking that is strong and not demanding. [6]

Empathy is the third essential element in a good therapeutic relationship. The aim of empathy is to empathize with the client's inner world in such a way that you perceive it through their eyes, as it were. It is crucial that you perceive the frame of reference or the

configuration of feelings and thoughts as if they reflected your own feelings and thoughts. The as-if quality of empathy must be maintained so that helpful empathy with the client's suffering does not turn into helpless identification with the client's suffering. Rogers writes:

If the client's world is clear to the counselor and he can move freely in it, then he can both communicate his understanding of what the client is only vaguely aware of and articulate meanings in the client's experience of which the client is barely conscious. It is this kind of highly sensitive empathy that is important for a person to be able to get close to themselves and learn to change and to develop. [7]

Moreover, empathy should occur on the basis of what Rogers calls unconditional positive regard, i.e. an unconditional positive relationship with the client. [8] Furthermore, according to Rogers, therapeutic communication does not achieve its goal if the client cannot perceive the therapist's authenticity, appreciation and empathy. Or vice versa: The therapist can be congruent, positively attentive and empathic, but he will not enable the client to gain a new self-understanding of his personality if the client does not experience the therapist as congruent, appreciative and empathic.

Rogers' assertion that the listed therapist variables in combination represent the necessary and sufficient condition for positive change in the client has proved to be an extremely effective challenge to psychotherapy research. Looking at the relevant studies, however, it

cannot be said that Rogers' assumptions have been confirmed across the board. Quite the opposite. The results in this regard are extremely contradictory and the "Spectrum of published opinions" ranges from "'neither sufficient nor necessary' to 'both necessary and sufficient' with all conceivable intermediate stages." [9] On the whole It can be said that the Rogers variables are absolutely necessary for the creation of a favorable therapeutic relationship and in this respect also have their lasting significance for logotherapeutic communication. On the other hand, the question of whether the variables can be regarded as necessary and sufficient conditions for positive change can still not be regarded as settled. There are indications that the Rogers variables, paired with a structuring, method-oriented approach, are highly effective in therapy. It is by no means certain that all problems can be solved at the relationship level alone. [10]

2. Aspects of the therapeutic relationship in the context of logotherapy.

Statements about the design of a helpful therapeutic relationship, the methodological instruments, and the anthropology underlying a form of therapy are the three main elements of a therapeutic concept. The various therapeutic approaches also set different emphases in this respect. Logotherapy and existential analysis are currently characterized by the fact that their main focus is on designing the anthropology that should guide meaningful therapy. The vast majority of logotherapeutic literature is of an anthropological nature. Methodological questions and questions concerning the therapeutic relationship are in the background of interest. The reference to the methods of paradoxical intention and dereflection, which are practiced in the logotherapeutic scene, in no way contradicts this, because both methods are not directly related to the process of sense discovery, which is at the center of logotherapeutic interest.

Logotherapy is open in terms of methodology and the design of the therapeutic relationship. However, this is not an arbitrary openness, but rather a targeted openness. Logotherapy is open to those methods and maxims of shaping the relationship that are suitable for promoting the process of discovering meaning in the context of therapeutic interaction. In the context of logotherapy as a specific therapy, i.e. in the case of noögenic neuroses, the therapist has the task of communicating with the patient in such a way that the patient (a) can perceive himself as a meaning-oriented being, insofar as the meaning orientation is buried in the unconscious; (b) to bring to the forefront of consciousness the responsibility for discovering meaning; (c) to provide help in discovering meaning, i.e. to communicate with the patient in such a way that he or she is able to discover not the

general, but rather the concrete, individual and as such unique possibilities of meaning in his or her life and (d) to realize them in the practical shaping of life. Consequently, Logotherapy is evocative therapy. Insofar as it challenges the repressed will to meaning and

challenges it to do justice to its very own intention, and heuristic therapy insofar as it manifests itself as an aid to the discovery of meaning.

According to the logic of logotherapeutic thinking, the theory of methodology and the theory of relationship design must be oriented towards logotherapeutic anthropology; the methods used in the therapeutic conversation and the concrete design of the therapeutic relationship must be oriented towards the concrete person in his or her concrete problem of meaning.

As a result, anthropology and attention to the unique problems of the person seeking help take precedence over methodological and relational questions. This attitude is well-founded, especially in view of the research situation. If it is true that the therapeutic situation is so complex that therapeutic behavior that is certain to lead to success cannot be planned in advance in the face of specific misconduct, then therapy remains, to a large extent, an art based on intuition. Without diminishing the importance of the empirical insights and methodological skills developed in the various schools of therapy, it should nevertheless be pointed out that every illness shows a very individual face through the way in which a subject falls ill and deals with their illness. This face may be similar in structure to other faces, but it is unique in detail. When we talk about neurotic reaction patterns - anxiety neurotic, compulsive neurotic, sexual neurotic - we are describing the basic structures of an unsatisfactory form of reaction.

But the elements within the pattern are not captured by the description of the structure. The pattern defines, as it were, the scope within which the neurotic activity takes place. The cataloging of an illness by the physician takes place on a relatively high level of abstraction.

Abstraction in this context means that the basic features of a disease process, as it occurs in many individuals, are described. This way of being ill is ascribed to you by the doctor, so to speak. But illness, especially mental illness, is first of all, a very individual way of dealing with the life you have to live. It always has a very individual biographical aspect. Perceiving

this, engaging with it, empathizing with it and dealing with it in such a way that the patient is put in a position to reorient their life is a therapeutic art. Science perceives the universal; art perceives the very unique play within the enclosure of structure. In the process of  successful therapy, however, scientific and artistic approaches intertwine.

If we apply these thoughts to our problem, then methodological one-sidedness or one-sidedness concerning the therapeutic relationship is quite naturally out of the question. Methodological diversity and diversity of the therapeutic relationship are appropriate in view of the individual biographical face of each neurosis. This presupposes that the therapist has a wide-ranging behavioral repertoire and is constantly expanding the spectrum of this repertoire. Does this open the door to arbitrariness with regard to the therapeutic relationship? What are the most important elements that determine the therapeutic relationship and how can they be understood from the perspective of meaning-oriented communication?

3. The body of the therapist in the perspective of meaning-oriented communication.

The therapist likes to ask: What do I have to do to help this person? This question is an expression of dominant cognition. Its basic intention is the desire for an instrument and its handling in order to transform a painful state into a bearable one. This question is partially justified. In my experience, however, the questions are: What must I do to help this person? What is not decisive? What is decisive is the insight that we do not primarily work by means of our therapeutic instruments, but rather through what we are: through our overall personal constitution. "People should not think so much about what they do, but what they are." This sentence by Meister Eckhart has special significance for pastors and psychotherapists, educators and doctors. According to my intuition, successful therapy is primarily an expression of productive contagion.

The primary medium of this infection, however, is the therapist's body, in which his overall personal constitution is reflected. With him and through him, the helper is first of all there. With him, through him, he is first of all with his patient. His specific way of being in the world, of understanding himself in the world, of dealing with his being in the world, his specific ideas of value and meaning are also imprinted on the body: the eyes, the face, the hands, for example, the gestures, the facial expressions, the motor skills of the body in general. The totality of these sometimes very subtle imprints is what we call a person's charisma. In principle, it is soul and spirit transformed into body. Even before a word is spoken in the therapeutic process, therapist and patient are there and together in their physicality. And then come the long phases in which the patient tells their passion story. The therapist, however, remains silent and listens. And in this silence and listening, the therapist is not just there for the patient and with him in full presence of mind, but also in presence of body. The body also speaks in silence, even in stillness. The question is what it communicates in a subtle way.

In order to link these thoughts to the problem of the therapeutic relationship, the following should be noted: No one is the master of their body-mediated charisma, which must be understood as a function of their overall personal constitution. But everyone can give an account of the basic orientations that determine their overall constitution, which  determine their outlook on life and the way they live. The decisive factor for the Logotherapist is not the communication technique with the help of which he releases the meaning-seeking process in the patient, e.g. the dialog conducted in a Socratic manner. The decisive factor is that the logotherapist himself is a meaning-open, meaning-realizing, meaning-vital personality. This vitality of meaning is certainly also expressed physically.

It is crucial that there are no contradictory messages to the patient in the logotherapeutic process. Logotherapeutic success also depends on the consonance of relationship and content. If the patient is stimulated at the content level by the means of the conversation to activate his potential for seeking meaning, then he will be able to do this more easily if he can also experience the therapist as a meaningful personality in terms of his charisma. It depends on the consonance of what is said verbally and what is physically the case. For it is only in the atmosphere of such consonance that the patient experiences what the therapist is trying to help him achieve as true. However, truth is also and especially experienced and communicated on a physical level. Here is a literary example of an ideal type:

H. Hesse published his novel "Siddhartha" in 1922. In a central passage, he describes how Siddhartha, the young Brahmin, and his friend Govinda meet Buddha and what they realize about him as they contemplate him:

Govinda looked intently at the monk in the yellow robe, who seemed to be no different from the hundreds of other monks. And soon Govinda also recognized: this is the one. And they followed him and looked at him.

The Buddha went his way humbly and lost in thought, his still face was neither happy nor sad, it seemed to smile quietly inwardly. With a hidden smile, quiet, calm, not unlike a healthy child, the Buddha walked, wore the robe and set foot in the same way as all his monks, according to precise instructions. But his face and his step, his quietly lowered gaze, his drooping hand, and every finger on his quietly drooping hand spoke peace, spoke perfection, did not seek, did not imitate, breathed softly in an unfading calm, in an unfading light, an untouchable peace.

So Gotama walked towards the city to collect alms, and the two Samanas recognized him only by the perfection of his calmness, by the stillness of his form, in which no seeking, no wanting, no imitation, no effort was to be seen, only light and peace.

'Today we will hear the teaching from his mouth,' said Govinda.

Siddhartha did not answer. He was not very curious about the teaching, he did not believe that it would teach him anything new, as he, like Govinda, had heard the content of this Buddha teaching again and again, albeit from second- and third-hand reports. But he looked attentively at Gotama's head, at his shoulders, at his feet, at his still hanging hand, and it seemed to him that every limb on every finger of this hand was teaching, speaking, breathing, smelling, shining truth. This man, this Buddha, was true down to the gesture of his last finger." [11]

There is no doubt that H. Hesse is attempting here to portray a life that has come to its fulfillment. According to him, the man Buddha, a teacher of humanity, is an embodiment of perfect existence. Hesse portrays him in the perspectives of Siddhartha's and Govinda's different interests. And he shows that Govinda's quite plausible interest in the teacher's teaching is secondary, while Siddhartha's interest in the figure of the teacher is essential. Govinda wants to know what the teacher teaches and says: "Today we will hear the  teaching from his mouth ..." [12]  

You can feel Govinda's excitement. Siddhartha, however, does not share this curiosity. He wants to know who this teacher is. He is fascinated by the way Buddha is there, by his head, his shoulders, his feet, his hands and the fingers on his hand. Siddhartha is not interested in the teaching, i.e. interested in coherent statements about the world and man.

Rather, he is interested in the coherence of the piece of the world that Buddha represents as a person. He is not interested in the objective teaching, which is to be detached from the Buddha's person, which can be written down and handed down. He is interested in the person of the Buddha who expresses himself in the flesh, who embodies the teaching in the literal sense and proves the truth of the teaching as embodied. "... seemed to him (Siddhartha)", writes Hesse, "every limb on every finger of this hand was teaching, speaking, breathing, smelling, shining truth." [13]  

Siddhartha's interest is again of an anatomical or aesthetic nature. He is moved by what the bodily form of Buddha radiates: peace, tranquility, stillness. Someone has reached perfection we, the ordinary people, want so much; he wants nothing more. We seek, are out for this and that; he no longer seeks. We strive for our salvation by imitating what others show us; he renounces all imitation. We toil and toil; but of him it is said, in the stillness of his form no effort was recognizable. Siddhartha is impressed by his overall personal constitution, understood as a seamless interweaving of body, soul and spirit. He is  fascinated by what Buddha communicates in his physical being. It is said of his body that it speaks truth, breathes, smells, shines. Truth is obviously not only understood here as the truth of the word, as adaequatio rei et intellectus [14] , but rather as the correspondence of the teaching with the whole person; as bodily, mental, spiritual. This truth is therefore not only dependent on intellectual perception, but also on sensory perception. For it not only speaks, it also breathes, it smells, it shines. It is obviously the truth that emerges from the overall physical and spiritual constitution of the person concerned.

The light is created by its brilliance, a certain radiance by its fragrance, a certain fluidity by its scent, a certain liveliness by its breath.

If an attempt is made to make such an essential humanity fruitful for the helping professions, it is not a question of making the perfection of this image of humanity the yardstick for one's own self-image. Ideals can also have a destructive effect. [15] This is the case when people set far too high expectations of themselves and then have to constantly experience that they are not up to their own standards. The painful experience of the difference between the false ideal and what is actually the case wears them down. And soon, under the influence of their self-image, they are no longer able to achieve what they would be capable of within the scope of their abilities.

In contrast, however, the indication conveyed in the Buddha image is therapeutically significant that here a person works primarily through his overall personal constitution, i.e. through what he is, and not so much through what he does. Or vice versa: that someone works through what he does, because what he does must be understood as a pure expression of what he is according to his overall personal constitution. The fascination emanating from this person has its reason in the correspondence of inner constitution and outer behavior which is also reflected physically:

With regard to the therapeutic relationship, however, it can be assumed that the therapist not only works through what he says and does, but also through the medium of the radiance of what he is; perhaps even primarily. For this reason, the therapist's mental state, which is communicated in the gestures of his body, and his physical state, which reflects the behavior of his soul, are of particular importance. The therapist also works through the fluid that emanates from him and belongs to him, which he does not have directly at his disposal, which he therefore does not have in the true sense of the word, but rather is, and which constitutes the nature of the relationship with the client. For members of the helping professions, especially for psychotherapists, it is important to know that this fluid has to do with their mental state and has a contagious effect. People in a depressive state generate depression, cheerful natures spread cheerfulness and courage to face life, children who grow up in a neurotic environment often have difficulty escaping neurosis. Looking, however, with regard to the therapeutic relationship in the context of logotherapy, it should be noted that the logotherapist can certainly work most effectively if he does not lead his patient alone on the path of the search for meaning, but rather acts as a meaningful person himself through his charisma. This also has to do with his physical constitution.

4. The therapist's image of the human being from the perspective of meaning-oriented communication.

There are logotherapists who are not very happy about the word "Logotherapy." There is no doubt that the meaning of the word Logotherapy is unusual in view of other word combinations associated with the term "therapy". When one speaks of behavioral therapy,

psychotherapy, communication therapy, the negation of a negative is always meant. The aim of therapy is to change misbehavior, to heal a suffering soul, and to eliminate disturbed communication in the social system. If the principle of this therapy is the negation of the negative, then the principle of Logotherapy is the position of the positive. Logotherapy is not therapy of a misguided Logos however one might understand the word in this respect; Logotherapy is therapy in the means of the mind with a view to discovering meaning.

This fact that the negative is not primarily overcome by negating the negative, but rather by looking at and activating the positive, is characteristic of logotherapeutic intervention. The discovery of the possibilities of meaning with regard to the abilities of the person one is, and with regard to the situation in which one is involved, shows itself as the discovery of a positive life form. The discovery and activation of the healthy parts of a person despite all symptoms is typical of a logotherapeutic approach. The tendency to focus primarily on the positive, however, is an expression of the view of the human being that guides logotherapeutic thinking.

However, the therapist's internalized view of the human being is fundamental to therapeutic communication and therefore also to the therapeutic relationship. It claims to portray the person in terms of their essentiality. In the medium of this image, the therapist looks at the patient as he presents himself and at the same time sees through him to the form that he is in essence but cannot realize. It makes a difference whether this process of seeing and seeing through is guided by an image of man that understands man by his nature as pleasure-oriented, power-oriented, or meaning-oriented.

Moreover, the perception of life in terms of its possible meaningfulness and thus in terms of its success is fundamental to mental health and psychological flexibility. Those who basically perceive their existence as an absurd existence have no reason to preserve their lives, the lives of others and the neutral and cultural conditions that provide life. The inability to deal constructively with the personal and supra-personal conditions that distort meaning - i.e. to endure them as far as necessary and to change them as far as possible – has in my opinion, its deepest roots in the imbalance between success and failure, sense and absurdity. Modern man, especially under the influence of the media, is developing into an acrobat in the reconstruction of the negative. But however precise the perception of the negative, which is absolutely necessary, is not a sufficient moving reason for overcoming the negative. From this point of view, it makes sense to overhaul or at least supplement the symptom-fixated therapeutic models with a counterbalanced model; a model whose center is the perception, imagination (in the sense of imagining) and reimagination of the meaningful. The difficulties of life cannot be overcome simply by becoming aware of the disturbance and developing techniques of interference suppression, especially since freedom from disturbance offers no guarantee of meaningfulness. If, to give an example, a person is completely healthy, then he has by no  means solved the problem that he represents in his self. Being is far from being solved. Only now does the question arise as to what he wants to use his health for, what he wants to consume himself for. [16]

Meaning and absurdity are experienced in contexts. A person has essential experiences of meaning in the form of social meaningfulness; be it that he can experience himself as meaningful for another person, or that he can experience another person as meaningful for himself. Logotherapeutic communication is characterized by the fact that the patient is set free to develop his meaning-seeking potency. However, the development of this power requires a therapeutic climate within a therapeutic relationship that the patient experiences as meaningful. Becomes. But what are the basic elements of the therapeutic relationship that the patient experiences as meaningful? Can a person experience therapy-immanent experiential values as meaningful and what role does the therapist's image of humanity play in this?

The basic suffering of man in man is expressed in the concept of passing by[1]. [17] People pass each other by, do not recognize each other's basic needs, deny each other, and drive each other into neurotic reactions. Psychotherapy provides a counterpoint that can be experienced as deeply meaningful. In this context, the nature of the therapeutic relationship is crucial. It is necessary to refer to facts that are as simple as they are significant: the presence of the therapist. The therapist is with me. To the therapist's openness. The therapist is open to my suffering, my strengths and weaknesses. The therapist's concentration. The therapist turns away from all other demands for a while and turns to me completely. It depends on the therapist's perspective. The therapist sees me not only as the damaged person I am now, but also as the healed, fulfilled person I could be.

However, the therapist's view of the human being plays a decisive role in the context of healing insight. It is, as it were, a therapeutic guideline for communication; the whereupon (foundation) of the therapeutic process. And vice versa: only within the horizon of the essentiality of the human being, which is expressed in the therapist's image of the human being, does the client appear both in his unhealed actual reality and in his healed potential reality. The task of the human being, which can never be completed, but which must be tackled again and again, is to uncover and bring out the hidden essence that he or she basically is in the shaping of life; in other words, to allow the hidden essential form to become reality in the shaping of living conditions. The pain of the difference between what one basically is and what one realizes acts as a motive to bring essence and existence into greater harmony. [18]

Everyone sees themselves differently than they are. Metaphorically speaking, we have an image of ourselves that motivates the way we shape our lives. The only question is whether a person really grasps or misses his essence in the image before him as a regulator of his being in the world. If the patient designs himself incorrectly, i.e. in contradiction to his

essentiality, he runs the risk of missing his life. If the therapist allows himself to be influenced by a false or reductionist anthropology, and if the therapeutic process is guided by the therapist's image of man, he runs the risk of endangering the life of the person entrusted to his care.

It is necessary for the therapist to perceive and accept his patient as realistically as possible on the basis of what Rogers calls unconditional positive regard. But the point of this acceptance is precisely that the patient is given the opportunity to become other

than he is: to undertake a theoretical and practical reorientation of his personality.

Therapeutically effective acceptance must therefore be holistic acceptance. It is acceptance with regard to and insight into ...! It perceives the patient in his unhealed dimension, which is the case, and at the same time sees through the patient to the healed form that is inherent in him, but which he is prevented from realizing at the moment.

Of course, it makes a difference whether one sees the essentiality of man in the competence to balance biological needs of a libidinal nature and superego requirements by means of a strong ego; whether one sees the essence of man in the need for and in the competence for self-actualization, or whether one understands man in principle as a being who basically wants a meaningful existence in the world that goes beyond himself, which is to be realized by means of action, experience, or attitude on the basis of self-transcendence.

P. Becker's empirical work in particular indicates that finding meaning is a central component of mental health and therefore a central component of an aspect of human essentiality. [19] Whether it is sufficient with regard to mental health to have "any goals, as long as they appear sufficiently attractive and achievable, or whether only very specific types of goals are suitable for promoting mental health in the long term" [20] , according to P. Becker, "cannot be answered authoritatively in the current state of scientific knowledge." [21]  In this context, however, he refers to the work of A.H. Maslow and J.E. Crandall, [22] which makes it likely "that goals that are not only directed towards oneself but reach beyond this and have the character of 'self-transcendence' or a 'task character', offer particular advantages from a psycho-hygienic point of view." [23] In principle, however, this would confirm Frankl's position on this issue, which sees the realization of meaning and value as synonymous.

Apart from these special questions, however, it should be noted here in summary that a therapist's view of human nature is decisive for the nature of their therapeutic relationship. However, this is precisely what should be shown.

4. The therapist's view of the world from the perspective of meaning-oriented communication.

It is very likely that the relevance of the logotherapeutic approach will steadily increase in the coming decades. In my opinion, this has to do with the fact that the realization of meaning in Frankl's sense is always in correspondence with "real tasks out in the world" [24] . Frankl is never concerned with the patient fulfilling his will to meaning by creating subjective feelings of meaning for himself, but rather that he perceives and complies with

the inherent prompting character of the respective situation. "The specific mode of neurotic existence is characterized by the fact that it is the person himself, that it is his own inner states that gain his interest, while the world and the objects in it recede to the same extent." [25] What is decisive here is that interest is withdrawn from subjective states of being and directed primarily towards concrete objectivity. The world, in its sense-oriented, stimulating character, plays an essential role in the therapeutic process, however small a part it may be: "... namely the possibilities of meaning lying in the world, waiting in the world, waiting there for the person, for their fulfillment by him ..." [26] This interest in the context of therapeutic interaction, which is oriented towards the objective nature of the world, is becoming increasingly topical.

If it is true that the world is threatening to drift towards a total catastrophe due to a possible network of partial catastrophes - I am thinking of the famine catastrophe, the water catastrophe, the energy catastrophe, the education catastrophe, the catastrophe of scientific side effects and the crisis of reason in general - then psychotherapy that seeks to open up self-realization based on purely subjective needs is inappropriate, even dangerous.

The physicist and mathematician A.M. Klaus Müller has written in his book "Die präparierte Zeit" [27] shows that global society has now reached a situation in which all institutions responsible for shaping life, despite their various objectives, all have one thing in common: in the coming decades, they will all have to base their actions on the maxim of survival, whether it is science, educational institutions or psychosocial care institutions. Psychotherapists play an important role within this framework. Particularist thinking is outdated:

The selfish pursuit of an intention without sufficient reflection on how it relates to survival is already a betrayal of man's future - indeed, if we look at it closely, it is even a betrayal of the traitor's future, a suicidal betrayal. In this sense, we are all traitors today. [28]

And elsewhere Müller writes:

The principle of survival is the principle of future ethics... Everything that is not motivated by survival is already detrimental to survival. For without the self-enlightening regulative of the principle of survival, humanity constantly produces unrecognized effects that add up to the destruction of any possible future worthy of the name. [29]

If we look at the world from the perspective of its current fundamental challenge, the conquest of a future worthy of human beings must be mentioned first and foremost. Nothing less. Psychotherapeutic interaction, which knows that it is integrated into world responsibility, no matter how tiny the aspects and segments, very quickly loses the smell of an apocryphal subculture of ethereal, loving soul care. Therapist and patient communicate with each other in the knowledge that they are considering and feeling their way through very personal, very intimate things. And yet their interaction is never private. For the aim of this interaction is to free the patient, who always initially revolves around a symptom, to be open to the world; to free him to perceive the claim that is directed at him from beyond himself. Therefore, in the context of Logotherapy, the focus of interest is not on getting away from the symptom by concentrating on the symptom, but rather on arriving at a meaningful life task and the resulting liberation from the symptom. However, if in the course of therapy the awareness develops that a degree of freedom has been achieved to overlook oneself and to respond to the call of the world outside oneself, then this also has an effect on the therapeutic relationship and goal setting. It takes place in the awareness of not doing something for oneself in a self-centered way, but rather, doing something for oneself by being set free to do something for the world outside oneself. The therapist's and patient's awareness of being integrated into world responsibility. However, it is crucial for the motivation to endure the pain of therapy, on both sides.

Endnotes

1 Quoted from D. Zimmer, The therapeutic relationship, Weinheim 1983

2 Quoted from ibid.

3 Quoted from ibid.

4 Quoted from loc. cit.

5 Quoted from ibid.

6 Op. cit.

7 Op. cit.

8  Rogers notes the category of unconditional positive regard: "I cautiously hypothesize that the less conditional the positive attention is, the more effective the relationship will be. By this I mean that the counselor accepts the client completely, not just under certain conditions. He does not accept certain feelings of the client and disapprove of others. He feels an unconditional positive regard for this person. This is a positive feeling emanating from the counselor without restrictions and without judgment. It means not making judgments. I believe that constructive change and development in the client is more likely to occur when this non-judgmental acceptance is present in the encounter between

counselor and client." Op. cit. p. 66.

9 Op. cit. page 66.

10 "I think it's a fiction to believe that all behavioral problems can be solved at the relationship level alone - this not only contradicts therapeutic experience, but also the findings of social psychology research, and communication research. And I think it is dangerous window-dressing, a campaign to try to convince people that all social, political and economic problems can be solved by a 'philosophy of interpersonal relationships'." This is what A. Franke writes, op. cit.

 11 H. Hesse, Gesammelte Schriften 3, Frankfurt a.M. 1949.

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid.

14 Cf. on this classical definition of the category "truth" originating from Thomas Aquinas, see L. Puntel, Wahrheit, in: H. Krings et al. (eds.), Handbuch philosophischer Grundbegriffe vol. 6, Munich 1974. 

15 On this subject, see the very informative work by W. Schmidbauer, Alles oder nichts - Über die Destruktivität von Idealen, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1980.

16 The concept of imagination and re-imagination of meaning is developed in the following work: W. Kurz, Ethische Erziehung als religionspädagogische Aufgabe, Habil.-Schrift, Tübingen 1983, p. 534 ff. There it says: What is meant by imagination or reimagination of images of meaning can perhaps best be articulated in contrast to the psychoanalytical-therapeutic model. At the forefront of this model is the realization that certain psychological and somatic symptoms, from which the patient suffers in a conscious way, are an expression of (early childhood) traumatization, which the patient was unable to consciously process due to their intensity and for this reason repressed them from consciousness into the realm of the unconscious. There they now unfold their negative energy in an uncontrollable way, which develops symptoms whose imprint does not allow any direct conclusion to be drawn about the underlying traumatizing event. According to the logic of this connection, the main psychoanalytic task is the discovery of the repressed material. As is well known, S. Freud developed a whole range of techniques to enable patients to recollect symptom-forming, repressed events: cathartic hypnosis, the method of free association, interpretation of dreams, random acts and mistakes. The method

of dream interpretation ultimately became the via regia to knowledge of the unconscious in the soul. Once the repressed material is finally remembered again, it can subsequently be felt and thought through in a parallel way and thus processed. If the processing is successful, experience shows that the symptom-forming energy and the symptoms it produces also disappear.

If we now turn this figure of thought around its own axis from the negative to the positive, we can see the following: The human being does not only reflect negative experiences, but also positive ones. They not only have deep experiences, which they may repress, but they also have a wealth of supporting experiences in many shades up to high experiences, which they also lose from consciousness under the impression of the dark side of their life,

shift into the preconscious or only remember their factuality in outline, but no longer their uplifting experience content. The representation of positive experiences in the subject in contrast to traumatization is difficult to define. The word "uplifting" is so weak in comparison with the term "traumatization" that it cannot be used as an antonym. For this reason, it makes more sense to formulate the situation in a paradoxical way and to talk about "positive traumatization". It can be assumed that the images flowing into the subject in the course of positive traumatization develop a life-enhancing energy.

Presumably they are to be seen as the basis of human hope, an increased attitude towards life, the lust for life, the motivation to act meaningfully, the desire for situation-transcending utopia and its realization, but also as the basis of frustration tolerance, perseverance and ultimately also the strength to negate the negative. On this topic, see also: W. Kurz, Seel-Sorge als Sinn-Sorge - Zur Analogie von kirchlicher Seelsorge und Logotherapie, in F. Böckleet al. (eds.), Wege zum Menschen, 37. It is crucial that the logotherapeutic relationship is characterized by the activation of experiences of meaning, be it in the medium of memory, which was meaningfully the case, be it in the medium of perception of what is meaningfully the case, be it in the medium of anticipation of what should meaningfully be the case in the future. The fact that the therapeutic relationship and therapeutic method can no longer be sharply separated here is probably due to the fact that the underlying image of man is decisive for both aspects, which is also immediately obvious.

17 Cf. the remarks in N. Hartmann, Ethik, Berlin 1962.

18 Cf. on the Essnz-Esistenz problem V.E. Frankl, Ärztliche Seelsorge, Vienna 1971.

19 Cf. P. Becker, Sinnfindung als zentrale Komponente seelischer Gesundheit, in: A. Längle (ed.), Wege zum Sinn, Munich 1985.

20 Ibid.

21 Ibid.

22 Ibid.

23 Ibid.

24 V.E. Frankl, The Suffering Human Being, Bern 1984.

25 Ibid.

26 Ibid.

27 Cf. A.M.K. Müller, Die präparierte Zeit - Der Mensch in der Krise seiner eigenen Zielsetzungen, Stuttgart 1972.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid.

[1] This is a difficult term to translate. The context indicates that it is describing our superficial exchanges with others. Someone asks, “how are you?” The other responds, “fine.” This is a perfunctory conversation. The question and response are automatic. In contrast, when a person sits down with a Logotherapist, he or she can have a genuine conversation because the therapist is “present” with the client.