CONCEPT
The Copernican Turn of Psychotherapy
Frankl's methodological inversion—from asking 'what do I expect from life?' to asking 'what does life expect of me?'—shifting meaning from entitlement to responsibility.
The Copernican turn is Frankl's signature methodological move, inverting the relationship between self and meaning. The common question—"What do I want from life? What can life give me?"—treats the self as center and life as meaning-supplier, a consumer stance expecting delivery of purpose, satisfaction, fulfillment. Frankl's inversion—"What does life ask of me? What can I give to life?"—decenters the self, treating life as the source of questions to which the individual is called to respond. This turn is Copernican in the astronomical sense: it displaces the self from the center, revealing that meaning orbits purposes existing independently rather than purposes orbiting the self. The shift converts the patient from meaning-consumer to meaning-creator, from one who waits for delivery to one who recognizes she is being asked to deliver.
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Frankl developed the inversion in deliberate response to therapeutic culture's consumerist drift. Post-Freudian therapy increasingly positioned the patient as entitled to satisfaction—the