CONCEPT
Logotherapy
Frankl's therapeutic approach—the 'Third Viennese School'—treating the will to meaning as primary, addressing existential frustration through purpose-discovery rather than unconscious analysis.
Logotherapy (from Greek logos, meaning) is the psychotherapeutic system Frankl founded as an alternative to Freudian psychoanalysis and Adlerian individual psychology. Where psychoanalysis addresses unconscious conflicts and individual psychology addresses inferiority compensation, logotherapy addresses the conscious will to meaning—helping patients discover or rediscover the purposes that make existence feel justified. The method is forward-looking rather than archaeological, addressing what life asks of the patient rather than what childhood imposed, treating the patient as responsible rather than determined. Core techniques include Socratic dialogue (clarifying latent purpose through questioning), dereflection (shifting attention from self to world), and paradoxical intention (prescribing the symptom to break neurotic cycles).
In The You On AI Field Guide
Frankl positioned logotherapy as the third major Viennese school, following Freud's psychoanalytic institute and Adler's society for individual psychology. The genealogy was deliberate: Frankl studied under both traditions, worked in Adler's clinics in the 1920s, and broke with both by insisting that the spiritual dimension (the noëtic) was irreducible to the psychological. His 1938 manuscript sketching the framework was confiscated by