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Logotherapy in the 21st Century: Review of Living Your Own Life: Existential
Analysis in Action

Article  in  Journal of Constructivist Psychology · September 2017

DOI: 10.1080/10720537.2017.1351014

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 Journal of Constructivist Psychology

ISSN: 1072-0537 (Print) 1521-0650 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/upcy20

Logotherapy in the 21st Century

Reviewed by Benjamin Bellet

To cite this article: Reviewed by Benjamin Bellet (2017): Logotherapy in the 21st Century, Journal
of Constructivist Psychology, DOI: 10.1080/10720537.2017.1351014

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 JOURNAL OF CONSTRUCTIVIST PSYCHOLOGY, 0(0), 1–4, 2017
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C Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 1072-0537 print / 1521-0650 online
DOI: 10.1080/10720537.2017.1351014

BOOK REVIEW

LOGOTHERAPY IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Review of Living Your Own Life: Existential Analysis in Action
By Silvia Längle and Christopher Wurm
Downloaded by [Benjamin Bellet] at 10:30 01 September 2017

London: Karnac Books, 2016, 218 pages, $35.76

Reviewed by Benjamin Bellet, University of Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee, USA

Living Your Own Life is a chance for the uninitiated English-speaking world to experience the
contemporary evolution of the logotherapeutic technique started by Viktor Frankl. Although pay-
ing due deference to the father of logotherapy, this book’s editors and contributors focus on the
last 25 years of development in existential analysis, particularly the ideas of Alfried Längle. The
book and its authors are refreshingly prosymptom in their approach, and meaning making still
holds primacy over distress reduction as the ultimate goal of therapy. Längle’s theory moves from
Frankl’s sometimes transcendent, cognitive conceptualization further into the sphere of the ex-
periential and emotive. Meaning, as understood by these authors, is conceptualized as a complex
interplay of emotion, cognitions, and behaviors. Längle’s “four fundamental questions of human
existence” are used as guideposts for how meaning is searched for and developed in therapy.
These questions concern whether an individual can exist, likes to exist, is allowed to exist as he
or she is, and can find a purpose for existence. Many of the chapters and case studies align them-
selves along these key questions as they apply to human experience, from typical “problems of
living” to what are considered more severe forms of psychopathology.
The first seven chapters apply existential analytic theory to several broad issues of human exis-
tence, weaving in brief excerpts from case studies in order to show how such beautiful (sometimes
poetic) and transcendent reflections can be applied in therapy. Chapter 1 opens up this examina-
tion of what it means to be human by posing the question, “Can I rely on my feelings?” What
follows is Alfried Längle’s brilliant indictment of Western culture’s phobia of emotions as “sin-
ister,” due to their nonobjective nature. Längle then makes the important distinction between
feelings as “signposts” of enduring, perhaps maladaptive, patterns of being and feelings as tools
for grasping the existential value of a particular situation. He describes the “personal position
method,” in which client and therapist identify the purposes and sources of feelings. They then
judge from the distanced standpoint what personal position to take.
In Chapter 4, Christine Wicki discusses how the nature of time and the inevitability of death
play into psychopathology and therapy. This chapter casts the client and all humans in a heroic
light, echoing Frankl’s assertion that a human always acts “in spite of the conditions in which he
is placed” (Frankl, 1975, p. 85). Wicki shows how many humans are faced with a past that is in-
scrutable and painful, a future that is not predictable, and an uncertain length of time in this world.
 2 BOOK REVIEW

All of our decisions in the present moment are made in light of (or in spite of) these fundamental
uncertainties. This situation can seem futile for someone who fixates on the uncertainty of the fu-
ture, having a maladaptive effect on cognitions and behaviors in the present. For example, Wicki
points out that for a person who is depressed, “the future is not experienced as the possibility for
development but, rather, appears eerie and threatening” (p. 58). This chapter provides techniques
and solutions for bringing clients into a daily life lived in an attitude of hope—trusting action in
the present can change the meaning of the past, and finding purpose in present action can obviate
the need for a perfectly predictable future.
In Chapter 7, Silvia Längle addresses fear, shining a positive light on anxiety and stress-related
adjustment issues as opportunities for deeper ways of existing. The author covers the key differ-
ence between “fundamental fear” (a complete breakdown in meaning structures) and the “fear
of expectation,” which is a phobia of a specific situation that allows an individual to make funda-
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mental fear localized within an external event and therefore more manageable. Both forms of fear
are discussed from a prosymptom position as they relate to familiar forms of psychopathology.
The dominant discourse of Western psychology discusses traumatic reactions as a function of
neurochemical dysregulation or elaborations of associative conditioning. Meaning-based com-
ponents of traumatic disorders are given short shrift in the contemporary Western conversation,
although some constructivists and meaning-oriented researchers have demonstrated the role of
“crises of meaning” in traumatic disorders and therapeutic interventions (Neimeyer, 2016; Park,
2010). Längle’s brilliant chapter couches trauma’s effects in terms of an individual’s possibilities,
reminiscent of George Kelly’s assertion of psychological channelization according to event an-
ticipation (Kelly, 1955). Traumatic reactions (whether motoric, cognitive, or behavioral) are seen
as reflections of an overall constriction of alternatives within a person, a destruction of meaning
systems. This constriction is brought about by an event that forces an individual to see all choices
as accompanied by threat, and therefore untenable. Therapy is not conducted in reaction to symp-
toms, but is a process of reestablishing trust in an effort to open possibilities and revise construct
systems.
The last seven chapters consist of in-depth applications of the heady concepts covered in the
first part of the book to specific forms of psychopathology. This is perhaps the most refreshing
part of the book, as it brings the concepts covered into living color. These chapters cover the full
range of disorders and their treatment in a nondirective existential analytic framework. The case
studies are told with the utmost humility on the part of the contributors. The stories are not all
wrapped up with neat endings, and the limitations of both the methodology and therapist are hon-
estly addressed. The ability of these contributors to apply existential approaches to disorders typ-
ically construed in the West as motorically or neurochemically based is eye opening and provides
much food for thought for those brought up in the dominant discourse of cognitive-behavioral
techniques.
Some highlights of these case studies include the effective use of expressive methodologies
(sand play, painting) in child psychotherapy and the complete rehabilitation of a client previously
diagnosed with schizophrenia through the ability of the therapist to enter into the experiential
sphere of an individual with selective mutism. Throughout all of these case studies, from indi-
viduals with narcissistic personality disorders to those who attempted suicide, rehabilitation is
conducted along the path of rebuilding Längle’s fundamental preconditions for happiness and
meaning.
 BOOK REVIEW 3

One of the final chapters concerns therapy with a severely disabled individual and provides
a haunting and moving reflection on how therapists must confront their own powerlessness in
order to enter the client’s world of meaning. In this chapter, Karl Rühl tells of his encounters with
a disabled woman who had been abandoned by her family due to a malignant brain tumor that
left her without the ability to walk, speak, hear, smell, or taste. Confronted by a human whose
physical symptoms could not be “fixed” by a pharmacological or medical remedy, the therapist
was able to enter the world of the client by contacting his own feelings of helplessness. Divested
of personal defenses against the desperation of his client, the therapist was able to access what
Bruce Ecker might call the client’s “emotional truth,” which related to an inability to distance
physical disabilities from personal identity and possibility (Ecker & Hulley, 2008). Working from
Längle’s first fundamental question of the client’s ability to exist, Rühl shows how coconstruction
of possibilities allows more freedom than an antisymptom approach resulting from therapist’s
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pathological reaction to the specter of human frailty.

The only criticism I would offer for this book is lamenting that it did not arrive sooner. Unfortu-
nately, these contributors (all members of the Gesellschaft für Logotherapie und Existenzanalyse
in Vienna) could not more readily collaborate with their constructivist counterparts further West.
Ecker and Hulley (2008), Greenberg (2011), and Neimeyer (2016) have been pioneers in access-
ing primary emotions, meaning reconstruction, and discovering prosymptom emotional truths. I
want to see more collaboration from both sides of the Atlantic on future projects.
In the American psychological community, existential, constructivist, and phenomenolog-
ical approaches are often quietly acknowledged and relegated to the position of “potentially
productive adjunctive components of therapy.” This book makes no apologies for its existential
framework and delivers on its promise to bring logotherapy into modern application. I was
personally delighted by the humility of the contributors, the immense respect paid to the clients,
and the ability of the therapists to apply existential concepts to disorders commonly viewed as
organically based. Constructivist readers will find much traction in the authors’ prosymptom ap-
proaches and the agency with which they imbue their clients. In modern existential analysis, just
as in personal construct theory, the task for the therapist lies in entering the world of the client’s
meaning structures and coconstructing new possibilities, freeing the client to take a personal
position. Frankl once said that he believed the Statue of Liberty on America’s East Coast should
be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast (Frankl, 1962). Ultimately, a
similar issue exists at the heart of American psychotherapy’s direction in the 21st century. Even
though we have the freedom and scientific facility to momentarily relieve “symptoms,” this free-
dom should serve our greatest responsibility, helping our fellow humans to construct meaning.
This book shows humanistic therapists theoretical and practical ways of rising to this occasion
by changing contemporary modern challenges into opportunities for deeper ways of existing.

REFERENCES

Ecker, B., & Hulley, L. (2008). Coherence therapy: Swift change at the roots of symptom production. In J. Raskin & S.
Bridges (Eds.), Studies in meaning 3: Constructivist psychotherapy in the real world (pp. 57–83). New York, NY:
Pace University Press.
Frankl, V. E. (1962). Man’s search for meaning. New York, NY: Touchstone.
 4 BOOK REVIEW

Frankl, V. E. (1975). Anthropologische gundlagen der psychotherapie [Anthropological foundations of psychotherapy].

Bern, Switzerland: Hans Huber.
Greenberg, L. S. (2011). Emotion-focused therapy. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Kelly, G. A. (1955). The psychology of personal constructs. New York, NY: Norton.
Neimeyer, R. A. (2016). Meaning reconstruction in the wake of loss: Evolution of a research program. Behavior Change,
33, 65–79.
Park, C. L. (2010). Making sense of the meaning literature: An integrative review of meaning making and its effects on
adjustment to stressful life events. Psychological Bulletin, 2, 257–301.
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