Logotherapy heals through the meaning of life

• April 27, 2024

I am often asked: what is logotherapy? And that's why I decided to write an answer that is clear and timely: the word "logos" is a very old word, to which different meanings have been given, for Viktor Frankl , the founder of logotherapy, means meaning.

The word therapy has Greek origin and means to cure. So logotherapy aims tor heal through sense . Logotherapy is a school of psychotherapy that aims to help the individual to find the meaning of his life.

In other words, when we believe that our life has no meaning, we are in a position to become psychologically ill. This is sometimes complex to understand because we know that it is normal that in certain circumstances we can not find the meaning of what is happening to us.

For example: before the death of a loved one, before the Loss of health, loss of a job, and other types of losses, it is normal that we have that feeling of existential emptiness. That feeling that leads us to ask ourselves: why me? What is the point of continuing to strive if this happens to me? What hurts me so much?

So that, yes, it is normal to feel desolate before certain losses, What is no longer normal is that he feels it all the time and for too long, or worse, for no apparent reason. That is to say, without having gone through a loss, I feel that my life has no meaning.

Frankl writes that the only question about the meaning of life is a demonstration that there is a meaning. And of course, when everything is going well, it is not common to ask about the life's sense . When we suffer is when we begin to question ourselves, and if we can not find answers, we can get to depression, addictions, and other behaviors that are destructive to us and others.

Logotherapy takes from the philosopher Nietzsche the well-known phrase "If I can find the why, I can bear any how". That is, when I find the meaning of a situation, I can live it without despair, however difficult it may be.

The logotherapy seeks that the person find the sense of what happens to him. That the person asking himself, for what? find answers Normally, when we look to the past we understand that what happened to us, that at the time was so painful, made us grow, learn, be better people. And that is the meaning of the experience lived.

Logotherapy is a philosophy of life because it proposes understanding life as full of meaning and involves interpreting events within a meaningful order. Also, for this school of psychotherapy, human beings are a mind, a body and a spirit. That spirit is incomprehensible for reason, but it is the wisest part, which gives us dignity and wisdom to know the meaning of our experiences.

It is also a method of prevention, because when we know their proposals and we are learning to search and find the meaning of our everyday experiences , we are exercising the value of the attitude. For the logotherapists, to exercise the correct attitude before the circumstances and to be responsible for our actions, is the first step to live a life with greater sense.

The Dr. Viktor Frankl, its founder, was imprisoned in concentration camps during World War II. He survives and writes his first of many books: "Man in search of meaning", in which he narrates his experience and explains how to believe that everything had a meaning is fundamental to not lose hope.

I founded the Institute of Logotherapy offered by the Diploma in Logotherapy, open to anyone who wants to know this hopeful school and the Specialty in speech therapy, for those who want to acquire the tools to work as a logotherapist. We are currently in the D.F., in Guadalajara, Ciudad Juárez and Villahermosa, Tabasco.

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