Reply #65: "The Essence of Existential Analysis" [View All]

Arthur Schnitzler, Vienna's famous poet an contemporary of Sigmund Freud, has been quoted as saying that there are really only three virtues: objectivity, courage, and sense of responsibility. It would be temptng to allot to each of these virtues one of the schools of psychotherapy that have emerged from Viennese soil." -- Frankl

"Courage" is the essense of Adlerian psychology. As Frankl reminds us, the Adlerian therapist's goal is to "help the patient overcome his inferiority feelings" which are what holds him back in life.

"Objectivity" is the description of the Freudian psychoanalysis. "What else could it have been," Frankl asks us, "that enabled Sigmund Freud, like Oedipus, to look into the eyes of the Sphinx -- the human psyche -- and draw out its riddle at risk of a most dreadful discovery?" Today, many in the psychiatric field do not appreciate the significance of the giant leaps that Freud took.

However, it is possible that this objectivity of Freud has become almost a cynicism today. Frankl warned that the view of the human being as a machine implied that al it took was an objective mechanic or technician to repair it. Today, there is an overemphasis on "fixing" broken machines by adding daily doses of fuels that alter the machine's performance.

"The sense of responsibility" is the description of Frankl's "existential analysis." His goal was to help people to respond to life "in action," meaning in the here and now. It is a means of having the individual be able to identify his responsibility -- to himself and to the situation -- in terms of his spiritual existence. "Here it is not the ego that becomes conscious of the id but rather the self that becomes conscious of itself."

It takes, however, objectivity and courage to follow through on one's sense of responsibilities!