This document provides an overview of Viktor Frankl's logotherapy. It discusses key concepts including: 1. Existence analysis, logotherapy's therapeutic methods, and Frankl's theory of the "will to meaning." 2. The spiritual dimension, which gives people the power to reject inner stipulations and defy limiting external factors through self-distancing. 3. Values of purpose like creative, experiential, and attitudinal values that follow universal values of goodness, truth, beauty, love and justice.

1. Presentation october 6.-8. 2014
Tampere
Logotherapy and The significance of
Existential Vacuum

2. 1.Viktor Frankl’s Logotheory contains:
1. Existenceanalysis
-theory on human existing as implementing values of
purposes
- Personality theory (in more detail in slide 6.)
- theory of mental disorders
- theory on ’Will to Meaning’ /purpose-based
philosophy
2. Logotherapy
- philosophical therapy, which has definitive helping
methods: dereflection, paradoxical intention,

3. 2. Spirit, spiritual dimension and self-
distancing
- Spirit= the special ability of spiritual dimension,
which gives power to reject inner (psychological)
stipulation, and power to defy the external factors,
that are threatening to limit the freedom to live life
with purposes (T. Purjo 2012 p. 115)
- Spiritual dimension refers to ’freedom of will’,
which is not freedom from conditions, but freedom
to take a stand on whatever conditions might
confront a person, e.g. however mentally ill a person
might be (Frankl: The Will to Meaning 1988, p. 16)
- Self-distancing is an operator of spiritual
dimension, that allows a person to take the stand on

4. 3. Values of purposes and conscience
- Values of purposes are values that implement
chosen purposes:
1. creative values» doing something meaningful to
others
2. experiental values» experiencing values of
other(s)
3. attitudinal values» facing unavoidable suffering or
evil using spirit and acting according to one’s own
conscience
- Conscience= built-in ability (that every person has)
to notice in every situation the will to good. However

5. 4. Noogenic neurosis, personal nihilism and
boredom
- Noogenic neurosis: Frankl’s own diagnosis for a
new kind of neurosis, that arises not from somatic or
psychological dimension, but spiritual dimension of
awareness
-Personal nihilism= an attitude, in which a person is
experiencing especially his own existence as mad,
absurd or irrelevant. In the backround there is a
state of boredom
- Boredom= experience of alienation and
strangeness, which leads to feeling of lacking and
longing. Boredom is usually a part of existential
vacuum.

6. 5.Existential vacuum and the reasons behind
it
- Existential vacuum is a symptom of an urge to find
purposes to one’s own life
- it is not a disease or disorder, but a healthy reaction
to diseased condition
- reasons in the backround of existential vacuum
(=noticing the diseased condition):
1. purpose is gone or lost
2. there hasn’t been any purpose at all
3. purpose is been distorted
4. purpose is to be deliberately distorted

7. 6. Logotheory’s Personality theory
- A person is a holistic entity, whose existence
consists of body, consciousness and situationality,
all of which need each other to be self-existing
- Consciousness consists of psychological and
spiritual dimensions, which need each other and
both body and situationality, to be self-existing
- Spiritual dimension of consciousness is the ”place”
where valuing and ethical reflection happens,
according to Frankl, Nicolai Hartmann and Lauri
Rauhala (Purjo 2012 p. 86-87)
- Spiritual dimension does not mean religious

8. 7. Universal values underlying in
logotherapy and the concept of DSM5
- Universal values: goodness, truth, beauty, love and
justice
- in logotherapy it is included that these values are
universal and everyone’s own values of purposes
should follow on these
- DSM5= The Diagnostic and Statistical manual of
Mental Disorders, fifth edition, 2013
- DSM5 has been widely criticized for developing
new diagnostic criteria, that has caused many new
diagnostic classifications, even though disorders
haven’t radically changed or multiplied

9. 8. Normality and sane insanity
- normality is always relative normality: it is
dependent on the society, which has established the
standards and set the ethics
- according to cultural relativism, normality is
something that is generally accepted in a certain
society
- statistical normality is the average of all people, the
middle point of Gaussian curve, where most of the
people are located
- Sane insanity is the opposite of normality: the
recognition of each others’ diversity and appreciation

10. 9. Three statements in this presentation
1. –Logotherapy is not a part of humanistic
psychotherapies along with client centered therapies
and Gestalt therapy, but a part of Logotheory, whose
ontology, personality theory and theory of values
originate from philosophy
2. – Existential vacuum is not a disease or disorder,
but a healthy reaction to a diseased condition that
manifests itself in purpose- and conscience related
disturbances
3. – All people are sane in their spiritual dimension
because of their ability for self-distancing and
freedom of will, that follows