An important model of Psychotherapy helps to find out the meaning and purpose of life especially for those who think that finishing themselves would finish all of their life problems......!....which is never true....!!! Every human on this earth has some purpose and meaning to be here. The human has to progress itself in a positive way and help the society to prosper positively...as each human is special and is an important part of it! Help those who cannot help themselves!!!

1. Purpose/Meaning in
Life
(Psychotherapy)
Why do we need to know about it?
Mental Health Consultants and Services

2. (Important psychotherapy)
Logo therapy
(meaning of existence)
• To help those people who lost the meaning &
purpose of their life……….due to clinical reason!

3. Logo therapy
• Psychotherapy works well for those having
suicide ideation, as medicine may not help in
such extreme mental conditions…..

4. Existentialism-Foundation of Logotherapy
Logotherapy founded on the tenet of “Existentialism”
• Applied to the work of late 19th- and 20th-century philosophers
• Despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that
philosophical thinking begins with the human subject
• not merely the thinking but the acting, feeling, living human as
individual
• In existentialism, the individual's starting point is characterized by
what has been called "the existential attitude",
• or a sense of disorientation and confusion in the face of an
apparently meaningless or absurd world
• Many existentialists have also regarded traditional systematic or
academic philosophies, in both style and content, as too abstract
and remote from concrete human experience.

5. What is Logotherapy?
* developed by neurologist and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl (1950s)
It is considered the "Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy“
after Freud's psychoanalysis and Adler's individual psychology
• Logotherapy is based on an Existential Analysis
• focusing on Kierkegaard's will to meaning as opposed to Adler's
Nietzschean doctrine of will to power or Freud's will to pleasure
• Rather than power or pleasure, logotherapy is founded on belief -
- that it is the striving to find a meaning in one's life
- that is the primary, most powerful motivating and driving force in
humans
• A short introduction to this system is given in Frankl's most famous book
“Man's Search for Meaning”
• theories helped him to survive his Holocaust experience and how that
experience further developed and reinforced his theories

6. Basic Principles- Logotherapy
• The notion of Logotherapy was created with the Greek word
logos ("meaning")
• Frankl’s concept is based on the premise that the primary
motivational force of an individual is to find a meaning in life
List of basic principles of logotherapy:
1) Life has meaning under all circumstances, even the most
miserable ones
2) Our main motivation for living is our will to find meaning in life
3) We have freedom to find meaning in what we do, and what we
experience
or at least in the stand we take when faced with a situation of
unchangeable suffering

7. Human spirit and Logotherapy
The human spirit is referred to in several of the assumptions
of logotherapy -
• the term spirit is not "spiritual" or "religious" In Frankl's
view, the spirit is the will of the human being
• the emphasis, is on the search for meaning, which is not
necessarily the search for God or any other supernatural
being
• noted the barriers to humanity's quest for meaning in life
He warns against – “affluence, hedonism, materialism..." in
the search for meaning

8. Meaning in life- concepts
• Purpose in life and Meaning in life, constructs
appeared in Frankl's logotherapy writings with
relation to existential vacuum and will to meaning,
also defined positive psychological functioning by
others
• Existential Vacuum — The psychological condition
in which a person doubts, whether life has any
meaning?
This new neurosis is characterized by loss of
interest and lack of initiative.

9. Existential vacuum
• Thus the individual relies mainly upon the
actions of others and neglects the meaning of
his own personal life
• Hence he sees his own life as meaningless and
falls into the “existential vacuum” feeling inner
void
• Progressive automation causes increasing
alcoholism, juvenile delinquency, and suicide

10. Purpose in Life
When person's search for meaning is blocked, it may be
psychologically damaging
• Positive life purpose and meaning- associated with strong
religious beliefs, membership in groups, dedication to a
cause, life values, and clear goals
• Adult development and maturity theories include the
purpose in life concept
• Maturity emphasizes a clear comprehension of life's
purpose, directedness, and intentionality which,
contributes to the feeling that life is meaningful

11. Meaning in Life - Logotherapy
• Discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by
creating a work or doing a deed;
(2) by experiencing something or encountering someone;
(3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering" and that
"everything can be taken from a man but one thing:
* the last of the human freedoms – to choose one's attitude in any
given set of circumstances
• Philosophical basis of logotherapy -
• believed that there is no psychotherapy apart from the theory of
man ,
• as an existential psychologist, he inherently disagreed with the
“machine model” or “rat model”

12. Logotherapeutic views and treatment
Overcoming anxiety
• E.g. New York Times writer Tim Sanders- uses its
concept to relieve the stress of fellow airline travelers
by asking them the purpose of their journey
• Frankl believed that the anxious individual does not
understand that his anxiety is the result of dealing
with a sense of “unfulfilled responsibility” and
ultimately a lack of meaning

13. Logotherapeutic views and treatment
Treatment of neurosis
• two neurotic pathogens: 1) hyper-intention, a forced intention
toward some end which makes that end unattainable;
• 2) hyper-reflection, an excessive attention to oneself which
stifles attempts to avoid the neurosis to which one thinks
oneself predisposed
• identified anticipatory anxiety, a fear of a given outcome
which makes that outcome more likely
• to relieve the anticipatory anxiety and treat the resulting
neuroses, logotherapy offers paradoxical intention, wherein
the patient intends to do the opposite of his hyper-intended
goal

14. Logotherapeutic views and treatment
Depression- occurs at the psychological, physiological, and spiritual
levels
• psychological level - feelings of inadequacy stem from undertaking
tasks beyond our abilities
• physiological level – is a “vital low”, which he defined as a
“diminishment of physical energy”
• spiritual level - the depressed man faces tension between who he
actually is in relation to what he should be
• Frankl suggests that if goals seem unreachable, an individual loses
a sense of future and thus meaning resulting in depression
• Thus logotherapy aims “to change the patient’s attitude toward
her/his disease as well as toward her/his life as a task”

15. Logotherapeutic views and treatment
Obsessive-compulsive disorder- lack the sense of completion that
most other individuals possess
• Instead of fighting the tendencies to repeat thoughts or actions,
or focusing on changing the individual symptoms of the disease,
the therapist should focus on “transforming the neurotic’s
attitude toward his neurosis”
• Important to recognize that the patient is “not responsible for
his obsessional ideas”, but that “he is certainly responsible for
his attitude toward these ideas”
Logotherapy - (Perfectionism can have uncertainties)
• eventually ignore his obsessional thoughts and find meaning in
his life despite such thoughts

16. Logotherapeutic views and treatment
Schizophrenia - He recognized the roots of schizophrenia in
physiological dysfunction
• the schizophrenic “experiences himself as an object” rather
than as a subject
• Frankl suggested that a schizophrenic could be helped by
logotherapy by first being taught to ignore voices and to end
persistent self-observation
• must be led toward meaningful activity, as “even for the
schizophrenic there remains that residue of freedom toward
fate and toward the disease which man always possesses”

17. Logotherapeutic views and treatment
Terminally-ill patients - In 1977, Terry Zuehlke and John Watkins
conducted a study
• design used 20 male Veterans Administration volunteers who were
randomly assigned–
• (1) group received 8-45 minute sessions over a 2 week period and
(2) group used as control that received delayed treatment
• tested on 5 scales – the MMPI K Scale, MMPI L Scale, Death Anxiety
Scale, Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale, and the Purpose of Life Test
• significant difference - univariate analyses differences in 3/5 of the
dependent measures
• confirm the idea that terminally-ill patients can benefit from
logotherapy in coping with death

18. ARE WE IN AN EXISTENTIAL CRISIS?
WHO world report on suicide –
*Over 800 000 people die due to suicide every year
*There are many more people who attempt suicide every year
*Suicide is the second leading cause of death among 15–29-
year-olds
*75% of global suicides occur in low- and middle-income
countries
*Ingestion of pesticide, hanging and firearms are among the
most common methods of suicide globally

19. Important message
Your “meaning of life” can help finding others
“purpose in their life”…….

20. Thank you
www.mentalhealthaims.com