THE DOCTOR AND THE SOUL

by Viktor Frankl ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

Interested in achieving a completely meaningful synthesis of psychic healing, Dr. Frankl presents in somewhat too technical a jargon, his concept of logotherapy, which takes as its starting point man's will-to-meaning rather than the Freudian pleasure principle or Adler's will-to-power. In setting forth aspects of existential analysis, he points out that man's freedom is to responsibility; his death gives him the value of temporality and singularity; his suffering offers him growth in terms of attitudinal values to complement the creative and experiential values of life. The central theme here is that man is essentialy a spiritual being, that often a neurotic or even psychotic person can be helped through the clearing of intellectual fog or a new reasoning. The aim of logotherapy is to guide the individual to a consciousness of his responsibility:- we are responsible to life, not it to us. There is consideration here of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, religion, the fundamentals of life. Logotherapy seeks to run between causal therapy and religion; its aim is to heal the soul while that of religion is to save it, says Dr. Frankl. Important as much for the questions it raises (the place of philosophy in medicine, for one) as for the answers it gives, this book will be must reading for the combined psychiatric-religious field. (Intended to supplement prevailing therapies, it seems sometimes to seek to supplant them instead.) ""Medical ministry"".

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1955

Categories: NONFICTION