Viktor Frankl's Contributions to Hypnotherapy

I wish to pay tribute to one of my hero’s. Though he is not known as a hypnotherapist, his theories and counseling techniques can be used by hypnotherapist. In an address on Hypnosis and Religion, Augustin Figueroa said, “Though he may or may not be a hypnotist, Victor Frankl's Logotherapy coincides with hypnosis in the search for information of self in order to find means to cope with disastrous situations. His ability to "talk himself" into a condition which enabled him to cope with his terrible situation at the Nazi concentration camp can most certainly be equated to hypnotic trance, His search for meaning is certainly a process similar to the utilization techniques of Ericksonian therapy.?

Viktor Frankl was born in Vienna on March 26, 1905 and died in the same city on September 2, 1997. Frankl was on the staff of Rothschild Hospital in Vienna when he was taken prisoner by the Nazi. Following his arrest, he was in German concentration camps till the end of World War II.

In an interview with Dr. Robert Schuler, Dr. Frankl told this story about his decision to stay in Europe when he had an opportunity to come to America in the early 40's. The situation in his homeland was becoming more and more difficult for those of the Jewish race. The local Jewish Synagogue had been bombed and left in ruins by the Nazis. Dr. Frankl was offered an opportunity to go to America. As the synagogue was destroyed, he went to a nearby Christian Church. He prayed that God would give him some direction as to what he should do. He wanted to know if he should go to America or stay with his family. Though he earnestly prayed, no answer came. He left the Church feeling that God had ignored him.

On the way home, he came to the destroyed Synagogue. He stopped for a few moment and picked up a piece of wood to take home as a keepsake for his father. When he arrived home, he examined the piece of wood more closely. As he read the inscription on the piece of wood, he realized that indeed God had heard his prayer and had answered him. The inscription on the piece wood read, “Honor your father and mother.? He stayed in Europe and eventually ended up a prisoner of the Nazis. If Frankl had not gone to that Church, stopped at that destroyed Synagogue, picked up that piece of wood and carried it home and read what was inscribed on it; would we have ever heard of Viktor Frankl? Maybe, maybe not!

Frankl survived the Holocaust and the Nazi death camps. Frankl's first book in English Man's Search For Meaning was written while in a Nazi prison camp during World War II.(According to United States Library of Congress poll, that book is one of the ten most influential books in America.) During those years, he experienced incredible suffering and degradation but further developed his theory of Logotherapy which focuses on the meaning of human existence and man's search for meaning.

Viktor Frankl taught at the University of Vienna Medical School and later at several schools in the United States. Frankl's first book in English was Man's Search For Meaning which he wrote while in a Nazi prison camp during World War II. During those years, he experienced incredible suffering and degradation but further developed his theory of Logotherapy. "Logos" is the Greek work for "Meaning." Logotherapy focuses on the meaning of human existence and man's search for meaning. According to Frankl, the striving to find meaning in one's life is the primary motivational force in man. In using the term, "man," Frankl is referring to the "Human Race": male and female. Logotherapy forms a chain of interconnected links; (1) freedom of will, (2) will to meaning, and (3) meaning of life.

1. FREEDOM OF WILL: Man has freedom of will which remains even when all other freedoms are gone because he can choose what attitude he will take to his limitations. Determinism is an infectious disease for many psychiatrists, educators and adherents of determinist religion who are seemingly not aware that they are thereby under-minding the very basis of their own convictions. For either man’s freedom must be recognized or else psychiatry is a waste of time, religion is a delusion and education is an illusion. Freedom means freedom in the face of three things: (1) the instincts, (2) inherited disposition, 3 environment

2. WILL TO MEANING: The basic striving of human beings is to find and fulfill meaning and purpose. People reach out to encounter meanings to fulfill. Such a view is profoundly opposed to those motivational theories which are based on the homeostasis principle. Those theories depict man as if he were a closed system. According to them, man is basically concerned with maintaining or restoring an inner equilibrium and to this end with the reduction of tensions. In the final analysis, this is also assumed to be the goal of gratification of drives and the satisfaction of needs.

3. MEANING OF LIFE; Logotherapy leaves to the client the decision as to how to understand his own meaning whether along the lines of religious beliefs or agnostic convection. Logotheapy must remain available to everyone and so must hypnotherapy. Humans are ultimately self-determining. What one becomes within limits of endowment and environment, he has made for himself. Frankl wrote, "In the concentration camp, we witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself: which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions. Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers and he is also that being who entered the gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips."

It was Frankl's contention that the pleasure principle of Freud is self-defeating. The more one aims for pleasure, the more his aim is missed. The very "pursuit of happiness" is what thwarts it. Pleasure is missed when it is the goal and attained when it is the side effect of attaining a goal. Hypnotherapist calls this the Law of Reversed Effect: "The harder you try...the more difficult it becomes."

The therapist's role consists of widening and broadening the visual field of the client so that the spectrums of meaning and values become conscious and visible to her. Meaning to life may change, but it never ceases to be. We can discover meaning through creative values, experience values and attitudinal. Meaning can come through what we give to life (creative values), by what we take from the world: Listening to music, reading, enjoying sports, etc. (experience values), and through the stand we take toward a situation we can no longer change such as the death of a loved one (attitudinal values). As long as one is conscious, he is under obligation to realize values, even if only attitudinal values. Frankl does not claim to have an answer for the client's meaning to life. Meaning must be found but it cannot be given. Logotherapy is an optimistic approach to life for it teaches that there are no tragic or negative aspects which cannot be the stand one takes to them be translated into a positive accomplishment.

It is commonly observed that anxiety produces precisely what the client fears. Frankl called this "anticipatory anxiety." For instance, in the cases of insomnia, the client reports that she has been having trouble going to sleep at night. The fear of not going to sleep only adds to difficulty of trying to go to sleep. Fear of test taking, sexual problems (impotence, failure to experience orgasm) are intensified by anticipatory anxiety.

Frankl developed the technique of "paradoxical intention." For instance, when a phobia client is afraid that something will happen to him, the Logotherapist encourages him to intent or wish for, even if only for a short time, precisely what he fears. Hypnotherapist calls this method or a slight variation of it, "desensitization." There can also be a bit of humor involved with paradoxical intention. I used this method with a lady who ate two bags of popcorn each night and wanted to stop or cut down. During the counseling session, I said to her, "Now, tonight just say to yourself, 'Well, I have been eating two bags of popcorn each night. Tonight, I am going to eat four bags. I am sure that if I can eat two, I can eat four." She began to laugh and said, "That is ridiculous. I don't want four bags. Two bags are too much also. I can be satisfied with one or less." This procedure is based upon the fact that problems are caused as much by compulsion to avoid or fight them as by the problem itself.