Third and final conversation
Human Beings and the Meaning of Life
From the Perspective of Viktor Frankl, Founder of Logotherapy
Topic of Session Three: What Is Logotherapy (Meaning-Centred Therapy)?

In this session, four major movements in the history of psychology and the place of logotherapy among them are examined.

1) First Movement: The Psychoanalytic Movement

Within this movement, neurosis arises from conflict between the patient’s conscious and unconscious mind. This movement is criticised in terms of the pan-determinism, psychologism, and reductionism embedded within it.

2) Second Movement: The Cognitive-Behavioural Movement

This movement, whose major figures in the history of psychology include Skinner, Pavlov, Erikson, and Ellis, begins with behaviourism, founded on the idea that human neurotic problems arise from human behaviours and that these behaviours are themselves products of learning and conditioning. It seeks, through theories of learning, to offer a route out of destructive behaviours.
The cognitive movement is likewise based on the theory that maladaptive and destructive behaviours, and human neurotic problems, are products of cognitive errors; even emotions are understood as arising from false beliefs, and treatment proceeds through correcting those cognitive errors.
The criticisms of this approach and its limitations are discussed in this conversation.

3) Third Movement: The Humanistic-Existential Movement

Psychologists such as Maslow, Bühler, Fromm, Rogers, Rollo May, and Yalom can be regarded as major figures in this movement.
If the cognitive-behavioural movement focuses largely on the sensory aspects of experience and on external data, the humanistic movement can be understood as focusing on our inner experiences in life and on how we can go beyond what we presently are. Its concerns include philosophical concepts such as freedom of the will and the fulfilment of our capacities, as well as personal experiences such as loss, death, and the fundamental anxiety of life.

4) Fourth Movement: Transpersonal Psychology

Goleman, Walsh, and Wilber can be regarded as leading psychologists of this movement, which has emerged over the past forty years. It seeks to connect individual consciousness to a larger level of transpersonal and universal consciousness, and its aim is to move beyond the boundaries of the ego and individualism in psychology.
Within this psychology, concepts such as cosmic consciousness, the cycle of death and life, and mystical experiences also enter the psychological field. The movement seeks to connect psychology with philosophical ideas and ancient mystical traditions, especially Zen and Buddhism.

We then discuss how logotherapy emerged from the third movement while seeking to accept concepts from the fourth, just as Jungian psychology seeks to build a bridge between the first and fourth movements. The fundamental similarities and differences between logotherapy and Jungian analytical psychology are also examined in this part.
In the final section of the conversation, we review the philosophical foundations and principal ideas of logotherapy.