Viktor Frankl

Question 1

Frankl’s view of the person is made up of four aspects. What are they?

Answer 1

• The freedom to be responsible
  (spiritual beings, therefore free and therefore responsible)
• A level of being beyond brute existence
  (fulfillment is to have purpose, leave the sub-human levels of functioning)
• The transhuman dimension
  (conscience is out link to the transhuman dimension, calling us to more. Life is unconditionally meaningful)
• A highly personalised way of being
  (we decide before whom we are accountable)

Question 2

Outline Frankl’s view of the structure of the personality

Answer 2

• three dimensions of existence (physical, psychological and spiritual)
• the spiritual dimension is the core of our being

Question 3

How is the personality formed?

Answer 3

It is what we do with what we have been given, how we respond to our environments that determine our personalities and characteristics.
We continue to develop as we age, ending only at death.

Question 4

Outline the three aspects of Frankl’s dynamics of the personality/noödynamics.

Answer 4

• The freedom of the will
  (we chose out paths)
• The will to meaning
  (what drives us forward in life, in all situations, dire or cushy)
• The meaning of life
  (found in creative values, experiential values, attitudinal values)

Question 5

What are the 9 characteristics on people who are optimally developed?

Answer 5

1. Self-determining action
   (don’t surrender to “fate”)
2. Realistic perception
   (separate themselves from what is happening)
3. Humour
   (laugh at own weaknesses and problems)
4. Self-transcendence
   (focus on that which is bigger than oneself)
5. Future-directedness
   (goald, vision)
6. Work as a vocation
7. Appreciation of goodness/beauty/truth
8. Respect/App for uniqueness of others
9. Meaning in suffering (highest peak)

*Happened when the spiritual side of our nature is fully evident, we exercise our will to fulfill the basic human desire for meaning

Question 6

Outline Frankl’s view of psychopathology

Answer 6

1. Noogenic neurosis
   - lack courage to respond to the challenge of life to exercise their freedom with responsibility. Suffer from neurosis for 4 characteristics
   i) unplanned, day-to-day existence
   ii) fatalistic attitude towards life
   iii) conformism
   iv) Totalitarianism

*Frankl emphasized the dignity and value of psychotic individuals

Question 7

Outline Frankl’s view of psychotherapy

Answer 7

• goal is to discover meaning in ones life (become aware of things which require hem to be responsible) - socratic dialogue
• two techniques:
  1. paradoxical intention
  2. dereflection
• aims to liberate clients from self-preoccupation and make them aware that they are spiritual beings with freedom and responsibility

Question 8

How does Frankl understand the permissiveness of our generation?

Answer 8

• as a reaction formation against the authoritarian regimes of the previous era
• the permissiveness is freedom without direction - causing delinquency, addiction, cults

Question 9

What doe Frankl think education should focus on?

Answer 9

• confronting the youth with values and ideals, encouraging them to take up challenges, embrace opportunities

Question 10

How does Frankl understand aggression

Answer 10

• an outflow of a frustrated or suppressed will to meaning
• also recognizes the impact of society; violence breeds violence. But we can overcome this.

Question 11

What is a man, according to Frankl?

And what freedom do we always have?

Answer 11

What then is man? He is a being who continuously decides what he is: a being who
equally harbours the potential to descend to the level of a beast or to ascend to the life
of a saint.

Everything might be taken away from the prisoner, but this freedom remained to him;
and it remained to him literally to the last moment, to the last breath. It was the freedom
to conduct oneself ‘this way or that way