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Volume 4, Number 2 Fall/Winter 1981 
CONTENTS 
The Future of Logotherapy 
Victor E. Frankl ...........................................71 The Existential Vacuum in Eastern Europe 
R.E. Stecker ...............................................79 Logotherapy in Tanzania Louis L. Klitzke ............................................83 Applications in Korea Byung-Hak Ko .............................................89 My Use of Logotherapy with Clients Edith Eva Eger .............................................94 Rehabilitative Nursing and Logotherapy Patricia L. Starck ......................................... IO1 Suffering, Tension, and Human Service Arthur Hoffer ............................................110 Validation of Logotherapy Elisabeth Lukas ...........................................116 The Disabled and the Authentic Self Carol Lynn ...............................................126 What the Will to Meaning May Achieve 
Guido Korf gen ............................................129 Book Reviews .................................................130 
International Forum for Logotherapy Vol. 5, No. I, Spring/Summer 1982 
A Journey into Meaning 
Jerry L. Long 
On July 24, 1977, the course of my life was irrevocably altered. While swimming with friends in an irrigation canal, I dived in and broke my neck. The forceful impact of my head upon the hard canal bottom resulted in a compression fracture of the fourth cervical vertebrae, which caused instantaneous paralysis from the neck down. There then ensued several long, grueling, and sometimes painful months of rehabilitation which in essence has not, nor ever will be, ended. 
Before the injury I was a strong 160-pound, athletically-built young man whose primary, though not total, source of meaning was physical prowess. And yet now, as I look down on my emaciated 115-pound frame, I am keenly aware of the deeper meaning and strong constitution which I have achieved as a result of my suffering. Without initially knowing it, I drew upon that uniquely human spiritual realm, the noetic dimension, and then began a journey into meaning. 
Since learning about logotherapy (and logophilosophy), I have found that I unknowingly employed at least two of its primary techniques to facilitate my initial recovery and subsequent rehabilitation. 
The first was dereflection. Because my pain was concentrated in my head and neck only, it was even more excruciating. Analgesic injections provided a brief respite from the pain, allowing rest, thereby facilitating a speedier recovery. But because I have an aversion to medications of this type, I searched intuitively for another method to alleviate the pain. I soon discovered that by intense concentration on something or someone beyond myself, the pain would be eliminated, or at least reduced. Usually, the things on which I focused were trivial. For example, it would take me an hour to visualize the intricacies of opening a door, riding a bicycle, or to reexperience the peace and contentment felt while relaxing upon freshly cut bales of hay. By dereflecting away from myself and my seemingly all-encompassing sense of pain, through these mental activities or through talking to my parents during visitation, or humming a song, my immediate "psychophysical" sense of pain was transcended, through the resources of my noetic dimension. Dereflection was helpful not only then in coping with pain, but has continued to be beneficial in all aspects of my life. I have found that, whatever the situation, the degree to which I focus upon some
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thing or someone other than myself is, paradoxically, the degree to which I am enhanced by transcending myself. 
I would be lying if I said that I have never felt discouraged, but these times are rare because I view my life as being abundant with meaning and purpose. The attitude that I adopted (intuitively) on that fateful day has become my personal credo for life: / broke my neck, it didn't break me. I have chosen to be a personal spokesman against the tendency toward reductionism, which fails to acknowledge the resiliency of the human spirit. I have had, and will continue to have, difficult circumstances that confront me, but it is reassuring to know that I have at my disposal a personally tested "defiant power of the human spirit." This power can be utilized without the person even knowing it. About one and one half years after the injury, an X-ray technician suddenly asked me, "How do you cope with it, mentally?" Spontaneously, I responded, "I just do it. I refuse to become stagnant when I have so many opportunities and abilities." I feel that I have enough difficulty to contend with as it is, and that to adopt a negative attitude would only add to the problem. 
All of this occurred before I was ever introduced to logotherapy. I first learned about logotherapy while reading Man's Search for Meaning as a part of a General Psychology course which I was taking at the local junior college. This book evoked profound feelings within me because, although my suffering was of a far lesser magnitude than that of Dr. Frankl and his comrades, I nevertheless saw many similarities between his experience and my own. Then, as I read the tenets, principles, and philosophy of logotherapy, I was astonished with a sense of deja vu. "That's me!" I said. 
After discussing Man's Search for Meaning, and my feelings about it, with my instructor, I wrote Dr. Frankl a letter expressing my appreciation for his book and how I personally related to it. His reply stated that I was an excellent example of "the defiant power of the human spirit." We have continued our correspondence, and I was elated to read in his most recent letter that I have been used as an example in his lectures and even in a European television interview. These acts touch me deeply, and I have found additional meaning by the hope that other persons, as a result of my arduous trek toward meaning, might be helped. 
I believe my future to be a bright one. I am majoring in psychology, and plan to continue my education at least through the Master's level, perhaps to the Ph.D. My vocational desire is to be a psychological counselor, teach, and write articles and books. But, in whatever I do, I feel that my physical handicap will have a positive influence upon my life, enabling me to have a deeper, more meaningful, and further reaching impact than would have been otherwise possible. 
JERRY LONG, Jr. is a psychology student at Victoria College, Gonzales, Texas. 
International Forum for Logotherapy Vol. 5, No.!, Spring/Summer 1982 
The Question of Death in Logotherapy 
George Kovacs 
The search for meaning in logotherapy is supported by the existential interpretation of the meaning of death. The logotherapeutic principle of unconditional meaningfulness includes the conviction that life is meaningful even against the insurmountable reality of death. This conviction, however, often becomes the target of theoretical objections. Educational and counseling praxis may suggest yet additional doubts about the affirmation of the meaning of death based on the difficulties in dealing with the situations of death and dying. What is death? What can be said about the meaning of death? How should the logotherapist deal with the questions of death and dying? The following reflections respond to these questions. First, they examine what logotherapy says about death and dying, then they show what remains unsaid about death in logotherapy, and finally some guidelines are suggested for dealing with the questions of death and dying in the practice of logotherapy. 
SELF-DISCOVERY AND THE QUESTION OF DEATH 
The question of death is basically an existential question for logotherapy. To ask "What is death?" means to ask what is the significance of death for the conduct of life. The answer to this question includes much more than just the claim that the reality of death does not take away the meaning of life. Frankl justifies this claim by a philosophical analysis of the nature of temporality and of human finiteness. The finiteness of human existence determines the concrete situation of responsibility. The fact of death, the transitory nature of human life, is not a negative but a positive factor of human existence. Death establishes the end of the future and defines the boundaries of human possibilities. In the presence of death, "we are under the imperative of utilizing our lifetimes to the utmost, not letting the singular opportunities-whose 'finite' sum constitutes the whole of a life-pass by unused. " 2 Thus human existence is irreversible; human life and its creations constitute an eternal record for which the person is responsible. The past is not the destroyer but the preserver of the record of 
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life. The individual decides in the present what shall be eternalized, what shall become part of the being of the past. "In death everything that has passed congeals in the past. Nothing can be changed any more." 3 According to Frankl's analysis of temporality, the transitoriness of all beings is regarded not as the chronological passing away of things but as movement, as the fleeing of everything "from the emptiness of the future into the safety of the past."3 This positive view of finiteness leads to the creation, to the reawakening of responsibility for the history of the individual. Human reality is transitory, but it is not meaningless; the inner limits of life add to the meaning of life. Human existence is a life of responsibility grounded on the finiteness of the human being; death does not annul responsibility but creates it. 
The awareness of death functions as the source of self-discovery. This phenomenon is not accidental; it is connected with the nature of human death. According to Frankl's analysis, in death the person not only sees his life in review but becomes his life; life in death becomes what the individual has made of it. Thus the question "What is death?" becomes synonymous with the question "What happens in death?" In dying, then, the life of the human person is reaching its completion and definitive form or quality. The human self is not a fixed thing but a reality in a state of becoming; it "becomes itself fully only when life has been completed by death." 3 This ontological interpretation of what happens in death means that the past history and creativity of life become the true and final future of the human being. The past is a mode of being because passed time is irreversible "but what has happened within that time is unassailable and inviolable .... All that is good and beautiful in the past is safely preserved in the past. On the other hand, so long as life remains, all guilt and all evil is still 'redeemable.' " 2 Up to the last moment of life there is the possibility to shape the past; there is the opportunity to adopt appropriate attitudes toward it. In death, in the deepening of the awareness of death, therefore, the individual not only sees his whole life flash by in a short time but, more significantly, creates and reconstitutes his life as a whole. In the process of living we complete particular tasks and establish particular realities; in death' we complete life in its totality. Life in death becomes what the individual has made of it. The human person "does not become a reality at his birth but rather at his death; he is 'creating' himself at the moment of his death.'' 3 Temporality is not simply an external aspect of the process of the becoming of the individual; it constitutes an essential element of the inner development of the self. 
Is the daily life of the human being guided by the existential and positive understanding of the meaning of death? According to Frankl, the daily life of the person often is dominated by the denial and the misunderstanding of death. The general tendency to ignore and to deny death, especially its personal nature, seems to permeate contemporary culture and the large 
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majority of individuals as well. Death is regarded as an intrusion upon life, as an interference with the process and projects of living, as something finishing off the whole of life. Human beings think about death and worry about death as something dreadful, as something completely hostile to all that life is about. The idea that death is an alarm and thus a judge leading to an awakening to and understanding of human reality is almost entirely forgotten. Death "awakens us to the true reality of ourselves, " 3 it opens us up to our inner being and selfhood. The awareness of the personal (nontransferable) nature of death leads to the discovery and creation of personal being and living. 
A NONMETAPHYSICAL APPROACH 
The question of death in logotherapy deals basically with the attitudinal and existential meaning of human death. Thus logotherapy discerns some fundamental insights regarding the significance of death for the conduct of life. The wisdom of these insights agrees in many ways with the ancient and with the contemporary philosophical reflections on death. Thus the essay of Seneca "On the Shortness of Life," the description of the human awareness of death in Leo Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilych," and the phenomenological analysis of death in the works of Scheler, Minkowski, Heidegger, Camus, Jaspers and others make substantial contributions to the examination of those issues which are at stake in the logotherapeutic claim of the meaning of death as the completion and rediscovery of the self. The clarification of the relationship between the understanding of death in logotherapy and the philosophical analysis of death, however, also indicates that there are some significant differences between them. There are several metaphysical issues about death that are not decided by the logotherapeutic perspective. Thus the logotherapist ought to be aware of what logotherapy says as well as of what logotherapy leaves unsaid about death. The following considerations call attention to these issues and show their significance for the practice of logotherapy. 
The understanding of death in logotherapy does not analyze, at least directly, the many metaphysical issues that may be raised in connection with the ultimate meaning of death. Why is there death? Why is the human being condemned to the universal death penalty? Is there some form of life beyond death for the individual human being? Does the self survive death in some way? ls death a punishment of the individual or of the human race? Who or what is the author of death, of mortality? ls death simply the final test of human endurance against the odds in living? What is the relationship between the human nostalgia for as well as speculation about immortality and the tragic reality of death? The concern with these issues in logotherapy does not constitute an explicit and adequate response to these 
International Forum for Logotherapy 
fundamentally metaphysical questions. Many insights of logotherapy about death (as analyzed earlier) are indeed compatible with a metaphysical view of death as a passage, a form of transition to a new mode of being. However, this compatibility does not mean that logotherapy is or ought to be committed to a particular metaphysical or religious perspective. 
Frankl's response to the fundamental questions about death aims at showing the art of transforming the existential anxiety of death into a phenomenon of self-understanding and self-creation. Frankl, like Scheler, speaks of the lasting nature of human achievements and of the survival of the "spiritual self." 3 This claim suggests that in some way the human self is trans-mortal, that it survives bodily death. The exact meaning of this claim and its epistemological as well as metaphysical status requires additional examination and clarification. 
Logotherapy integrates death into life and shows the significance of the awareness of death for the quality of life on this side of death. This affirmation of the meaningfulness, of the meaning-generating function of death, however, does not give a specific content to the ultimate meaning of death. Frankl's reflections on the nature of time and thus on mortality are not aimed at deciding the question about the possibility of human life outside the horizon of temporality; they analyze the reality of "meaning at all" under the horizon of death as the expression of temporality. To give one specific content to the ultimate meaning of death (e.g. wage of sin, will of God, fact of nature) requires a philosophical commitment to a specific metaphysics, theology, or at least to a system of ideology. Logotherapy is not a substitute for any one of these systems of thought. 
Logotherapy regards death as an existential fact; it analyzes the given realities and potentialities of life. What is the cause of death, of human mortality? Why is there death at all? What. is the ultimate wisdom that declared the universal death penalty? Logotherapy neither can nor wants to give the answer to these ultimate questions. These issues ultimately belong to the domain of metaphysical speculation and theological interpretation. Even these attempts to understand them do not resolve the mystery of death. Logotherapy shows how to live with the help of human wisdom in facing the existential fact of death and other tragic situations of the human condition. 
THE TASK OF THE LOGOTHERAPIST 
The practitioner of logotherapy encounters the question of death in the diversity of existential and personal situations of those individuals who seek professional help. The main task of the logotherapeutic relationship is to help the individual person step out of the denial attitude towards death and 
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acknowledge the existential reality and potential meaningfulness of human finiteness. What conclusions follow from the logotherapeutic view of death for the practice of logotherapy? The following guidelines for dealing with the question of death represent a response to this question. 
The practitioner of logotherapy ought to be aware of the many dimensions of the human concern with death. The logotherapist should be able to see and thus make clear distinctions between the biological, the logotherapeutic, the metaphysical, the religious, and the ideological interpretations of human death. These distinctions are indispensable guides for understanding the patients and for helping them in their search for meaning. 
The logotherapeutic relationship should strive for a dialectical and balanced interaction between the roles of questioning (doubting) and the roles of commitment (decision) in the search for the meaning of death. This interaction substantially contributes to the basic attitudes of intellectual honesty and openness toward the definitions of the content of the ultimate meaning of death. 
The logotherapeutic endeavor needs to recognize the role of religious faith as a teacher (historical) of the striving for wisdom regarding the ultimate questions about life and death. Logotherapy is a secular way of dealing with clinical problems. However, the spiritual and religious resources of the patient do have at least a psychogenic function in the therapeutic relationship.' The logotherapist thus can function as a healer and a comforter at the same time. 
The logotherapeutic relationship should always keep in mind that the discovery of unconditional meaningfulness is conditioned by the depth of insights and the courage of the will, both of which are in short supply in contemporary society. To recognize the meaning of death requires nothing less than to affirm the meaning of the life of the individual person against the reality of death as such. The attitudes of skepticism and despair will be transcended only by the indefatigable reaching out for wisdom and for meaningful hope. 
The logotherapist should never try to impose a particular meaning, rather he ought to encourage the patient to search for one. This principle of the practice logotherapy ought not to be forgotten in dealing with the questions of death and dying. The healing attention shall be possible and real only if the logotherapist knows how to temper (and live with ) his own anxiety about his own death by some measure of peacefulness regarding his own mortality. 
GEORGE KOVACS, Ph.D., is professor of philosophy, Florida International University, Miami. 
International Forum for Logotherapy 
REFERENCES 
I. Frankl, Viktor E. Psycholherapy and Exislentialism. New York, Simon and Schuster/ Touchstone, 1967, p. 91. 
2. 
~---· The Doctor and /he Soul. New York, Bantam books, 1971, pp. 27,52. 

3. 
_____ . The Unheard Cry for Meaning. New York, Simon and Schuster/ Touchstone, 1979, pp. 111-113. 


International Forum for Logotherapy Vol. 5, No. 1. Spring/Summer 1982 
Logogeriatrics 
Uwe Boschemeyer 
According to a fable, the Creator granted the human being a life span of 30 years. Upon complaints he took some years from the life spans of the donkey, the dog, and the monkey and added them to the human's. Thus we now live the first 30 years like a human, the next 18 we must slave like a donkey, the next 12 we lie in a corner growling and toothless like a dog, and if we are granted IO more years we behave foolishly like a monkey. 
This view of the human which sees old age as deterioration is still widely held by people today. An essential reason for this negative view is that we mistake a change in our achievements for a loss of achievement. This mistake can be illustrated in the biological area by the change in our eyesight: in the course of our lives the focus of our sharpest vision moves away from our eye. The normal distance for optimal vision is 30 inches for a IO-year-old and 90 inches for a 30-year-old. In old age this expands into farsightedness. Glasses become necessary not because the sight has deteriorated, but because it has changed. 
In psychology, too, change of achievement is mistaken for loss of achievement. People who are perfectly capable of achievements respond to the negative expectations of their society. Their readiness and capacity for achievement is reduced because achievement no longer is expected. 
Even when achievement actually is lowered in old age, this loss is not necessarily negative. Although older persons may experience a loss in perception through their senses and the picture of the world becomes pale and incomplete, it also becomes more transparent and concentrated. For example, in the later works of well-known painters one often finds fewer details, but the essentials are expressed more clearly and unequivocably. The eye for details and nonessentials diminishes in the elderly, but they become free in many ways and are able to think along broad lines. Old age gains new values which are therapeutically promising. 
THE VALUES OF OLD AGE 
Every age has its ups and downs, though not every up has only positive values, nor does every down have only negative ones. The positive and the negative are interwoven, allowing continuing renewal and transformation. The various phases of development bring change and each phase contains elements of progress with its characteristic values. This is also true of old age. 
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Openness to the new possibilities of old age is enhanced for those who consciously have prepared themselves for the impending changes, who have-inwardly and outwardly-said goodbye to the preceding phase. When proceding from one stage of life to the next it is important to let go. Older people are asked to let go in various areas of their lives-their professions, partners, families, living quarters, and health. Many of the elderly do not experience the letting go as a bitter "must" but instead discover it as the happy capacity of being able to let go. What once was desirable has turned out to be irrelevant and much that seemed indispensable has found its proper place in the hierarchy of values. Experience has shown them that a loss does not necessarily mean impoverishment. To the extent that they are able to let go they gain a new freedom. The elderly face an important task and opportunity: to fuse the changed and the new possibilities into a meaningful process, to mold their freedom according to their own abilities. 
Some capacities are present in all phases of life but can be made available best in old age. Older people can perceive, in retrospect, correlations among different events. Experiences fall into their proper places. Past sufferings can find a meaningful interpretation. From such ordering can come wisdom and serenity. 
NEGATIVE ASPECTS 
The positive appraisal of old age must not let us overlook the difficulties which old people face. Increasingly they are confronted by sickness and the thought of death. Thus questions about the meaning of suffering and death become distressingly urgent. It is not always possible to apply to the present life the insights gained from past sufferings; death does not always seem the normal, hence serenely faced, conclusion of life. 
Memories-eminently important for the elderly-often are tarnished by thoughts of past failures. The problem of festering guilt may be extraordinarily burdensome in the face of approaching death. Thus, resignation and despair are the fronts on which old people often have to fight. 
Organic sicknesses of the brain and psychological illness may block the outlook on the aforementioned positive possibilities which old age offers. Here, medical and psychotherapeutic assistance must be called upon to remove those blocks that prevent patients from seeing old age as a phase of life during which it is still worth looking for positive attitudes and facing the challenges of old age. 
Logotherapy is especially suited to be applied as "logogeriatrics," to assist the elderly in overcoming their difficulties. "Conflicts that turn up in 
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later years can be overcome by a therapy along the lines of Frankl's logotherapy which challenges human beings to actualize values and help patients accept and fulfill consciously the demands of their conscience. " 4 
APPLICATIONS 
Creative values can, ordinarily, be actualized through one's profession. The full meaning of one's professional life, however, often becomes apparent only when work no longer is possible, as in times of unemployment or retirement. The complaints of the retired that their life no longer has meaning, is as well-known as the multitude of possible consequences: loss of initiative, apathy, depression, organic deterioration. Retired people feel they no longer have value because they no longer create things of value in a materialistic sense. They feel useless becauseaccording to their society-they have lost their usefulness. Since their time is not filled with professional activities they feel unfulfilled, in an "existential vacuum." Their motivation for living is disturbed. This disturbance may be pathogenetic, but a positive meaning, a positive orientation, can become a path to health. 1 
I should like to outline five general steps in a Socratic dialogue which can prevent the crisis brought on by the ending of a professional career. 
First step: The retired have to be led to accept the fact that their professional life is over and that it has ceased to be an area where they can find meaning. They are encouraged to review their career in a positive light so they can see the value of their work for themselves and society, and to make them aware of their achievements. It is desirable to go beyond a mere historical observation of their past, and to let the retired relive various parts of their career, including the high and low points, by way of thought associations. 
Second step: The retired persons are then helped to see that the value of a human being is not entirely dependent on one's professional activities, that it is unhealthy to identify our career completely with our life task, and that a human being must not be reduced to a means of production. This phase is to make the retired persons aware that their profession was an important but by no means the only area where they can experience meaning. 
Third step: The retired persons are now helped to see that the end of their professional career is an opportunity for realizing possibilities for which during their working life there had not been time. What experiences gained during their active work can now be utilized in organizations, clubs, institutions? After having accepted the fact that their career has ended and having realized the relative value and meaning of professional work, the time has come to link profession and possible related future activities. Here 
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it may be necessary to help the retirees in their search for actual future activities so their aroused will to meaning will not die away. Resignation should not set in again because they lack factual information. 
Fourth step: Sometimes it is not possible to find a link between the lost profession and future activities. Such clients face the question of how they can fill their time with meaning. During their professional career their interest was concentrated on their work, and the question may be raised which of their goals, wishes, and hopes had been neglected because of their work. What creative or experiential values, such as hobbies, education, or art had to be postponed for lack of time? Such unrealized wishes may have emerged already during the first step of the dialogue when the clients, during their thought associations about their past career, may have complained about things not done because of the pressure of work. The therapist may have to stimulate such free associations by encouraging the retirees to recall unfulfilled hopes from their childhood and adolescence. Dreams and fantasies may be used to discover such unfulfilled wishes and ambitions. 
Fifth step: A mere review of the past as possible resource of meanings that still could be realized may not be sufficient. The Socratic dialogue also must elucidate new meaning possibilities which old age, as a new phase of life, can offer. How can their free time and the experiences of a life be put to use? 
LOSS OF PARTNER 
Among the most acute events leading to massive disturbances among the elderly is loss of the partner. The consequences are manifold: independence must be reestablished; the helplessness which had been mitigated by the partner, becomes a continuous source of anxiety; the enforced loneliness causes depressive feelings of isolation. The despair will be acute if the partner had been the primary source of meaning and the survivor has nothing left to value because all other areas of life are considered void of value. 
Logogeriatrics will take the course of the discussions outlined above. The question will have to be raised whether the death of the partner is identical with the death of the relationship. Has not the common life left traces that mean more than mere memories? Is the partner not "alive" in the survivor's habits, expressions, behavior, thought, and choices? The question of continuation of a life without one's partner can be of central importance for a despairing old person. 
Another often neglected approach in counseling the aged focuses on the "sacrifice of survival." This approach is illustrated in Frankl's well-known 
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dialogue with a severely depressed widower who could not get over the loss of his wife. Frankl's question what would have happened if he had died first made the man see that his suffering as the surviving partner was a price he had to pay for having his wife spared the pain of mourning for him. 2 For the first time the widower saw a glimpse of possible meaning behind an apparently meaningless situation, opening him up to further therapy. 
Older persons gain significant comfort in finding the therapist a human being who shares and cares about their difficult situation and becomes a partner in a common search for new meanings. Because the danger exists that the client may become dependent on the therapist, it is important to encourage old people to make and renew contact with others. Here, too, the therapist may have to assist with ideas and suggestions that translate mere understanding and intentions into reality. The will to meaning must be not only aroused but applied to concrete situations. 
INCURABLE DISEASES 
When people face unavoidable suffering, such as an incurable disease, mere therapy is supplemented by "medical ministry."' Here the attempt must be made to help the sufferer bear a situation that fate has imposed and to find an attitude to "say yes to life in spite of everything," to quote one of Frankl's earliest book titles. Clients are motivated to find meaning within the narrow spectrum of possibilities still open to them in their situation. Medical ministry, for Frankl, is not limited to a theological approach but based on logotherapy's view that the human being is an entity of body, psyche, and spirit whose disturbances and sicknesses never concern only one dimension but always the whole human being. 
The therapist who enters this field of problems, may ask whether the attempt to help people face unavoidable suffering is not, from the outset, condemned to failure. Is not life really meaningless when suffering is irreversible? The answer would be yes, if meaning were measured along the alternatives "success or failure" or "pleasure or pain." These alternatives, increasingly prevalent in today's society as a measure of our quality of life, are in Frankl's view secondary to another pair of alternatives which he sees as specifically human: fulfillment or despair. 
A life is fulfilled when a person actualized his or her freedom and responsibility. And this is possible, according to Frankl, even in unavoidable suffering. When suffering persons no longer are able to "create" or "experience," they still can try not to "let themselves go," not to identify with their suffering as Freud demonstrated in the last years of his life when his jaw cancer caused him continuous pain. Human beings have the capacity of self-distancing which enables them to gain a distance from 
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the flood of despair so they bring out the best in themselves and become witness to the human ability to remain human even in situations of helplessness. 
To interpret the meaning of suffering in this way is foreign to the contemporary sense of values. Frankl is aware of this: 
If we project the triumph of the suffering person, his finding meaning in suffering, into the dimension of a success-dominated ethic, he would look absurd. Seen from a view that considers meaning exclusively in terms of success or positive experiences, the triumph of the suffering person, his finding of meaning in spite of massive suffering, looks like foolishness. 2 
Indeed, there are critics who disqualify as absurdity Frankl's praise of this last and perhaps greatest chance to find meaning. They might ask themselves, however, if the utilitarian interpretation of meaning, expressed along the success-failure alternative, does not dehumanize the human, and if a low appraisal of the human potential is not more dangerous than too high an estimation. 
Frankl does not deny that life brings misfortunes where medical ministry fails, but logogeriatrics, through medical ministry, provides therapy for many who would despair without the positive attitude toward their situation which helps them accept suffering that has become unavoidable. 
An example from Frankl's practice illustrates how medical ministry can be helpful. He reports a discussion with an 80-year old woman dying of cancer, which was held as a demonstration before students in Vienna.' 
First step: The therapist steers the discussion toward the positive aspects of Mrs. L's life. She recalls a number of events that made her life worthwhile. 
Second step: To avoid a one-sided euphoric review and to broach the subject of her existential despair the therapist points out that her beautiful experiences cannot be recaptured. 
Third step: Although these experiences cannot be recaptured, neither can they be eradicated. The question of the lasting values in Mrs. L's life becomes the focus of the dialogue. 
Fourth step: Mrs. L recalls again her past sufferings which she understands as God's punishment. Because she herself interprets her suffering in a religious context, the therapist feels it permissible to continue the dialogue in the religious dimension, without assuming the role of a priest. Mrs. L accepts the possibility that her suffering may not have been a punishment but a test, and that she had done her best under the circumstances granted her. As a result of the discussion her depression lifted and she spent her last days in serenity. 
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PARADOXICAL INTENTION 
To work through early-childhood conflicts that have led to neurotic symptoms is difficult with older patients (see Petrilowitsch4). In such cases, short-term treatments with paradoxical intention have proved successful for phobias and obsessive compulsions.3 
As amply demonstrated in the logotherapeutic literature, the method makes use of the specifically human capacities of self-distancing and a sense of humor. Patients are encouraged to "laugh into the face of their fears" and thus find distance between themselves and their phobias. 
If we can convince our patients, through paradixocal intention, that they are able to face the tension of their resistance and to conquer symptoms they had thought invincible; if they enter, so to speak, the lion's den and feel comfortable in it; if they dare face their symptoms armed with nothing but the weapons of self-irony and humor which they initially use only as a momentary intention but which eventually lead to a lasting attitude of facetious composure-then they will realize that their symptoms are manageable and this will open them to a new world view which turns them from determinism to a belief in personal free choice.' 
UWE BOSCHEMEYER, Ph.D., is director of the student pastoral counseling center at the University of Hamburg, Germany. 
REFERENCES 
I. Frankl, Viktor E. Arzt/iche Seelsorge. Wien, Franz Deuticke, 1971, pp. 5ff, 237ff. 
2. 
_____. Theorie und Therapie der Neurosen. Miinchen-Basel, Ernst Reinhardt, 1975, p. 188. 

3. 
Niebauer-Kozdera, E. and K., Kocurek. "Ergebnisse der klinischen Anwendung der Logotherapie" in Handbuch der Neurosenlehre and Psychotherapie III, Miinchen-Berlin, Urban & Schwarzenberg, 1959. 

4. 
Petrilowitsch, N. Probleme der Psychotherapie alternder Menschen. Basel-New York, Karger, 1968, pp. 47, 95. 


International Forum for Logothcrapy Vol. 5, No. I, Spring/Summer !982 
An Example of Improvisation 
Kazimierz Popielski 
A year ago I was asked by the director of a neurological clinic to try a brief but intensive treatment of eight patients. He asked me what methods I would use. I told him that I was a logotherapist, but subscribed to Frankl's statement that a psychotherapist should not belong to one method, but that all methods belonged to the psychotherapist. 
I lived in the clinic for four weeks and saw each patient regularly two or three times a week. I also met them by chance in the clinic and spoke to them privately. During the entire period I never treated them as "patients" but as human beings. After the four weeks all eight showed marked improvement, three could be released after one month from the clinic as "cured," which meant they were able to lead normal lives although they still had remnants of fears and compulsions. However, they were able to live with them, and knew they had the tools to conquer them further. 
I should like to present one case of a 50-year-old man, Mr. W., who for 25 years had suffered from agoraphobia. He had been a worker in a factory, was married, and had two children. At the age of 25, at an open soccer stadium, he had been gripped by a sudden panic, with heavy sweating and trembling. His family doctor had given him sedatives, but his anticipatory anxiety and his actual panic spread more and more to situations of open places, until he never went out of his house, except to go to work. To get to work his son had to take him by car and he took a taxi back. 
During our first session, I used autogenic training to calm him. Then we spoke about his childhood which he had spent on a farm enjoying walks under the blue sky and through the woods with a murmuring creek. Without using complicated words, I spoke about the nature of the human being as seen in logotherapy: that one is never the helpless victim of one's circumstances, one's drives, fears, and compulsions but has the freedom to change, either the circumstances or, at least, the attitudes toward unchangeable circumstances. I pointed out to Mr. W. that he was caught in a vicious cycle of his fears but that he could break out. He had fears but the fears did not have him. They were not part of his essential being and I would help him get rid of them. The clinic would attend to his physical needs, his food, bed, medical needs, but I would attend to his human strivings, as a "carer," perhaps as a friend. 
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Mr. W. had a negative picture of himself and the world. He was afraid to talk to the people in the clinic, afraid to leave his room. When he had to go to the dining room, he crept along the walls of the corridors, concentrating his thoughts on himself and his difficulties. 
I wanted to lead him away from this concentration on himself, to help him break through the wall that separated him from the world. At the second meeting we again spoke of his childhood experience with nature. Yet words were not enough-reliving the past was not enough. He had to experience his connectedness in the present. Outside the window of his room was a well. I led him to the window and pointed at the well. 'Don't speak, just listen,'' I told him. For several minutes we stood, listening to the murmur of the water. He wanted to say something, but I pressed my finger to my lips. It was a hot day, and through the well he experienced something cool, something positive. The well told him, without the use of words: "We are part of nature, and nature is good.'' Toward the end of the session I asked him how he felt. "I feel calm," he answered. "It was a pleasant experience.'' 
The next day I met him by chance in the corridor and asked him casually how he was. "Fine," he said, and smiled. Nothing more was said. 
At the following session we repeated the well experience twice, during a leisurely talk about his former experiences with nature. Then, standing at the window, I drew his attention to the wide open spaces of the sky, the various shades of blue, the trees in the distance, the fields. 
"This is really beautiful," he said. We talked about beauty and calmness, which can be destroyed by too much reflection on one's own problems and symptoms. 
He was ready for the next step: to be motivated to break the vicious cycle of his fears, to shift his imagination away from a concentration on his fears. I said: "I know a path nearby which we can try together. First we walk through a tunnel, then comes a stretch flanked on both sides by large trees whose top branches touch each other. One feels sheltered there. Then we come to a rose garden. Have a look at those roses. They are beautiful." 
He agreed to go with me. While we were walking I kept talking about the dark tunnel, then the cool and shady tree-lined stretch, with the beautiful roses as our goal. He began to walk faster, perhaps to get that adventure behind him. I started to jog and he fell into my pace. "Imagine," I said, "you are the world's best runner and are going to bring the most beautiful rose to your wife." We reached the rose garden. 'I've done it!" he cried, happily. 
The next day again we met by chance in the corridor. No session was planned for that day. "Let's take a walk," I suggested, taking his arm. He began to tremble and sweat. "See that house over there?" I said. "That's our goal for today." To dereflect him I kept talking, quietly, pointing out trees, plants, flowers along the way. Beauty was everywhere. Everything in 
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nature actualizes itself, lives up to its potential, all without a thought. 
He complained about trembling and a dried-out mouth. "The house, our goal for today, is only twenty steps away," I pointed out. "Let's walk there." "I've done it again," he said. "I've walked farther than before because I trust you. That's why I could do it." 
On the way back I pointed to a tree without leaves. "What a difference between all the other trees and this bare tree," I said. We looked at each other, without a word. He understood the difference between life and death, between growth and stagnation. 
During the second week he had improved enough so that his doctor at the clinic thought he could spend the weekend at home. I used the opportunity for a new experience. "You can also take a walk at home, with your wife. Pick a goal, not too distant but also not too near. You can show her the beauty of nature." It was a casual remark, not a task. "It would make us both happy if you could repeat our experience at home." Again we talked about what a human being is essentially and what we as persons can do. 
Upon return he reported that, although he had been free of fears, he had not taken walks. But he had thought a lot about what we had done and discussed. 
The time had come to strengthen the experience of beauty with an experience of friendship. From our talks I sensed that he now had the courage to continue working with me to conquer his own limitations. "Today we'll take a long walk. Take Mr. F. along." Mr. F. was an alcoholic in the clinic with whom Mr. W. had formed a friendship. 
First we walked to the house again, as on previous occasions. I kept talking about various things of natural beauty on the way. We did not run, but walked slowly, often stopping at a flower or a tree. Gradually I began to speak more and more about the blue sky, the _various color shades, the tremendous space of openness, and the beauty of that openness. When we arrived at the house, I said: "Done again!" He (happily): "Yes!" 
I (forcefully): "Let's go on. (Pointing to a hill in the distance): "That's our goal for today!" I kept talking. Mr. F. joined me and eventually so did Mr. W. 
On top of the hill, I exclaimed: "Mr. W.-your victory!" He (looking down onto the town below): "For 25 years I have not seen my own town. How it has grown!" But then: "Look how I tremble and perspire!" I: "Your fear has wrapped itself around you like a big ball of twine, for 25 years! It will take a while to disentangle itself." On the way back we spoke again about the human potentials, and especially his own potentials as he saw them, with regard to his work, his family, his hobbies. 
The coming weekend he was allowed to spend with his family again. This time he came back, reporting excitedly: "I've done it! I walked to town with my wife. Step by step I did it, watching all details on the way, the sky, some 
Kazimierz Popielski 
trees, houses, windows. I went to the market place, for the first time in many years. Then, step by step, to my place of work. I can do it, and I have proven it to myself!'' 
The last two weeks in the clinic he made outings with various other patients. "Sometimes I still tremble," he reported. "The ball of twine has not gotten all loosed up. But now I know it will." 
After his permanent return home he went to work again. One year later he was functioning normally; playing soccer with his boys, participating in family outings, bird watching. 
The chief of the neurological clinic asked me what methods I used, since the case was successfully concluded. I still could say no more than that I had improvised, using the principles of logotherapy as a basis. Although paradoxical intention is the recommended treatment for phobias I felt, after listening to his case history, that some variation of dereflection would work better. For Mr. W., the world did not exist, only his fears did. Yet, he was deeply receptive to the beauty of the world, even the beauty of the open spaces which he feared. He was not the intellectual type and had to be led back to his contacts with the world through experiences in nature. He was letting himself be defeated by his limitations and needed to experience what he, even under these limitations, still could do. His attention was drawn to the positive aspects, to the "ups" rather than the "downs" which seemed to overwhelm him. Consequently, the ups became higher, the downs less deep. He was shown that he had a freedom where he thought he had lost it, and he was shown values (especially beauty, to which he had been receptive throughout his life), not by talking about them, but by experiencing them. He was shown a way out of a seemingly unconquerable trap, step by step, toward goals-a path, a house, a hill, then a weekend at home, a walk with his wife, and finally a normal life with his family. 
When I think back on the "case"-on the rehumanization of Mr. W.-I think the path to health was taken in three steps: From "I" to "We" (via the friend in the clinic, other patients, to his family). 
From "Having" to "Being" (the realization that the fear was something he "had," but what he essentially "was" was the person who had the resources to conquer the fear). 
From "Being" to "Meaning" (a stretching from what he was -a person afraid -to what he was "meant to be" -a person with the freedom to change). 
KAZIMIERZ POPJELSKI, Ph.D. is associate professor ofpsychology at the Institute of Psychology, Catholic University of Lublin, Poland. 
International forum for Logotherapy 
Vol. 5, No. 1, Spring/Summer 1982 
The "Birthmarks" of Paradoxical Intention 
Elisabeth Lukas 
The question sometimes is raised whether the psychotherapeutic technique of paradoxical intention has anything to do with the concepts of logotherapy. In my twelve years of practicing logotherapy I have never doubted that paradoxical intention is a true child of logotherapy, even though it is frequently adopted, under various names, by other schools of psychotherapy. Its logotherapeutic origin, however, can easily be identified. 
Paradoxical intention has characteristic marks-one might call them birthmarks-which reveal its origin and account for its success. Behaviorists use certain paradoxes which produce similar effects in reducing symptoms but they do not possess those "birthmarks" and therefore differ in their effects from those of paradoxical intention. 
It is my hope to make clearly visible the connections between paradoxical intention and the logotherapeutic view of human nature, and thus to eliminate all doubts about the conceptual godparents of this successful method when future practitioners of this psychotherapeutic tool ma_y wonder where it all had its origin. 
CHANGE OF ATTITUDE 
One of the birthmarks of paradoxical intention is the phenomenon of change. Logotherapy might be called a great "quick-change artist" because it succeeds again and again to transpose the meaningless into the meaningful situation or to elicit a value in apparently meaningless events. In accomplishing these changes, logotherapists-as all quick-change artists-know the real connections. Their "tricks," if such are used, are based on a knowledge of human nature-otherwise they would not work. 
Paradoxical intention, however, does not produce "trick changes" in surface behavior which can be easily manipulated, as is often believed. In contrast to other techniques on the psychotherapy market, paradoxical intention brings about a change of inner attitudes, not temporarily but essentially a lasting new attitude toward oneself and one's feelings. 
Paradoxical intention achieves a calmness in the patient, a return to a 
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basic trust that had been lost, a fundamental confidence that things will fall into place even if we humans do not always understand how. Paradoxical intention brings about a humility that has almost religious undertones-the realization of our own shortcomings which are embedded in a universal order of meaning. A woman who can say to herself, "All right, if I have not locked my door, then let it be open, gapingly wide open, so a whole procession of thieves can walk in and rob me blind," such a woman is made to feel the relativity of all possessions and material values. She is gently reminded that we humans are mere specs of dust in the works of the world and of time, and that our presumed treasures are insignificant within an infinite universe. A man who smilingly imagines presenting his boss with a sizeable puddle of sweat or bombarding him with a broadside of stuttering babble is a man who has realized that there is a higher authority than the boss, and that the boss is merely a human being. 
Phobic and obsessive compulsive patients suffer from a distorted perspective which makes details close-by appear frighteningly large and important while more remote goals, being apparently out of reach, seem insignificant and not worth striving for. Such patients are like children watching a street from a high tower, mistaking the crows circling near-by for giant monsters, and the trucks on the street below for toys. The morning toilette becomes a complex ceremony, the bus trip to work becomes a frightening journey, the desk-because of the compulsive orderliness-requires a tremendous amount of time, a sharp word from a co-worker causes a flood of tears-that's the small world of the neurotic. No room for the large outside world which presents a continuous challenge to the human spirit. 
Paradoxical intention puts the details in their proper places. During the morning toilette, those millions of bacteria "sitting all over the skin, must not be splashed with water so they won't get angry as a wet hen." The bus trip provides the time for a little fainting spell to make up for the lost morning sleep. A hurricane is invited to sweep over the desk to send the pencils dancing. And the co-workers with all their remarks can go to hell. 
The profound testimony of these exaggerations is the ridiculousness of wasting precious minutes of our lives on such trifles instead of saving our emotional reactions for important things that remain unattended. Without a change of our inner attitudes, without a shift of our attention from the small to the big, paradoxical intention cannot be accomplished. Therefore, the emphasis of this method is on the word "intention" and not on the technique of the paradox which is used, in many variations, by many psychotherapists. 
An experienced marriage counselor told me that he has kept many couples together by advising them to separate. "People love contradictions," he said. "The grass is always greener on the other side. H he is forced to stay he wants to go across. If he is there he wants to go 
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back." There was some truth in what my colleague said, yet he applied the paradox only as a trick. Once, I too assumed a paradoxical position with a wife who spent hours complaining about her husband. I agreed that her husband indeed must be the '!most cruel, incompetent, unlovable, and evil man in God's creation." She immediately stopped her complaints and suddenly talked about some of his good points. The crucial difference was that she knew my words were not meant seriously, and she was gently admonished by my exaggerations to correct her inner attitude toward her partner, and not to see his minor faults all out of proportion. If I had advised separation, she might have found the idea appealing. A trick may or may not work, but a change of attitudes that will help a person get a perspective is always a gain. 
Logotherapy was by far the first, and for a long time the only, psychotherapy which paid attention to attitudes. The emphasis was so strong that it assured attitudinal values a permanent place in psychotherapy. The handling of attitudes is a focal point in a therapy plan that is to lead the psychologically sick back to normalcy. The attitudinal change from attachment to unimportant details (which characterizes phobics and obsessive compulsives) to a grandiose disregard for the unimportant, thereby opening the door to the meaningful things in life, is a typical logotherapeutic concern which could have originated in no other concept of human nature. 
THE SELF-SELF DIALOGUE 
Another birthmark of paradoxical intention is the dialogue with oneself. The call "know yourself" has been heard in psychotherapy from its inception, and everyone thought all problems would be solved by selfknowledge. The call has become more subdued because self-knowledge turned out to be a slippery concept, and the more contradictory evidence was found in the depth exploration of the psyche, the more the original enthusiasm vanished. 
Meanwhile logotherapy, rather unnoticed, found a better approach to the self: attention was focused on influencing rather than understanding the self. This approach is better because it is active. Its results are more tangible than those produced by interpretations and fantasies to which we fall victim when we explore the unconscious and the subconscious in search for "hidden forces." A meaningful self-to-self dialogue is only possible if we conceive of a dimension of the spirit where the self is in control, and a dimension of the psyche where it is controlled by those hidden forces. This view of the human being is a prerequisite for the discovery of the human capacity for self-distancing and its use as a tool in therapy. Only when logotherapy offered this view did the idea emerge that the self could be used in its own training. 
Elisabeth Lukas 
"Influencing the self" has been enthusiastically received and many books offer advice on how to achieve it, mostly however, without crediting its logotherapeutic origins. One of the best examples come from the founder of logotherapy in the form of paradoxical intention and its self-self dialogue between the spirit and the psyche. "Good morning, grouch," one patient will say to himself when he wakes up in the morning, depressed and in low spirits. "Go ahead and spoil my day. We'll see if you'll succeed! But put a little effort behind it, will you-it's no fun fighting a pushover." "Now finally I have a good reason to get mad," another patient will tell herself after having dropped a cup of coffee. "I always get mad with no good reason, now I can enjoy my anger because it's justified!" Such short dialogues with the self immediately chase away the negative mood which, paradoxically, was intended. 
I have had patients who freed themselves from their fear through an inner dialogue with the fear itself rather than with the feared consequences which is the rule. But some phobias are so vague that their consequences are hidden in a fog of nebulous threats. In such cases the patients can be encouraged to ask themselves: "Where in the world did I leave my fear today? It would be awful if I had lost it somewhere and couldn't find it any more. It's been my steady companion for so long, I'd miss it terribly." These vague, abstract fears are more prevalent today, in an age of daily reports about nuclear and ecological disasters, than they were in the past when neurotics were afraid to blush at the wrong moment or to have sexual failures. 
Therapeutically it is of course easier to get patients to wish to "become as red as a tomato" than to wish for poisoned oceans. All the more important is a paradoxically intended self-to-self dialogue which can counter even vague fears. Without the capacity for self-distancing there is no reasonable basis for a dialogue with one's self-who is to talk to whom if there is no perceptible distance between the noetic and the psychological self of one and the same person? 
The concept of self-distancing legitimizes paradoxical intention as a true child of logotherapy because this method constitutes ninety per cent of a therapeutic dialogue with the self. This legitimacy is not invalidated by the many "illegitimate children"-practices used by other schools which do not admit the paternity for methods strikingly similar to paradoxical intention. 
HUMOR 
A third birthmark that identifies paradoxical intention as a child of logotherapy is humor, the ridiculing of symptoms which is like a psychological volcanic eruption. Only rare patients have a sufficient sense of humor to see through the tragic of their situation and appreciate the comical aspects of the paradoxical formulations. But once they see the ridiculous behind the tragic, they begin to laugh and keep laughing-not 
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only about the nonsensical formulations which they are to repeat but, above all, about the fact that after all those long torturous years of vainly fighting against their fears and compulsions they are able to break the neurotic vicious cycle with a simple trick. (It is, however, neither simple nor a trick). They laugh about themselves, their fears and compulsions, their paradoxical intentions; they laugh themselves healthy. 
"I cannot travel by train," declared a rather plump woman. "I always have to think that I'll open the car door by mistake and fall out." "Why by mistake?" I asked her, paradoxically intending. "Why don't you make up your mind to open it occasionally and fall out a little? There is no better way of reducing than somersaulting along the embankment-you probably don't get enough exercise-falling off the train is your great chance because then you can jump back in again and you'll see how those extra pounds will tumble off you!" The woman laughed, and when she came to our next session she still laughed. "I took a train," she panted, "and every time I looked at the door I had to think of your crazy prescription to reduce, and the fear went away. Such nonsense ...." She couldn't continue because she had to laugh again. Since then she had no more difficulties traveling by train. 
In what conception of human nature does humor have a proper place? From what theory of human nature can it be derived? I know only one-the concept of human nature expounded by logotherapy which recognizes a specifically human dimension oriented not toward pleasure and pain but toward sense (and nonsense). Sense and nonsense are the anchoring points on which humor is fastened like a balancing wire. The aforementioned patient could not have balanced across that wire of humor if she had not seen the deeper sense in my "nonsensical" words-that she would not fall out if she didn't want to fall out. When we laugh 1:1-bout a joke, we laugh not about a nonsensical string of words but about the kernel of sense behind the nonsense in which we perceive a meaning, we "understand" the joke. 
Paradoxical intention must be humorous or it becomes a dangerous autosuggestion. Think of what would have happened if the patient, instead of paradoxically intending, would have made the autosuggestion to let herself fall off the train! By the use of humor, paradoxical intention becomes part of the meaning dimension of the human spirit, and thus draws closest to the source of logotherapy. Humor is not only a birthmark of logotherapy, it is its distinctive feature. Those who can laugh about their symptoms have overcome them. They are carried off, from their sickness and misery, on the wings of their spirit which remains unaffected by the torments of the psyche. 
ELISABETH LUKAS, Ph.D., is head of a counseling center in Munich, Germany. 
International Forum for Logotherapy Vol. 5, No. I, Spring/Summer 1982 
Some Practical Hints About Paradoxical Intention 
Joseph Fabry 
Reports from logotherapists in various parts of the world indicate that the application of paradoxical intention is spreading beyond the clinical fields for which it was originally intended. When Frankl, as a medical student, worked in a neurological clinic in Vienna, several phobic patients showed unexpected improvements, and when-in 1929-Frankl asked them how they had overcome their fears, they said, "Why, I just did what you told me." "What did I tell you?" asked Frankl. And they would say, "Well, don't you remember? You told me to do exactly what I was afraid to do, and you made it sound so funny that I had to laugh." Out of these beginnings Frankl developed paradoxical intentions as a cure for phobics and obsessive compulsives because it fitted so well with his view of human nature as described in the previous article by Lukas. He developed paradoxical intention not as a trick, but as a means of helping patients establish distance between themselves and their symptoms, helping them see that while they have fears and compulsions they are not identical with them. What you have you can lose again, but what is an essential part of you stays with you. From this realization springs a change of attitudes toward the self, toward the symptoms, toward life itself. 
It is useful to know about these early beginnings because it explains, in part, how it is possible for some people to apply paradoxical intention even to themselves after just reading about it in a book. This is possible because paradoxical intention works when the underlying principles are well understood. It cannot be learned as a mere method. 
NONTHERAPEUTIC APPLICATIONS 
This does not mean that paradoxical intention can be applied lightly, without special training. Yet the training must be one of understanding, not manipulation. Persons who use paradoxical intention must understand that they have resources in the dimension of their spirit that can fight the driving 
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forces of their psyche. Everybody gets angry, upset, and depressed. Simple applications of paradoxical intention may help in simple cases where the person is not "sick" and paradoxical intention is not "therapy." A schoolboy let out his anger by breaking pencils and tearing up pads. The school counselor invited him to his office and offered him a pencil to break in half, then in quarters and in eighths. Then he gave the boy several boxes of pencils and asked him to break them all. The boy eagerly broke three or four, then he laughed and said, "But this is ridiculous!" In a flash he saw how ridiculous had been his behavior and, upon remrn to his class, the teacher was amazed at the change. 
My wife and I took care of our three-year old granddaughter Heidi when her sister was born. On the first morning, Heidi sat in front of her mother's closed door and screamed. No talking, no offer to play did any good. "You really scream beautifully," I said. "But I think you can do it a little louder." She gave me a funny look, while she kept screaming, tears rolling down her cheeks. I got the cat's dish and placed it in front of her. 'Let's see if you can fill that dish with your tears. I think you can do it in ten minutes." I took out my watch to time her. Again she looked at me and I thought there was a hint of a smile in her eyes. Yet she kept sobbing and panting. I now suggested a sobbing race, to see who could pant faster. I began to breathe and sob in quick jerks. This acting broke her up. She stopped crying and was ready to listen to a story. 
With depressed persons, caution is necessary. Depressions may originate in the body or the psyche, and some medication or traditional psychotherapy may be needed. But light depressions caused by boredom, inner emptiness, or existential frustration may be lifted by some form of paradoxical intention. ''You cannot let your depressions come and go like an unwanted visitor," one counselor advised a woman who complained about fits of low moods. "Why don't you invite them for a morning visit, say between 9 and 10, but then make the best of it. Sit in a dark closet and really be depressed. Pay full attention to your visitor. Then you can go about your business the rest of the day.'' 
Such "simple" applications of paradoxical intention, by changing the person's attitude, may have some long-range preventive effects. The destructive boy, by seeing the ridiculousness of breaking pencils, may be prevented from further venting his anger on windows and the heads of his classmates. Our little sobbing race may have helped prevent Heidi from becoming a youngster who makes it a habit to get what she wants by whining. The closet-sitter may be kept from sliding into more serious forms of despondency. 
But according to logotherapeutic principles, these exercises in paradoxical intention are only a first step which has to be followed by an orientation toward goals and meanings that pull the persons out of their attacks of rage, upset, or depression. The school boy was encouraged to follow his inclina
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tion and join a handball team and choir. Heidi listened to a story and later was allowed to help watch her baby sister when Mama was busy. The depressed lady joined a women's group lobbying in the state capital for issues she considered important. 
The self-to-self dialogue may even be held between the dimensions of a person's spirit and own body. A psychiatrist who suffered from serious irregularities of heartbeat, tells his heart: "All right, you old ticker, beat as crazily as you like, jump and tumble, do somersaults, I don't care!" Such procedure seems to be in conflict with the logotherapeutic warning not to apply paradoxical intention to people who suffer from actual physical symptoms, such as a heart condition, but only to those who merely fear the imagined consequences of an imagined condition. There are, however, correlations, not fully understood, between body, psyche, and spirit, and at least what Frankl calls "piggyback" symptoms can be relieved by paradoxical intention. Piggyback symptoms are those riding on top of other, physically or psychologically caused symptoms: endogenously depressed patients may be depressed about their depression, or patients with real heart conditions may worsen their condition by observing themselves anxiously to see when the next irregularity will occur. Here, paradoxical intention can at least remove or relieve the additional difficulties, and there are indications that their new positive attitude helps even with the root difficulty. 
FEARS AND OBSESSIONS 
In fears and obsessive compulsions, for which paradoxical intention was primarily developed, the method should be applied only by professionals who have gained a thorough understanding of it, after training and supervision. Ideally, a thorough medical examination should be given before a therapy plan is established that may include medication and psychotherapy. When Frankl originally developed paradoxical intention, he considered it a supplementary method to regular psychotherapy. But through the years it became apparent that in most cases a therapy exploring the root causes of a phobia or compulsion did not help. Because a vicious cycle of fear and anticipatory anxiety had developed a behavior pattern which the patient had to break-and for this, paradoxical intention proved effective, even when the root causes of the trouble remained undiscovered. 
The treatment, especially in severe cases, may have to start with a calming of the patient, by autogenic training, meditation, or medical means. This step is followed by an educational process to provide the patients with a detailed understanding of how and why paradoxical intention works, what is expected of them and what they, in turn, can expect to have happen. They are told some case histories of patients who were cured of similar difficulties and are, at times, brought together with such patients. Again and again they 
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are given the opportunity to ask questions about the method. Only then the humorous formulations are agreed upon in a common efffort of therapist and patient. By the this time a relationship of trust will have been established between the two for their work as partners. It is understood that the responsibility for success lies with the patient-that the patient has it within himself or herself to succeed. The exaggerations must be geared to the patient's mood, sense of humor, and the special circumstances. Care must be taken so that patients do not feel they are being ridiculed, rather they are being helped to ridicule their own symptoms. The formulations are first practiced in safe situations, in the counselor's room, later in the patient's apartment, until they present true intentions for actions and not merely wishful thinking or, worse yet, fearful anticipation. 
FACING THE FEAR 
Now comes the most difficult step: the patients must be motivated to face the feared situation and actually practice paradoxical intention. They must intend to do what they had run away from (in cases of phobias) or intend to accept eagerly what they had fought against (in case of obsessive compulsions). It has been shown that it makes no difference why the patients finally decide to try: some may do it because nothing else had worked, others because they trust their therapist even if they doubt whether it will work. Still others try because they want to prove the therapist wrong. They may fear dire consequences and anxiously want assurance that the therapist will assume responsibility that the feared consequences will not occur. The therapist will assume responsibility that nothing will happen to the patient, but the patient must take the responsiblity to go out and try. In some cases, it is advisable for the therapist to go with the patient into the feared situation, but care must be taken that the patient does not become dependent on the therapist's presence nor give the therapist credit for the success. It is important that the patients take credit for their accomplishment-having used their defiant power of the human spirit to conquer the fear or a compulsion which they thought had held them inexorably in its grip. 
As the numerous examples in the literature show, the formulations are tuned to the specific case and may be modified during the course of application. Once patients have understood the underlying principle, they can adjust their formulations to new situations. They will be instructed to apply their formulations before they enter the feared situation; once they are in the grip of their fear it may be too late. Also, care must be taken to have the newly improvised formulations continue as true intentions and not slip into fearful anticipations. The paradoxical intention must be directed against the consequences of fear-a fainting spell, blushing, fear of being robbed after not having checked that door once more. The therapist may 
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ask the patient: "What is the worst that can happen?" and then direct the formulations against the feared event. As Lukas points out in her article, the formulations sometimes may be directed against the fear itself if the fear is vague, without clear consequences. "Did you bring your fear along or did you leave it outside today?" she may inquire, trying to accomplish a selfdistancing from the fear. Counselor and patient may put on their coats and walk into the street paradoxically looking in every corner for the "lost" fear. The counselor will keep reminding the patient how important it would be to find it again, after having lived with it for so long and having become friends with it. 
As was indicated before, paradoxical intention must not be used when a real danger exists that patients will actually do what they say they will do. A man who suffers from a compulsion to stab himself and for years has stayed away from any pointed instruments, may be led to a drawer full of knives with the prepared formulation "to stab myself with so many knives that I'll look like a porcupine," but such an approach is counterindicated with a man who has true suicidal impulses. The compulsive does not really want to kill himself, he only fears he might. One can point out to him that his very fear will protect him from actually doing what he fears. 
When paradoxical intention was first advanced, two reasons were suggested why it wouldn't work. First, because it is a short-term method that would have no effect on long-standing difficulties. Second, that it would fail because it only dealt with symptoms, and not with causes, and that without dealing with causes the symptoms would recur in other forms. 
After 40 years of use of paradoxical intention it has been shown that both expectations had no justification. Length of treatment has no relationship to the effects. Some fears have been cured after a few meetings, and phobias of 20 years standing were cured within one year. A treatment is considered successful when patients are able to lead a normal life, although they still may have occasional attacks of fears and compulsions. They can live with their fears (as we all do to some extent) and be the masters, and not the slaves, of their fears. 
The second expectation, that symptoms would crop up elsewhere if the causes remain unexplored, has also been proved unfounded. Patients have remained symptom-free for as many as 30 to 40 years. Some have occasionally, usually in times of stress, developed their old and even new symptoms, but they have been able, alone or with a short "booster shot" from the therapist, to find new formulations to deal with their symptoms. 
JOSEPH FARRY is director of the Institute of Logotherapy and editor of the International Forum for Logotherapy. 
International Forum for Logotherapy 
RECOMMENDED READINGS ABOUT PARADOXICAL INTENTION 
Ascher, L. Michael. "Paradoxical Intention: An Experimental Investigation," In Handbook of Behavioral Interventions, A. Goldstein and E.B. Foa, (Eds.) New York, John Wiley, 1980. 
___ and Ralph M. Turner. "Paradoxical Intention: An Experimental Investigation." Behavioral Research and Therapy, 17, p. 408, 1979. 
Frankl, Viktor E. The Doctor and the Soul. New York, Alfred Knopf, 1955. 
___. "Paradoxical Intention: A Logotherapeutic Technique." American Journal of Psychotherapy, 14, p. 520, 1960. ____. The Unheard Cry for Meaning. New York, Simon and Schuster, 1978. Solyom, L., J. Garza-Perez, B.L. Ledwidge, and C. Solyom. "Paradoxical Intention in the 
Treatment of Obsessive Thoughts: A Pilot Study." Comprehensive Psychiatry, 13, p. 291, 1972. 
International Forum for Logotherapy Vol. 5, No. 1, Spring/Summer 1982 
The Belfast Test: A New Psychometric Approach to Logotherapy 
Bruno Giorgi, Jr. 
Possibly the most widely known instrument in the field of "logo-psychometrics" is James Crumbaugh and Leonard Maholik's "Purpose in Life Test," better known as the PIL test. 2 It measures Frankl 's concept of "existential vacuum" and consequently the degree to which a person experiences a sense of meaning and purpose in life. Crumbaugh has also devised a complementary scale (the SONG test) to ''measure the strength of motivation to find life meaning. " 3 German speaking readers will know Elisabeth Lukas' Logo Test8 which attempts to deal experimentally with the same personality dimension as the PIL test. The Logo Test is made up of three parts, one of which, although qualifiable, belongs to the realm of the "projective techniques." Finally Dansart's "Attitudinal Values Scale" (A.V.S.)4 measures "attitudes toward events that are beyond people's control; namely, unavoidable suffering, guilt and death." Each one of Dansart's 60 items is to be rated on a 7-point Likert scale. Robinson and Shaver's review• lists Crumbaugh's PIL test, along with other instruments, under the heading "alienation and anomia." This categorization can be explained by the fact that both "meaninglessness" and "alienation" are related to the particular way in which reality (and particularly social reality) is construed. 1 
The Belfast Test consists of 20 statements to be rated on a 5-point Likert scale. The test attempts to measure the subjects' relative difficulty in finding meaning to circumstances beyond control ("existential frustration") and their difficulties in actualizing "creative values" ("alienation"). 
The word "suffering" is not mentioned but specific instances of suffering are given. Ten are theoretically unavoidable (the odd numbers); the other ten are theoretically malleable (the even numbers) and therefore call for the actualization of creative values through our capacity to transform the world. 6 
In our concept, "existential frustration" is "shortsightedness" in perceiving other than the lost values when faced with events beyond control. "Alienation" is "shortsightedness" in perceiving the human potential to transform reality. This concept corresponds with Berger's concept of "reif
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International.forum for Logotherapy 
ication," here understood as the relative difficulty in actualizing Frankl's creative values. 
A preliminary factor-analytic study carried out in Northern Ireland has shown that the dimensions of attitudinal and creative values are basically uncorrelated. For the purpose of this test, only these two values were considered. We thus recognize two personality factors, or dimensions, as schematically shown in the Figure 1. 
The M (Meaning) dimension refers to the subjects' relative capacity to envisage some kind of achievement or realization vis-a-vis circumstances beyond control. Depending on their reactions to events conveying unavoidable suffering, subjects can score on a continuum ranging from downright skepticism to the absolute conviction of achievement regardless of circumstances. To put it in Frankl's terminology, the "achiever" is able to actualize "attitudinal" values. 
The A (Alienation) dimension refers to the subjects' relative capacity to envisage human potential to transform social reality. Here the continuum ranges from one extreme where the subject interprets social facts as natural things ("externals") to the other extreme where the subject interprets social facts as essentially malleable ("internals"). The internals are characterized as being able to actualize creative values in the sense of capacity to transform the world. 
The Belfast Test takes into account some methodological difficulties, in particular the control of the social-desirability variable. As frequently reported, subjects tend to describe themselves in favorable, socially desirable terms in order to achieve the approval of others. Elsewhere we interpret that feature as "bad faith, " as in the Sartrian sense.1 
This fact was noticed by Crumbaugh in connection with his PIL test when he discouraged users from applying his test in situations "which tend to arouse the trait of social desirability." The Belfast Test is usually applied in conjunction with either Edward's or Crowne and Marlow's scales of social desirability. In addition it was worded so that neither alternative seems particularly ''virtuous.'' 
The Belfast Test Project we are currently conducting at the New University of Ulster deals with the interrelationships between the mentioned variables "existential frustration" (defined as the relative incapacity to actualize "attitudinal values"; "alienation" (defined as the relative incapacity to actualize "creative values"); and "religiousness" in the broadest sense. We would like to draw attention to some issues in connection with the latter variable. 
A) It may not be appealing to some religious people that "religiousness" sometimes is correlated with what we have called alienation. This reaction does not stand up to closer examination. For one thing, everything depends on what is meant by "religiousness" and by "alienation." On the other hand, no experimental approach to "religiousness" can fully encompass 
Bruno Giorgi, Jr. 
M-DIMENSION Achiever A-DIMENSION
4 
External Internal 3 2 
Skeptical 
Figure 1. A Typology Based on Frankl's Concepts 
what is implied by such a concept. Logo-psychometrics is only a humble attempt to make operable otherwise admittedly abstract and complex constructs, i.e. it is only an approximation. However, on theoretical grounds " ...meaning is available to each and every person-regardless of sex or age, 1.Q. or educational background, environment or character structure, or last but not least-whether or not he is religious, and if he is, the denomination to which he may belong." 5 
B) It could be said that we are allotting undue importance to Frankl's "creative values." However, virtually in all of his works Frankl has stressed that the actualization of attitudinal values is only applicable in situations of unavoidable suffering. Any other attitude might be seen as masochism or reactionarism. 
Our Belfast Test, we hope, will fill a vacuum in the literature relating to psychometric approaches to Frankl's concepts. Rather than a reinterpretation, the theoretical framework of the Belfast Test implies a restatement of Frankl's orthodox viewpoint. 
BRUNO GIORGI, Jr. is currently reading a British doctorate at the New University of Ulster. He is a member of the Spanish Psychological Society. 
REFERENCES 
I. Berger, Peter. The Social Reality of Religion. London, Penguin Books, 1967. 
2. 
Crumbaugh, James and Leonard Maholik. "Manual of Instructions for the Purpose in Life Test." Indiana, Psychometric Affiliates, 1969. · 

3. 
______ ."Manual of Instructions for the Seeking of Noetic Goals Test." Indiana, Psychometric Affiliates, 1977. 

4. 
Dansart, Bernard. Development of a Scale to Measure Attitudinal Values as Defined by Viktor Frankl. Dissertation, Northern Illinois University, 1974. 

5. 
Frankl, Viktor. The Unheard Cry for Meaning. New York, Simon and Schuster, 1978. 

6. 
Giorgi, Bruno. "A Cross Cultural Study in the Psychology of Religion. British Psychological Society, Northern Ireland Branch, Annual Conference, Rosapenna, 1981. 

7. 
_____ . "A Cross Cultural Psychology of Religion." Bulletin of the British Psychological Society, 1981. 

8. 
Lukas, Elisabeth. "Zur Validierung der Logotherapie" in Frankl, Der Wille zum Sinn. Bern-Stuttgard-Wien, Hans Huber, 1972. 

9. 
Robinson, John and Phillip Shaver. Measures of Social Psychological Attitlldes. Michigan, Institute for Social Research, 1973. 


International Forum jor Logotherapy 
BELFAST TEST* 
For each of the following 20 statements, circle the number that would be most nearly true for you. Note that the numbers always extend from one extreme feeling to its opposite kind of feeling. "Neutral" implies no judgement either way; try to use this rating as little as possible. 
(I) Having a deformed child: 
2  3  4  5  
would be largely irrelevant to my achieving what I regard as the important things in life.  (Neutral)  would largely prevent me from achieving the most important things in life.  
(2) Poverty:  
5  4  3  2  

could be erradicated by would remain among us
(Neutral)human efforts. even if every person decided to eradicate its causes. 
(3) The death of the person I love most: 
2 3 4 5 
would, by and large, be (Neutral) would, by and large, unimportant to my impede me from achieving achieving my utmost goals my utmost goals and and ambitions in life. ambitions in life. 
(4) The problem of unemployment: 
2 3 4 5 
will continue irrespective (Neutral) is likely to disappear if of human efforts to the every person decided to contrary. eliminate its causes. 
(5) Being unable to get a job: 
5 4 3 2 
would, on the whole, stop (Neutral) would be ultimately me from achieving my insignificant to my utmost goals and aims in achieving my utmost goals life. and aims in life. 
• The Belfast Test is copyrighted and must not be used without the permission of its author. A Spanish translation is also available. Contact Bruno Giorgi, Jr., Psychology Department, University of Ulster, Coleraine, Co. Londonderry, Northern Ireland. 
Bruno Giorgi, Jr. 
(6) The unequal distribution of wealth in this country:  
2  3  4  5  
will persist in spite of human efforts to the contrary.  (Neutral)  is likely to disappear if every person decided to eliminate its causes.  
(7) Contracting an incurable disease:  
5  4  3  2  
would, on the whole, make me unfit to achieve my foremost aims and ambitions in life.  (Neutral)  would, on the whole, be irrelevant to my achieving my foremost aims and ambitions in life.  
(8) Social conflicts such as war and other kinds of violence:  
2  3  4  5  
would remain among us even if every person decided to eradicate its causes.  (Neutral)  could be wiped out by human efforts.  
(9) Becoming severely handicapped:  
2  3  4  5  
would be largely unimportant to my achieving my foremost aims and targets in life.  (Neutral)  would largely render impossible my achieving my foremost aims and targets in life.  
(10) Discrimination (racial, or otherwise):  
5  4  3  2  
could be eliminated by human efforts.  (Neutral)  would remain among us even if every person decided to eradicate its causes.  
(1 I) Having to live in the utmost poverty:  
2  3  4  5  
would, by and large, be irrelevant to my achieving what I regard as the important things in life.  (Neutral)  would, by and large, prevent me from achieving what I regard as the important things in life.  

International Forum for Logotherapy 
(12) Horrific sexual offences such as rape: 
2  3  4  
would persist even if every person decided to eradicate its causes.  (Neutral)  
(13) A mental handicap:  
2  3  4  
would be largely unimportant to my achieving my foremost ambitions and targets in life.  (Neutral)  
(14) Crimes such as theft or burglary:  
5  4  3  2  
would be wiped out if every person decided to eradicate its causes.  (Neutral)  
(15) Losing all my property:  
5  4  3  2  
would, on the whole, stop me from achieving my utmost goals and targets.  (Neutral)  
(16) The problem of terrorism:  
2  3  4  
would persist even if every person decides to eradicate the causes.  (Neutral)  
(17) Losing my eyesight:  
5  4  3  2  
would, by and large, make me unfit to achieve my utmost goals and aims in life.  (Neutral)  

5 
could be erradicated by human efforts. 
5 
would largely impede me from achieving my foremost ambitions and targets in life. 
will continue regardless of human efforts to the contrary. 
would be ultimately insignificant to my achieving my utmost goals and targets in life. 
5 
could be erased by human efforts. 
would, by and large, be irrelevant to my achieving my utmost goals and aims in life. 
Bruno Giorgi, Jr. 
(18) Marital problems such as unfaithfulness: 
5 4 3 
are likely to disappear if (Neutral) every person decided to eradicate their causes. 
(19) Failing to find a person to love: 
5 4 3 
would jeopardize my (Neutral) achieving my utmost goals and ambitions in life. 
(20) Corruption (political or otherwise): 
2  3  
would continue even if each person decided to eliminate its causes.  (Neutral)  

2  
will remain regardless of human efforts to the contrary.  
2  would be largely irrelevant to my achieving my utmost goals and ambitions in life.  
4  5 could be eliminated by human efforts.  

International Forum for Logotherapy 
Vol. 5, No. I, Spring/Summer 1982 
Case Studies with Juvenile Delinquents 
Lou is S. Barber 
The value of logotherapy for rehabilitation lies in its basic assumptions that the human dimension enables us to reach out beyond ourselves and make aspirations and ideals part of our reality; that we primarily seek not pleasure but life tasks, and that the deepest pleasure comes from accomplishing these tasks; that we are free to make choices about our activities, experiences, and attitudes, and that our freedom allows us to change ourselves-to decide not only what kind of person we are but what kind of person we will become. Each individual is seen as unique, and when we lose our sense of uniqueness we are less likely to be aware of our will to meaning. Our uniqueness can be used to make choices which, to be meaningful, must carry responsibility-to ourselves, to others, to causes, to the requirement of the moment. 
An experiment using logotherapy in Twin Pines High School was conducted in two studies. The school's purpose is to provide meaningful educational experiences for boys, ages 15 to 18, incarcerated at Twin Pines Ranch, a Riverside (California) County Probation Department facility. Each boy is committed to Twin Pines Ranch by order of a superior court judge. 
GOALS OF TWIN PINES 
Twin Pines aims at the rehabilitation of adjudicated delinquent boys and their return to society as both meaning-oriented individuals and fully functioning adults. Specifically, the objectives are: 
To help the student acquire the academic skills necessary to function at grade level or beyond, as determined by standardized tests. 
To build trust and respect for all members of the treatment environment. 
To provide the student with the opportunity to assume responsibility for his rehabilitation and his life. 
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Louis S. Barber 
To assist him in learning to accept fair rules and regulations, distinguish between fair and unfair rules, and develop alternative methods for dealing with differing social situations. 
To build his self-confidence and acceptance of others. 
To provide a meaningful educational program for each student 
based upon his unique personality and ability. 
To make school a pleasant and rewarding experience without 
threat of failure or punishment, geared to the student's ability and 
designed for his success. 
To make academic competition a personal goal within the indi
vidual rather than turn students against one another by external 
control. 
To enable the student to attend both high school and vocational 
classes and see the relationship between education and future 
vocational goals. 
To develop the student's creative values, his attitudinal values 
concerning self-control and self-improvement, and acceptable 
social values dealing with peers, adults, and authorities. 
To teach basic academic skills and independent thinking so that 
the student can solve problems by himself. 
To assist him in becoming a fully functioning person and build 
his self-concept so that he may realize his own work and that of 
others. 
I conducted two studies which provide information on how meaningful rehabilitation was undertaken. One study' investigated changes in self-concept during incarceration; the other explored changes in students' attitudes toward a "will to meaning" measured by The Purpose in Life Test. 2 
The first study showed that the Twin Pines rehabilitation program altered the self-concepts of the subjects in a positive direction at or beyond the .01 level of significance for fifteen of the sixteen measures tested and at the .05 level for the sixteenth measure; it also showed that the program tended to produce a more normal population than was the condition of the population before treatment. The study concluded that the program was highly effective for therapeutic rehabilitation; that a therapeutic environment, eclectic and pragmatic in nature, based upon the client's decision to take control of his behavior and responsibility for his choices, significantly altered his self-concept; and that it offered a meaningful, realistic rehabilitative program for those who had been judged as delinquents in need of rehabilitation. 
International Forum for Logotherapy 
The second study indicated that Twin Pines, as an example of a logotherapeutic environment influenced the will to meaning of incarcerated boys in a positive direction. A group of 15 students, Anglo-White, MexicanAmerican, and Black, were given the Purpose-in-Life Test. Their initial test scores were from 58 to 109, with a mean of 86.13-well within the range showing a lack of clear meaning and purpose. Six months later their scores had climbed from 93 to 124, with a mean of 103.46. Although only three students scored above the 112 level indicating definite purpose and meaning, all of them had progressed significantly toward that goal. 
THREE CASE HISTORIES 
The following three case studies illustrate the effect of the Twin Pines program in kindling the individual's will to meaning. Each study reflects one of Frankl's valuing areas-attitudinal, experiential, and creative. 
Case Study Reflecting Attitudinal Values 
Norman: Socio-ethnic background: Black lower class 
Father: Absent from the home 
Mother: A long-time welfare recipient 
Place in family: Eighth of 16 children 
I.Q. (CTMM): 78 
School file. Anti-social behavior. Frequently truant, many fights. Several suspensions and finally expulsion because of leading an attack of black students on a white school-bus driver. Full file of negative reports from teachers. 
Probation report. Norman has been unable to make any adequate adjustment to his school or community. He is beyond the control of his mother. After the unprovoked attack on the bus driver and Norman's expulsion from school, the school district filed a complaint with the Riverside County Sheriff's Department which led to Norman's arrest and placement at Twin Pines. 
Twin Pines Narrative. Norman entered Twin Pines High School with a low reading test score. He was placed in a diagnostic classroom. First objective: to change a student's negative self-image, and thereby effect a change in his feelings toward others. He is highly defensive and easily provoked. Appears to have good athletic ability although he was never allowed to participate in high school athletics because of his poor academic grades and low marks in citizenship. Shows interest in masonry and has been assigned to masonry as a vocational choice. 
During the first few months at Twin Pines, Norman was a constant problem for both probation and academic school staff. He did well, however, in masonry where he seemed to have natural ability. During the summer Norman continued to function below normal standards but was not removed from the program and was realistically praised for his vocational skill. 
In the fall Norman joined the football team and did well enough in his academic studies to be allowed into an exploratory science program based more on field experiences than on the classroom work. In football Norman showed his natural ability to lead others and play a role as a team member. However, in his first football game he 
Louis S. Barber 
was expelled for unsportsmanlike conduct-having kicked an opposing player and cussed out the referee for calling him on the play. Nevertheless, he was not removed from the team. Norman's head coach was a black, a former high-school all-American football player. Later in the season Norman was made defensive co-captain with responsibility for coordinating the defensive team. These two factors (in the principal's opinion) were responsible for changing Norman's image of himself and his role as a member of society: he was able to identify with a member of his own race who exemplified the highest qualities of citizenship and was given responsibility for others as well as himself. 
During the baseball season Norman played regularly on the first team, alternating as an outfielder with another boy. During an early game Norman missed a fly ball which resulted in a decisive run being scored. Later in the game he was replaced by the other boy. Norman, with tears streaming down his cheeks, related to the school principal that he didn't mind being taken out of the game, but he hated letting the team down. He played the entire season and was selected by his teammates as the most inspirational player. Norman later commented that it was the white boys on the team who had voted him the honor. 
At his own request, Norman remained at Twin Pines four additional months to complete his high-school education. He lettered in three sports, became a good student of masonry, and raised his reading skills above the seventh-grade level. 
Follow-up study. Upon release he received additional help from the Riverside County Office of Economic Opportunity and began training at a local junior college. Some months later, after he was taken off probation, he withdrew from the college; he had received a "D" in one of his academic subjects and was suspended from the football team. He has had no further contact with the law for any known violation, but his whereabouts at this time are unknown to the Riverside County Probation Department. 
Case Reflecting Experiental Values 
Mike: Socio-ethnic background: Anglo-Saxon, middle class 
Parents: Mother and father divorced 
Place in family: Second of three children 
I.Q. (CTMM): 93.5 
School file. Emotionally immature and upset by parents' separation. Physically small, always trying to be the "big man." Constantly causing problems in class by talking without permission. 
Probation report. Mike has created numerous problems in his neighborhood and at school. He has been reported several times for being a voyeur (peeping Tom), and vandalizing his neighbors. Mike ran away from his home last June. The deputy probation officer recommended Twin Pines Ranch for placement after a psychological report showed Mike's feeling of hostility toward his parents and school and a deep-seated dislike for himself due to feelings of inferiority caused by his physical size. 
Twin Pines narrative. Mike was placed in the regular school program and in masonry as a trade area. His masonry instructor was concerned because Mike's size might pose physical difficulties for him. However, although weighing only 114 pounds, he could handle a wheelbarrow full of cement weighing 80 pounds or more as well as any of the other boys. During the first months Mike was frequently involved in minor incidents because of his "daredevil" behavior. His school progress was good, as he found that in his academic work he was not competing with anyone. 
International Forum for Logotherapy 
During the winter he transferred from masonry to agriculture where he was able to take advantage of a natural interest in science. During that winter Twin Pines was flooded. The bridge from the main campus to the agricultural area was washed out. The stream, which was twenty to thirty feet wide and from eight to ten feet deep, was impossible to ford. Mike, either because of his daredevil nature or concern for the hundred head of cattle without food on the other side of the stream, climbed a tree which hung over the stream, tied a rope to the limb and swung "Tarzan-style" to the other bank. He stayed with the animals all of that day and night and part of the next day. 
From this experience on, Mike continued to grow in his concept of self-worth and his ability to handle most of his personal problems. He requested permission to remain at Twin Pines in order to complete his high school education. He left Twin Pines a high-school graduate. His I.Q. score had increased almost 19 points, to 112. 
Follow-up study. Mike enlisted in the United States Army and was serving as a paratrooper with an airborne division. He has of this date had no further violations. 
Case Study Reflecting Creating Values 
Henry: Socio-ethnic background: Mexican-born 
Place in family: Second of 13 
Father deserted family; mother ill 
Family on welfare 
I.Q. (CTMM): 94 
Schoo/file. Dislikes school, has no goals. Is a chronic discipline problem. Has been suspended several times for fighting. Is highly belligerent. Irregular attendance. 
Probation report. Henry has committed a variety of unlawful acts: a series of minor offenses including petty theft and shoplifting; one known incident of grand theft (auto) and one known burglary. The recommendation to place Henry at Twin Pines is based upon several incidents which indicate that he is beyond the control of his mother and developing a life style of increasing criminal behavior. 
Twin Pines narrative. After Henry was tested with a general aptitude battery, he began working in the welding shop. This activity provided him with a creative value that showed him the meaning potential of his life. In-his high-school experience, no meaningful relationship had ever developed with the school's staff. No attempt had been made to show him a way out of his dilemma. Most important, no method had been provided for him to learn a trade that would enable him to make a living. 
In the welding shop Henry worked with an instructor who had been a professional welder. In Henry's welding program he attended four periods a day in vocational class work and one period of vocational theory. Because of his ability, Henry was increasingly called upon to repair and build needed equipment and parts, none of which was to fulfill a project, but which was necessary for the functioning of the working ranch program. He helped and supervised the creation of I-beams to support the roof of an auto-shop building, and also created an A-frame which lifted all the I-beams, exceeding more than 2,000 pounds. The A-frame is attached to the bed of a large truck and is still in operation today. 
Some of Henry's academic class work was coordinated with his vocational interests, but many subjects were not. He completed all state requirements for high-school graduation. 
In his vocational program Henry received the Twin Pines outstanding student vocational award for his work as a welder. He was made foreman of his welding shop. With help from the school vocational coordinator, Henry began working in a welding shop in Riverside. 
Louis S. Barber 
Follow-up study. Henry is working as a welder in Los Angeles, is married and has a child. He has had no further contact with law enforcement since his release from Twin Pines. 
Logotherapy has much to offer the rehabilitation planner at a time when the need for therapeutic rehabilitation centers in the United States is urgent. A significant correlation exists between the self-concept of the individual and his value structure, and the key to successful rehabilitation often lies in changing the offender's selfconcept and his process of valuing. Logotherapy's attitudinal, creative, and experimental value categories provide a logical foundation upon which to build a meaningful rehabilitation program. 
LOUIS S. BARBER is assistant superintendent of Public Instruction and Director ofSpecial Education for the California Department ofEducation. 
REFERENCES 
I. Barber, Louis S. Changes in Self-Concept Among Delinquent Boys in a Therapeutic Community. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. United States International University, 1972. 
2. Crumbaugh, James C. and Leonard T. Maholick. Purpose in Life Test. Munster, Indiana, Psychometric Affiliates, 1959. 
International Forum for Logotherapy Vol. 5, No. I, Spring/Summer 1982 
Meaning in Family Therapy 
James E. Lantz 
Family therapists view the total family group as the client. 3 They assume that dysfunctional family interaction may trigger and maintain symptoms with an individual member and that the best way to reduce such symptoms is to help the family as a group to change patterns of family interaction. 3 Family therapists often use treatment techniques similar to dereflection and paradoxical intention, but do not place much emphasis on the importance of meaning within the family group and family life. An awareness of the importance of meaning, however, can be helpful to family therapists and their clients. 
MEANING AND FAMILY INTERACTION 
My experience has shown me that meaning and family interaction have a close reciprocal relationship. Awareness of meaning within the family can stimulate healthy interaction which, in turn, can stimulate increased awareness of meanings to be found within the family. On the other hand, a lack of awareness about meanings within the family can stimulate dysfunctional interaction which, in turn, can further cloud the members' awareness of family meanings. 
Logotherapy can help the family find meaning in their existence together as a group. This process can be facilitated in three ways: by using paradoxical intention and dereflection to help family members control symptoms; by using the Socratic Dialogue to stimulate members to search for meaning within the family; and by helping members find meaning within the family through an experiential change in family interaction during treatment. Some examples follow. 
An epileptic husband was fearful that he would have a seizure when he was "arguing" with his wife. Both partners avoided conflict with each other in an attempt to "control the seizures." This inhibited the couple's ability to negotiate problems. The husband and wife were instructed to "argue anyway" and the husband was instructed to try to have a seizure whenever he felt the "argument" might get out of hand. The seizures decreased dramatically. 
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James E. Lantz 
In the Smith family, Mrs. Smith and her daughter were overinvolved with each other, while Mrs. Smith and her husband had developed an underinvolved marriage. The daughter reacted to her overinvolved relationship with the mother by developing anoretic symptoms. These symptoms made Mrs. Smith increase her focus upon her daughter which caused the daughter to become even less hungry. The family therapist helped Mr. and Mrs. Smith increase contact with each other and structured most of the interaction during family treatment sessions between husband and wife. As a result, dereflection occurred in the overinvolved mother-daughter dyad. The daughter's appetite returned. 
The Socratic Dialogue is useful in family therapy because it can make family members become more conscious of their own family-meaning orientation. I often ask the family members to bring to the session a family photo album. Family members are asked to tell the therapist something about the photographs that seems important to him or her. I then pose questions in such a way that will help the members become more aware of their family meanings which have not been revealed to either himself or other family members. 
MEANING THROUGH EXPERIENTIAL CHANGE 
A primary goal in family logotherapy is to help the members change dysfunctional patterns of family interaction and to develop a sense that every moment of the interaction provides each member with the opportunity to discover what Frankl2 calls the "unique meaning of the individual situation." A second goal is to help all family members develop skills in discovering such unique family interactional meanings experientially during the family therapy interview. 
The Socratic Dialogue can achieve results, but sometimes provocative comments by the therapist are useful to stimulate a change in family interaction and to help each member discover unique meanings as they occur in family interaction. Some examples: 
Therapists to a withdrawn husband: If you really want your wife to listen to you, I suggest you hold her hand, look her in the eye and tell her what's on your mind. Therapist to an angry wife: You say you want to be closer to your husband. Why not try to speak softer and hug him more often. He might respond to that. 
Provocative comments are only useful when they are provided by the therapist from a position of caring, concern, and respect. Provocative comments can be destructive when they are used to express the therapist's hostility or to treat the family as an object to be manipulated. Provocative 
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comments should not be used to give the family a "formula" for finding family meanings. They are more helpful when they stimulate and encourage the members to find their own meaning in the family. 
ADVANTAGESOFLOGOTHERAPYINFAMILYTREATMENT 
Logotherapeutic concepts may well be necessary for the survival of the human race. 1 Their use in family treatment may have two major advantages over individual logotherapy especially when viewed from the context of human survival. First, by helping family groups find meaning in their existence together as a family we may well start a multiplying effect that can be transmitted from generation to generation. A second possible advantage has to do with the nature of family interaction. Family interaction is reciprocal.3 As a few members begin to discover meanings within the family, other members will be stimulated to do the same. 
A society of individuals who have found meaning within families who relate to each other in a meaningful way may well be the best guarantee against self-destruction of a world dominated by a will to power and pleasure rather than meaning. 
JAMES E. LANTZ, Ph.D., ACSW is a clinical social worker at Harding Hospital in Worthington, Ohio and a consulting clinical instructor at the Family Therapy Institute of Cincinnati. 
REFERENCES 
I. Fabry, Joseph, "The Frontiers of Logotherapy." The International Forum for Logotherapy, 1981, 4:1, 3-11. 
2. 
Frankl, Viktor. The Will to Meaning. New York, New American Library, 1969. 

3. 
Lantz, James. Family and Marital Therapy. New York, Appleton Century Crofts, 1978. 


International Forum for Logotherapy Vol. 5, No. I, Spring/Smr.mer 1982 
Counseling the Aged 
Robert C. Leslie 
Logotherapy can make an important contribution to old people by shifting the emphasis from "old" to "people." The body may deteriorate, the psyche may suffer in our youth-oriented culture, but the spirit (noos) remains intact. Just as it cannot get sick, so it cannot get old. Every person, up to the final hour, retains his or her uniqueness, the capacity to make choices, and a will to meaning. The full human being remains, even though earning capacity, eyesight, hearing, or strength may be impaired. 
OPENING NEW FIELDS OF MEANING 
Many aged persons feel that life has ceased to have meaning because meaning no longer is available in the area where it had been dominant: the retired person has lost the meaning of regular work, the aged mother the meaning of bringing up children, the surviving spouse the meaning derived from marriage. It is the task of the logotherapist counseling the aged to help. them realize that meaning potentials beckon in many other areas not closed to them, and, indeed, offer new unexplored opportunities. 
In our culture personal identity is so tied up with vocation that a person's sense of meaning is related to his job. If in retirement the opportunity of pursuing a vocation is no longer available, it is easy for a person to lose his sense of meaning. The retired person needs to learn to define his values and goals. It may be necessary for the logotherapist to reorient old people away from a focus on success that has dominated their mature life toward meaning in a wider area than they had found in their career. Many were considered, and considered themselves, machines for the making and spending of money; and now that the machine is out of order and beyond repair, and success is not possible, life seems empty. The logotherapist may have to make his clients see that life may be empty of success, but never of meaning. The meanings of the moment have shifted to new areas: the old person has now the opportunity to correct old follies, deepen compassion, free himself from competitiveness, and learn-not to prepare for a career but for the sake of learning. 
The logotherapist can help his client see old age as a time not of stagnation but of potential inner growth. Ideally, the therapist can prepare his client for old age long before the magic 65th birthday; better still, the 
Reprinted from Logotherapy in Action, with the permission of the author. 0/9/-3379/8211300-0047$02. 75 47 © 1982 Human Sciences Press 
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person, using the principles of logotherapy, can prepare himself. A good time to start a hobby in preparation for retirement, it is said, is in junior high school. 
Hobbies, however, hold meaning for the elderly only in rare cases. There is nothing wrong in collecting stamps, playing cards, or sewing dolls. Retirement is certainly the time when a person can indulge in all sorts of activities he was unable to do because of the pressure of routine, and the logotherapist can even help such a person rediscover hobbies long abandoned. But the old person needs to be reminded that this goal is not to keep busy but to find meaning; he now has the opportunity to find meaning in areas he may have neglected, including intellectual pursuits, creativity, human relationships, and devotion to causes. Rather than trivialize his existence with an overemphasis on hobbies and games, the retired person can now use his accumulated wisdom and experience for what he considers important. He has to learn to use leisure not primarily for entertainment and recreation, as he did during his working years, but for life-filling, meaningful pursuits. The aged person may have to be helped to shift his search for meaning from activities to experiences. In retirement, he is more likely to find meaning in people than in things. This switch may be difficult to make. Although the working person finds meanings also in his relationships with his co-workers, the emphasis is on the product, the activity, even his mere physical presence at a certain place at a certain time. In finding meaning in human relationships (experiential values), he does not enter a new field but the emphasis changes: to take a child to a circus, to visit a sick friend, to talk to a neighbor were previously incidental relationships; now they hold the promise of becoming the center of meaning. 
Such a switch requires a new goal orientation, a transcendence of personal interests, and an awareness of uniqueness-all tools found in the tool shed of the spirit. The logotherapist redirects the client's orientation from success to meaning; he demonstrates that self-transcendence-helping others-is a source of satisfaction; and he motivates his client to discover his unique qualities that make such help possible. His uniqueness may lie in skills he has learned, in insights he has accumulated, in the time at his disposal which, far from being a liability, may be used as an asset. Most important is the example he can give to others who are also retired. No one can help a retired person overcome boredom and self-pity better than a retired person who leads a full life. 
In my counseling I have found the aged receptive to the idea that they can learn to be more effective in human relationships. Many visit ailing friends. With little training, old people can learn new skills that will make their visits more than social calls. I urge visitors to stay in the areas of the friend's concern. If the friend says, "Things are not going well," it is more helpful to let him talk than to say, ''Things will be better tomorrow,'' or to change the subject. I warn the visitor against trying to solve the friend's problem 
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for him. I encourage the visitor to help his friend clarify his own thinking with the expectation that he can find his own solutions. When people are talking about problems, they are not asking for answers. Giving them advice only starts the "yes but" game. "I've tried it but. ... " The excuses are many: too old, too expensive, no transportation. 
THE ELEMENT OF CHOICE 
Sympathetic listening, however, does not mean inactive listening to endlessly repeated complaints. The biggest contribution the logotherapist can make to persons in restricted situations-convalescent hospitals, homes for the aged-is to draw their attention to the choices they still have. Such persons are inclined to be critical of their situation, the food, the care. I tell the visitors that they themselves have a choice: to listen to the recital of the same grievances, or to apply logotherapy. After listening for a while, they can say, "Yes, I know there are lots of problems in your living here and we have talked about them. I was glad to hear what they are, but I'd be interested in what you are doing with them, how you respond to them." I don't know any better approach to help patients than to dereflect their attention from their grievances and at the same time to make them aware that there is something they can do. The visitor cannot provide solutions but he can help his friend feel optimistic about his own capacity to better his situation. The visitor can express confidence based on real experiences of his friend, remind him of past achievements and of his successful handling of difficult situations, and then throw his influence on the side of his friend's constructive handling of his present life. "I know what you have done," he can tell his friend, "I know you can find a way if you put your mind to it, and I'll be interested to know how it comes out." 
The visitor can help his friend list alternatives but needs to resist the temptation to make the choices for him. He gently leads his friend to see the one choice no one can take away from him under any circumstances: the choice of changing his attitudes in situations when the facts no longer can be changed-the facts of deteriorating eyesight or the death of a friend. In teaching the aged how to get a clear perception of another person's situation, the logotherapist not only helps the patient who is being visited but also helps the visitors to find meaning. I have seen an old person find meaning in his newly discovered skill in human relationships which prompted him to visit not only his friends but strangers to whom he was referred by organizations such as the Retired Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP). 
Some old people no longer can find meaning in their activities and find it in human relationships; others go the opposite direction-from relationships to activities. Examples are women whose childen have grown up, divorcees, and widows. These women have spent most of their adult lives in 
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fulfilling relationships with their nuclear families. When the nucleus breaks up, life as they knew it collapses. A woman in this situation often realizes on her own what a logotherapist would lead her to see: that meaning for her may now lie in activities-she goes back to college, seeks a new career, or takes on voluntary work. 
To help the aged find their own uniqueness as an antidote to their feeling of uselessness, the logotherapist may have to fight the stereotypes that society, and indeed the aged themselves, have accepted: that they are helpless, have a poor memory, always complain, and live in the past. Nobody needs to accept the label of a stereotype; he has his own strong points and shortcomings. Some shortcomings must be accepted, others can be disregarded, and some even turned into assets. One 77-year-old woman was on the verge of suicide because she saw herself as a burden to her family. She had been given to understand that her stories about the past were tiring, and she had crawled into her shell. But the counselor found that her grandchildren were interested in knowing something about their own roots. So grandma, the only living link with the past, was made the "family historian." She wrote the family history, and her oldest grandson made a cassette tape on which she voiced incidents of her early childhood. She became so interested in the life of her parents that she went to the attic and looked up old diaries, letters, and souvenirs, and eventually took a trip from California to Rhode Island to find out more about her ancestry from church records and tombstones. When she found among their ancestors soldiers of fortune, gold diggers, and even a pirate who had been executed, the grandchildren urged her to find out more. The last eight years of her life were filled with her ''research,'' and she died in the midst of planning a trip to Scotland to follow a lead about another branch of the family. 
USE OF GROUPS 
It is useful to suggest to the aged to think back over the past and note down the moments that gave them their greatest satisfaction. When they talk about these moments, the thought naturally comes up: How can some of that satisfaction they once felt be recovered and continued in the present? 
Such inventory-taking is profitably done in groups. The memories of one participant trigger similar experiences in others. The participant, in the presence of others who can respond to what he said, will extend his recollecting a bit further. The group leader keeps the accent on the positive values-the successful choices and even the disappointments from which meaning emerged only in hindsight. The tendency to feel sorry for themselves because the past is over can be overcome by the thought of "the full granaries of the past wherein [a person] has salvaged once and for all his deeds and his joys and also his sufferings. Nothing can be done, and nothing can be done away with" (MS, p. 191). 
Robert C. Leslie 
To elicit meaning in the aged, the group allows its members to share their experiences. Sharing promotes their feeling that they are not useless things on shelves or people who have nothing to contribute and must be entertained. Entertainment, in the form offered in many homes for the aged-bingo games, child-like birthday parties, or lectures by experts-is helpful, but the greatest gain comes in groups where the old people are their own experts. The most succesful groups are those where the participants can capitalize on the group itself. 
Every person is the most qualified expert in one field: his own life. As a chaplain in mental hospitals and as a group leader in churches I have set up study groups in which the material presented-a Bible story, a poem, a news event-was a means for encouraging participants to relate their own experiences. The purpose was not to pour in a lot of information but to elicit responses to the stimulus of the material. From the story of Jesus's visit to Mary and Martha, for instance, came associations of times when companionship was wanted, when a person was tired from giving out all the time and wanted to take in, when he was exhausted from routine work and needed a quieting atmosphere surrounded by loving people. The participants need to realize that what is expected of them is not an understanding of a book but a sharing of whatever is stirred up in their memory. In teaching pastoral counseling I try to impress on the students that their primary job is not to bring information but to create a climate in which sharing can take place. 
In sharing groups, especially those for the aged, the group is primarily not a means but an end. Friendships are formed, self-knowledge gained, a more positive self-image established. These are ends in themselves even if the group was established to accomplish a specific purpose. One group in an old-age home was formed in response to a hospital request for bed slippers. Few slippers were ever delivered, but the group went on meeting in response to the desire for companionship. 
Sometimes, however, a group enhances a sense of identity that encourages participants to move on to outside activities. The Retired Senior Volunteer Program in Berkeley, California, needed helpers in convalescent homes. They found it easier to get volunteers living in retirement housing where they had met as a group in preparation for their work than from among single individuals living alone. Occasionally, the inward and outward purposes blend. A group of ladies, aged 62 to 90, meet every two weeks in the Oakland Jewish Community Center to sew clothing for orphanages. They do little sewing at their meetings but there is much chatter followed by private visiting. Nevertheless, an enormous amount of sewing is being done by the participants at home and, for some of the ladies, this work is a major incentive for living. "They crave the appreciation of the group," the group leader commented. The relationship between the internal benefits from the group experience and the benefits from outside activities resulting from the group has been illustrated by Elizabeth O'Connor. 1 
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Churches and other organizations can also help the aged by including some older members in their working committees. Here the healing effect comes as much from the satisfaction of being one of the group as from being asked as an individual who has something to contribute. 
A group can provide a major motivation for old people to seek meaning. It offers the example of participants who have overcome obstacles that are still bothering others in the group, it promotes supportive friendships, and it presents a meaningful activity through the group itself. The group helps participants to shift their attention from feeling old to feeling as human beings who incidentally happen to be getting on in years. One participant reported an experience he had in Vermont when he visited a 103-year-old woman who operated an apple orchard. The visitor admired her apples, and she offered to pick some for him. When he protested, she said, "I'll get the boy to pick a few.'' The ''boy'' turned out to be her 97-year-old nephew. By her attitudes, the woman was a logotherapist without knowing it. 
ROBERT C. LESLIE is professor ofpastoral psychology and counseling at the Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley. 
REFERENCE 
1. O'Connor, Elizabeth. Journey Inward, Journey Outward. New York, Harper, 1969. 
International Forum for Logotherapy Vol. 5, No. I, Spring/Summer 1982 
Report from U-OneSouth-N ine 
Frank E. Wood 
U-One-South-Nine was my cell in Florida State Prison (FSP), Florida's maximum-security prison for men unfit to socialize even with the general population of the other institutions. The electric chair is housed there. The whole prison consists of separate one-man cells, and most men never leave them. 
I was a three-time loser, eligible for the Habitual Criminal Statute (a sentence of 50 to 75 years) on my next conviction. In my record I was labeled "sociopath," "recidivist," "incorrigible." I was 39 years old and had spent the past eleven years in various prisons. 
We were permitted five books per week which were delivered to our cell. In one weekly delivery I received Man's Search for Meaning. No reading material was wasted when one was alone, so I read it. When I finished Part I, I found myself crying. Crying wasn't unusual in solitary but these tears were different. Something in me was calling. I had read a message that told me of an inner strength in everyone, even a three-time loser, that enables him to rise above limitations of any kind-limitations of the past, of present circumstances, of the forces of impulses and behavior patterns. The message came through that even an "incorrigible" could change, couid have the courage to make commitments to himself. Life began to take on meaning. This process still continues. 
CHANGE OF ATTITUDES 
I now had a "significant other." I wrote Frankl in Vienna and he answered in nine days. Surely his letter was carefully examined by the censors. He also sent me various articles but, more important, he sent me a pledge of interest and concern. That pledge is alive today. This article is a result of it. 
Because of continuing attitude changes I was moved to a part of the prison with lesser custody. The word was out in the prison grapevine that something "bad" had happened to me. I was no longer violent; no longer took drugs; no longer loan-sharked or robbed the weaker inmates. Most inmates thought I had just gone crazy. 
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In this atmosphere Greg and Bill approached me on the prison yard. What had happened to me? What had changed? What had I found? Bill's and Greg's problems were not unique. Each was young, vulnerable, and being pressured by older inmates to submit to sex. Could I help? Could my "thing" give them the strength to resist? 
This was a unique challenge, even for logotherapy. I loaned Greg and Bill my literature, but almost too late. Two days later Bill was gang-raped and admitted to the hospital, hemorrhaging. Greg and I visited. Bill threw his arms around us, and we all wept together. We discovered that we were very close. I ,believe that logotherapy was proved to us first in the meaning of love and concern for a friend in pain and in trouble. Wasn't this so in Auschwitz? 
As is often the case, we grew in strengh from the meaning of shared tragedy. Others tentatively approached us, and within two months we were twelve-check artists, car thieves, drug peddlers, and one murderer. We met three afternoons a week in our free time on the prison yard. I encouraged the men to write to Frankl and the letters flew frequently between FSP and Vienna. Frankl quotes from these letters in The Unheard Cry for Meaning (pp.42-43). 
We discerned from Frankl's letters and books that logotherapy was really confirmed in Auschwitz when a personal, loving, concerned approach was needed. There was no time for lengthy psychoanalysis. Our method was simple, but evidently pragmatic. We discussed our lives, what had brought us to prison, our present attitudes and needs, and our future wants and goals. We were more confrontive than might be imagined, but each man shared similar experiences with the rest. Here Logo-Florida began-the first such group in Florida, therefore the name. 
Not one of us was a virgin to prison. We had all been incarcerated somewhere before. There must be a message there. One of Frankl's tapes, "Meaninglessness," gave us a clue. Each of us had felt rejected (meaningless) outside of prison. We saw that prison was like the womb-every physical need was provided, and some psychological ones, too. This was dangerously insidious because when we were free and experienced rejection or failure, we caught outselves thinking that we had it better in prison. At least we were not rejected there. My first year of release had always been filled with this longing for security, even if it was that of a "security prison.'' I remembered once thinking that if I were back up there I would be with my old poker pals having a good time. This, we believed, was the real recidivism and the problem we would have to work on. We would have to replace that longing of the body and the psyche for a surface security with a longing of the spirit for meanings and goals. 
We found meaning from sharing and from caring for each other. We set some short-term goals, and strengthened our feelings of meaningfulness 
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through small achievements: not lying for 24 hours, not manipulating for 24 hours, apologizing for a wrong, getting courage through reaching out to others, and finally, accepting others as they are. 
Prison officials looked at this development with suspicion. I was informed we would have to "officialize" or disband. Our sponsor had been chosen, and so we began to meet in chaplain Dale H's office. All we had to do to convert him was have him read Man's Search for Meaning. 
LOGOTHERAPY BY LONG DISTANCE 
Through Frankl, Fabry, and Crumbaugh we received tapes, records, and even a movie featuring Frankl. When he taught, in 1974, at the United States International University in San Diego, he suggested "joining" the group. Chaplain Dale procured a telephone amplifier and it was placed on an empty chair within the group. Frankl called from California and for three meetings he was a participating member, speaking, answering questions, and giving feedback. We called it "logotherapy by long distance." 
During 1974 Frankl also sent cassette tapes made just for us, addressing our special problems and reacting to each man in the group by name. We especially cherished his Christmas tape. It concluded with the words, "Surely you have overestimated me and underestimated yourselves." Each of us had his own Christmas star that year. 
And so we grew together in meaningfulness. We employed our own version of logotherapy, surely nonprofessional, but it worked. We played out various familiar scenes, with new dialogues added between the old and the new self, and between one person and the other group members. When I desire something that can be gotten only by stealing, what inner self-communication must I employ in this dangerous situation? 
We projected ourselves into the time after our release. Suppose I would need $500 which I could get by cashing a false check. How would the group feel about my doing it? How would they feel when I was caught? How would I feel? What inner things would I lose? Could I possibly call a group member, tell him I was in trouble and needed help? Would I really have the courage, the love for the group? What would Frankl do in this situation? 
This "technique" worked amazingly well and we could feel the results, and see them as friends began to change and to find their own personal meanings. 
Each in his own time left the prison and the safety of the group. As each went his way we shared the separation anxiety, and those partings were especially poignant. My time came, too. Greg and Bill and Cleve walked me to the gate. We embraced but no words were spoken. We knew that I carried with me "the light." 
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We remained close through letters, and five of the original group settled in St. Petersburg. Six years have passed. The light burns brighter. All of the original twelve in the Logo-Florida group have maintained contact. Only one returned to prison, and he is now free again. 
I have started a new logogroup. We are 27 strong and the newer ones are staying out of prison through the peer strength of those of us from the original group. We call ourselves "Free Felons"-not "Ex-Felons" because we believe there is no such person as an ex-felon, just as Alcoholics Anonymous believes there is no ex-alcoholic. As the alcoholic is one drink away from a drunk, I am one little bad check away from FSP. 
FRANKE. WOOD lives and works in St. Petersburg, Florida. He was released from prison October 1, 1976 and has never returned. 
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