How Logotherapy Can Help You Find Purpose In Life

Medically reviewed by Elizabeth Erban, LMFT, IMH-E
Updated October 8, 2024by Regain Editorial Team

In psychology, there is a field of study called existential therapy. This field focuses on addressing human existence’s inherent challenges and empowering people to handle them confidently. One of those existential challenges is finding meaning in life.

Logotherapy is focused on this challenge. According to its creator, a psychiatrist named Dr. Victor Frankl, finding a purpose in life was the greatest source of strength and motivation for everything else a person might do. Having something to live for can make hardships easier to endure and can even lead to a longer lifespan.

It’s worth exploring why he focused on meaning, how Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy can help you find purpose in life, some techniques, and whether it’s the right treatment method for you.

Origins and principles of logotherapy

Find meaning and discover your purpose in life

Victor Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist who survived the holocaust through multiple concentration camps. This experience was formative of his understanding of how the human mind works and the importance of finding meaning. Viktor Frankl’s purpose in life through the holocaust was to endure.

Furthermore, and a little more controversially, Frankl believed this meant that anyone, no matter how difficult their situation, could find a way to see a positive purpose in their life, even while experiencing the horrors of concentration camps. This led him to guide people into finding inspiring stories about what their life meant even in the face of tragedy. 

Frankl studied the existential theories of psychology extensively. Using this knowledge base and his experiences within a Nazi concentration camp, he defined three philosophical principles as the theoretical core of human existence and the foundation of mental health:

  1. No matter the situation, everyone’s life has meaning and value
  2. The greatest drive for everyone is the desire to find meaning in life
  3. No matter the situation, everyone has the ability to control their attitude in response to the environment

These principles led Frankl to conclude that he should develop an approach that focuses on this primary human drive through existential analysis and helps people develop the tools to achieve it by controlling their own attitudes and perceptions of life.

In his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl also outlined the three basic methods by which people can find/create meaning in their lives, based off his experience.

  1. You can create something or do something for someone.
  2. You can experience something or have an encounter with someone.
  3. You can change your attitude towards life’s inherent challenges.

These options may seem obvious, but they are critical for Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy approach. Your ability to achieve the first and second option can be taken away from you in difficult circumstances. Nothing, however, can deprive you of your ability to change your attitude towards your life. This is why Frankl focused on this idea. It is also a clear reminder of how Logotherapy was born out of truly horrible circumstances.

Who is logotherapy for?

The first thing to understand about logotherapy is that it is not an exclusive method of treatment. The application of logotherapy techniques and principles to other treatment methods is a common practice. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, for example, has been able to apply some of the techniques in logotherapy without sacrificing the objectives of CBT.

With that in mind, logotherapy itself works on a range of issues, including but not limited to

Burnout

It has been observed to help people overcome feeling burnt out at work. By determining that employees felt disengaged because they stopped seeing any value in what they were doing, researchers could reignite people’s passions for their jobs.

Depression

Unsurprisingly, logotherapy can help overcome and/or manage depression. Those struggling with depression can feel isolated and lost. Rediscovering meaning in life can go a long way in ameliorating that pain. Meaning and purpose were core elements of Frankl’s survival in Nazi concentration camps, making it likely that those concepts underpin the drive to overcome adversity.

Marriage issues

When a couple starts to drift apart, a common problem is two people who no longer believe they want the same things out of life. 

Logotherapy can have a reputation for being harsh. Some people take issue with the idea in logotherapy that no one’s situation is so bad that they can’t find a positive purpose in it, as it can come across as unsympathetic. 

How forceful your logotherapy experience is in this regard will depend largely on you and your therapist.

How do logotherapy techniques work?

There are specific techniques and general principles that inform logotherapy work.

The general principles are that progress is made via honest collaboration between the therapist and the patient. Furthermore, as may be clear by now, logotherapy is attentive to the things in life that have meaning and value. Finding, moving towards, and expanding those things/people/activities are a huge part of logotherapy treatment.

In addition to these general guidelines, there are some specific methods that a logotherapist may apply to help adjust someone’s attitude towards their life.

Deflection

If a therapist believes that your problems are based on an excessive focus on oneself, they may use deflection to shift your focus to people/places/things external to you

Paradoxical intention

Sometimes, what’s holding you back is an excessive fear or phobia. A therapist may try to help you overcome this fear by “paradoxically” having you talk about the issue often and even joke about it. Paradoxical intention is intended to make the fear seem more manageable, even laughable.

Socratic method

The philosopher Socrates was known to challenge and teach his students by asking a series of questions that pushed their understanding of ideas. In logotherapy, establishing a Socratic dialogue allows a therapist to help patients find new answers to problems by guiding them. The questions should lead to a place where the patient discovers the answer through what they know and believe rather than handed to them by someone else.

How does logotherapy help you find meaning in life?

Human beings lose sight of their purpose in life for many reasons. Sometimes it’s through one or more major events, like a brush with death or a great personal loss. It can sometimes come about gradually, after a long time spent in a sad living situation until one day you realize you’re just not happy. Whatever the reason, we are all susceptible to losing our way.

By starting with an individual’s power to control how they perceive the world, logotherapy necessarily begins treatment from a place that everyone can understand. From there, logotherapy can help you see that whatever it seems like on the surface, your life has not and cannot lose all meaning. You feel terrible because, deep down, you believe you are in a life without purpose, an existential vacuum.

Logotherapy starts on the inherent value of your life and builds on it collaboratively. By asking questions, challenging your perceptions, defining new goals, and shifting your focus, a counselor can help you find and/or create new sources of meaning.

Get support with online therapy

If you believe that your life has no meaning, or if you feel like you are striving for a purpose on this earth, then logotherapy may be right for you. You must be ready to ask hard questions about your behavior. You need to be open to the idea that the real problem is your attitude towards your situation rather than the situation itself. If you can do these things and work collaboratively with your counselor, you can make great progress.

Understanding how to navigate them and determining how they impact you takes practice, patience, and perception. Professional help from people like the counselors at Regain can go a long way in making your exploration of finding meaning in life much more fruitful.

Online therapy from sources like Regain can be a good option for those seeking therapy. In fact, recent research suggests that online therapy can be just as effective as traditional in-person meetings while remaining more cost-effective and comfortable for patients.

Takeaway

When Victor Frankl gave voice to his idea that having a purpose in life had helped him endure the unimaginable horrors of the holocaust, people listened. Over 50 years later, the strength of his ideas and their power to help others continue to show. While his interactions with patients were, in some cases, slightly questionable, his overall goal and theory were sound.

Logotherapy can be a powerful way to explore your purpose and how to make it real.

Find meaning and discover your purpose in life

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