Recent Reflection on Logotherapy: Recently, I have been thinking through the similarities between Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy and a biblical worldview. I am convinced that it is one of the more Gospel-friendly contributions of Modern Psychology in the last 100 years and can be appropriated within Christian ministerial and pedagogical contexts if done with wisdom and discernment. I have just finished writing an article on the topic. Here is an excerpt:
What I have always appreciated and find interesting from a Christian perspective are the three ways that human beings can find meaning according to Frankl. It does not take more than a glance to see how well they align with a biblical worldview: (1) By creating a work or doing a deed, (2) By experiencing something or encountering someone, (c) By the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering. In his own terms, the first is the way of “achievement and accomplishment” (Frankl, 1984, p. 115). This is obvious enough and Frankl says so.
For the second way, Frankl writes that one can find meaning by “experiencing something—such as goodness, truth and beauty—by experiencing nature and culture or, last but not least, by experiencing another human being in his very uniqueness—by loving him” (1984, p. 115). It is here that Frankl discusses love—and sex within the context of love—in more detail. Frankl makes it clear that love is to precede sex. Love enables us to “grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality” and actually be part of “[enabling] the beloved person to actualize these potentialities” (1984, p. 116). Due to the primacy of love as a means of finding meaning, sex is not reduced to an act of pleasure, but rather, it takes on a more noble distinction as an important mode, or “vehicle,” for communicating that “ultimate togetherness which is called love” (Frankl, 1984, p. 116). While Frankl does not specify that marriage between a man and a woman is the context for sex, the view that sex is intended to be a vehicle of love and not a mere means for experiencing pleasure can be easily integrated into a biblical worldview and help provide students with a rich, nuanced, and biblical view of sex as opposed to a moral code simply telling them what to do or not to do.
C.S. Lewis in the Introduction to a Book for Christians: I am currently reading C.S. Lewis’ Reflections on the Psalms. Unlike Mere Christianity, The Problem of Pain, Miracles, and so many other books, this book on Psalms is written for those who have already chosen to follow Christ (like The Screwtape Letters to some degree). In the Introduction, Lewis writes one of my favorite lines that he penned anywhere: “A man can’t be always defending the truth; there must be a time to feed on it.” I find this line to be so powerful, inspiring, and challenging.
BJ Condrey, Ph.D. 