Three men, three answers to the same question: what, deep down, moves human beings? Early twentieth-century Vienna produced the three schools of psychotherapy that attempted to answer.
Freud: the key to pleasure
Sigmund Freud, with the firmness of a scientist, raises psychoanalysis: we are governed by unconscious forces, instincts and repressed desires. Life is, at its core, the search for satisfaction. Freud offers the key to pleasure.
Adler: the key to power
Alfred Adler counters: what moves man is not pleasure, but power. The human being is a fighting being, always trying to overcome inferiority and dominate his environment. Life is competition, effort, achievement. Adler offers the key to power.
Frankl: the key to meaning
Viktor Frankl enters the scene last, and does not need to raise his voice. Its authority comes from the experience of someone who looked death in the eye: neither pleasure nor power, the true engine of existence is meaning. Man can bear any pain, as long as he knows why. They can steal external freedom, reduce someone to a number, but they cannot steal the ultimate freedom, that of choosing one's own attitude in the face of suffering.
Why doesn't the third answer cancel out the other two
Pleasure can be lost, power can be taken away, but meaning is indestructible because it is born in the spirit, not in circumstances. Frankl is not saying that Freud and Adler were wrong, he is saying that their answer is incomplete: man is not just pleasure, he is not just power, he is, above all, the search for meaning. It is this engine that continues to stand even when everything else falls apart.
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What is the difference between Freud, Adler and Frankl?
Freud (psychoanalysis) argues that man seeks pleasure, driven by unconscious instincts. Adler (individual psychology) argues that man seeks power, in a struggle to overcome inferiority. Frankl (logotherapy) argues that man seeks, above all, meaning.
Do the three schools contradict each other?
Frankl does not deny Freud or Adler, he completes the picture. Man is not just pleasure, he is not just power, he is also, and above all, a search for meaning, an engine that continues to stand even when pleasure and power are taken away from someone.
Continue: In Search of Meaning, by Viktor Frankl · What is Logotherapy · What is Self-Transcendence
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