Review of O sofrimento de uma vida sem sentido, by Viktor E. Frankl

Abstract

Review of O sofrimento de uma vida sem sentido, by Viktor E. Frankl (São Paulo: É Realizações, 2015, 125 p.). The text presents the reviewed author's twofold training in psychiatry and philosophy, his approach to existential phenomenology through Scheler, Heidegger and Buber, and the constitution of logotherapy as the third Viennese school of psychotherapy, after Freud and Adler. It surveys the notion of existential emptiness as the root of contemporary complaints, the characterization of noogenic neurosis, Frankl's criticism of Freudian homeostasis, of Adler's social determinism and of the reduction to archetypes in Jung, and the techniques of paradoxical intention and of confronting hyper-reflection in anticipatory anxiety and sexual neuroses. It further examines the will to meaning, the meaning of suffering, the place of spirituality and religiosity in clinical practice, and the humanist closing of the book, relating it to contemporary research on spirituality and health.