Logotherapy, Psychology and Modern Society

Logotherapy, Psychology and Modern Society

          Logotherapy, the groundbreaking work of psychologist Dr. Viktor Frankl, author of Man’s Search for Meaning, does not fit in with established notions of psychology. Concurrently, establishment psychology supports and advances modern societal trends. The psychological establishment, assuming the bright mantle of settled science wrapped in the glittering cloak of received wisdom, holds the high ground in the culture which marginalize Logotherapy. We shall study Logotherapy and juxtapose its theory with that of its official Freudian opposite while keeping in mind the fact that Viktor Frankl, who survived four years in Nazi concentration camps, achieved a certain credibility that other psychological theorists did not attain.

          In his concentration camp memoir, Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl attributed his unlikely survival in conditions of unimaginable horror to his well-developed intellectual and spiritual life. He observed that by focusing on such external factors as his love for his wife, fleeting observations of natural beauty such as a sunset, and barely perceptible acts of defiance in the face of totalitarian forces, he found meaning to his life and the inner strength to live. Frankl survived while many stronger and younger men who perhaps lacked similar internal resources did not. Frankl’s habit of focusing on meaning outside of himself and beyond his indescribably miserable condition resulted in a greater awareness of his surroundings which helped him to read the character and intentions of those who might kill him at any moment.

          Logotherapy is an applied practical social science, one that helps the patient find solutions to psychological problems with techniques that aid in finding meaning. The patient is able to tackle normal but difficult situations related to suffering, loss, obsessive fear, depression, insomnia, suicidal thoughts, and other conditions that have contributed to neurosis in the patient. Logotherapy is based upon the premise that by perceiving purpose, and by discovering meaning the individual, even those experiencing extreme neurosis or psychosis,   is capable of determining how to cope and, in the process, how to advance the course of their own life and destiny within the bounds of capability and circumstance.

          The obvious reason why the psychological establishment rejects Logotherapy is because Logotherapy can actually lead a patient toward resolving or solving a problem. This, quite frankly, threatens the financial interests of psychotherapy which is, at the end of the day, a cash cow. If the patient figures out how to cure himself, that patient would no longer be inclined to spend a ton of money and waste interminable hours over weeks, months, years, even decades in the therapist chair. Indeed, with Logotherapy, conventional psychotherapy might no longer be a lifestyle, as it is for such cultural luminaries as movie producer Woody Allen. The therapist, practicing Logotherapy, would rather help the patient solve or learn to cope with a real life problem. Having said this, it should be noted that there are many talented and brilliant Freudian oriented psychotherapists who care about and help their patients. This critique is philosophical as opposed to one directed at individual professionals.

          The psychological establishment rejects Logotherapy, however, for reasons that transcend mere pecuniary interests. Indeed, the rejection of Logotherapy has a philosophical component. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl contrasts his concept of a will to meaning with Sigmund Freud’s will to pleasure and Alfred Adler’s will to power. All three men were practicing psychologists around the same time in pre-World War II Vienna where, it has been suggested, they each established three major psychological schools of thought. While Frankl focused on the discovery of meaning as a choice, Freud focused on the centrality of the subconscious mind and Adler focused on the centrality of the individual as the primary source of existence.

          Freud and Adler were both determinists with Freud claiming that the human psyche was

pre-determined by the ultimately unknowable subconscious mind as it was formed in the formative years of infancy and early childhood. Freud was likely influenced in this regard by the work of enlightenment philosopher Emmanuel Kant who viewed reality as devided into two spheres, the conscious or nominal sphere which was not real, and the unconscious or phenomenal sphere which was real but unknowable. Adler’s will to power was likely influenced by the philosophy of Frederich Nietzsche who developed a concept of will to power that he applied to political leaders as well as to societies and nations.

          Freud and Adler both viewed the individual as a reactive animal, responding primarily to external stimuli and to innate genetic biological factors. While Frankl acknowledged these factors as influential on individual development, he nevertheless viewed environment and genetic influence as existing outside the ability of the individual to exercise free will and self-determination based upon individual educational, moral and ethical development. Frankl’s personal experience in the Nazi concentration camps led him to realize the ability of the individual to transcend and overcome extreme external environmental factors. This same concentration camp experience led Frankl to reject the deterministic genetic argument given that he witnessed first-hand the Nazi crack-pot genetic race theories in action and he understood more fully than most the real effects of their consequences.

          Frankl believed that the individual was capable, through self-reflection and self-knowledge, of changing direction of his or her life. He believed that every person had an inner core of dignity. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl offers an example of a Nazi camp doctor, who he described as satanic, but who was later changed into a better person while held in the infamous Soviet Lubianka prison.    

          Freudian psycology emphacizes the pleasure principle, the idea that the purpose of life is to be happy. The work of life, in this context, is to “find yourself” to use the old counter-culture term. Freud may have drawn inspiration from the ancient Greek philosophical schools of epicureanism and sophism which hold that whatever feels good is good and that all of existence is based on the sensate. This belief, along with the widely reported and accepted assumption that Freud was having an adulterous affair with Mina Bernays, his wife’s sister, probably had a lot to do with his obsession with sex. The Oedipus Complex, by which the child desires an incentuous relationship with the parent of the opposite sex, constituted a major role in Freud’s psychological theories.

Freud viewed “polymorpheus pervisity,” sex with anyone, at any time, in any combination, as an ultimate virtue and he viewed opposition to polymorpheus pervisity a0s a form of psychological repression. This view would be advanced by Soviet theoretician Alexandra Kollentai who wrote about winged as opposed to unwinged eros. Winged eros, according to Kollentai, was sex connected to the sacred, or sex connected to love, commitment, or meaning which she viewed as a bourjouis affectation and, as such, a form of false consciousness. Kollentai viewed unwinged eros, which she described as occurring when sex became as common and as devoid of meaning as the act of drinking a glass of water, as a virtue.

Logotherapy is a form of spsychtherapy that recognizes the obvious, that tension is a normal and is often a positive dynamic of life, that tension can be harnessed in positive ways when viewed in the context of meaning. The unnatural goal of Freudian psycology, on the other hand, is equilibrium, a condition by which tension has been eradicated which is impossible. Equalibriam, which is a condition by which there is no tension, can only be achieved when the person is dead.

In the process of finding meaning as a response to the natural conditions associated with tension, the individual is set on a cource of solving a problem. This required the marshalling of all aspects of the human being, physical as well as intellectual. A byproduct of working toward a goal, or a purpose, is a sense of self-esteem which is a byproduct of such advancement. This is likewise the case with a sense of happiness. These factors are thus not a goal, per se, but rather they are a byproduct of experience and achievement.

Viktor Frankl anchored his psychological theory on the importance of a sense of responsibility. The successful sovereign individual finds meaning in life as a result of developing an internal moral and ethical code, one based on reason as well as faith. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl suggests that the Statue of Liberty, situated in New York harbor, be completed by a Statue of Responsibility to be located in Los Angeles. Frankl derived his own moral and ethical code from his study of science, by which he derived principles of reason, and his faith, which he integrated with scientific knowledge.

Thus Psycology today reflects the pleasure principle, whatever feels good is good, and the psycology of politics reflects the Adlerian principle of the will to power. Individuals sacrifice a besic objective understanding of right and wrong in favor of satisfying whatever they precieve as pleasurable at the moment. In the process, they lose their sense of meaning, they forget the past or the future as they live only for the moment, and they ultimately forget who they are.

This is likewise the case with nations that operate on the principle of arbitrary fiat power as opposed to limited representative responsibility which opens the door to a deliberative expression of the national will. Both nations and individuals would be well served to explore the psychological philosophy of Viktor Frankl, a psycology that was forged in the hot irons of Aushwitz.

Bernie Madoff and the Criminal Imagination

Bernie Madoff and the Criminal Imagination

     Investment advisor and financier Bernie Madoff perpetrated what has been described as the biggest fraud in world history, a fraud that cost 4,800 victims an estimated $64.8 billion dollars as of November 30, 2008. (1.) The colossal crimes of Bernie Madoff constitute personal troubles for decieved victims who range from retired widows living on fixed incomes to America’s most respected institutions including Harvard and Tufts Universities. His crimes were social issues due to their damage to the American economy and political system. (2.)  Understanding Bernie Madoff’s crimes and the scope of his deviance from American norms of business conduct and morality involves first an examination of the deviance of Bernie Madoff, the con artist, and then of human and societal tendencies that enabled his crimes.

     Madoff started out as an honest man but along the way he got hooked on the ease by which he could defraud investors and friends and get away with it. A classic element of the personality of the criminal is someone who detects an opportunity to secure an unfair and easy advantage by means of fraud and deception, and then makes the easy and immoral choice to act on that opportunity. The first crime might be minor, or might only skirt the edge of crime, but in the case of Madoff the first crime proved to be the equivalent of a gateway drug. Once he siezed his first opportunity to commot fraud, and obtain the easy financial reward, he entered into a deception. One lie leads to another which inevitably expands into a growing miasma of lies. When crimes are subsequently multiplied, as was the case with Madoff, the criminal enters into  a world of lies and deception of their own making and begins to live a double life of which, over time, it becomes more and more difficult for the perpetrator to disengage from.

     Crimes of the nature committed by Bernie Madoff can affect the criminal like an aphrodisiac, like a growing sexual desire in that there is an element of thrill and, in the case of Madoff, he became a nymphomaniac who needed to feed the thrill with larger doses of stimuli. A major part of the deception, as is often the case with these types of crimes, was that Madoff maintained an ostentacious lifestyle of opulence and excess in order to support the con. He jet-setted with the rich and famous and he spent big money openly and lavishly. At the same time, Madoff maintained a squeaky-clean scandal free image of the family man with a wife who co-authored a kosher cookbook and two college educated sons following in his footsteps as investment advisors. The combination of lavish wealth and conservative respectability set the stage for his attracting big investors who handed over big money into his care. Madoff also made use of noted connections with well-heeled liberal advocacy groups, particularly Jewish groups, as a platform to troll for suckers. 

     The con artist depends on the aspect of human nature that gives the benefit of the doubt and that doesn’t want to think ill of seemingly successful and accomplished people. We tend to glorify success and look the other way or give a pass to flaws in the image. This may have been the case regarding people in the Madoff’s immediate orbit, including his immediate family and his close associates, although this view is complicated by the fact that they benifited financially from his crimes. Were they also consciously corrupt or were they morally compromised by the tendency to turn a blind eye? This is a question for the system of justice to sort out in response to the lawsuits lodged by the victims. Easy access to big money tends to corrupt the reciepient who might choose not to ask too many questions. This creates a functioning buffer around the criminal and the criminal enterprise which is supported by a culture of corruption that can be both explicit and implied.

     A fraud of the magnitude of that perpetrated by Bernie Madoff can work as a metasticizing cancer on the body politic of the United States if the cancer is not identified and treated. Such crimes, if not addressed, pose as a threat to the entire system as evidenced by various smaller, more vulnerable or less experienced nations around the world where corruption has reached a point of critical mass whereby they are controlled by corrupt and criminal oligarchs and syndicates. While the United States, with our independent judiciary and system of justice and our democratic traditions, has been relatively immune to these tendencies, the danger is always there as recently evidenced by corrupt politicians using their offices to enrich themselves by proxy through mechinations in corrupt nations such as Ukraine.

1.  "US Prosecutors updated the size of Madoff's scheme from $50 billion to $64 billion". Reuters. March 11, 2009. Retrieved April 26, 2009.

2. The Sociological Imagination: Chapter 1, The Promise, C. Wright Mills, Oxford University Press, New York, 1959. P. 8.

A Sociological Theory of Trump Derangement

Charles Moscowitz is majoring in Sociology at Bunker Hill Community College

The American people and their organizations and associations traditionally recognize the right to exercise free speech and Americans expect to function in a relatively tolerant mileau, one that protects the open expression of legitimate and rational opinion to a high degree. In this context, political debate between opposing sides might become fierce, degrees of propaganda might be employed and, as such, credulity might become stretched to win the political argument. This is to be expected in a free society where a great deal is at stake, where ideas and opinions matter, where ideas might become law and custom or, conversely, might serve to undo antiquated or erroneous ones. Ideas, once accepted or once rejected on a mass scale, might affect freedom and might influence the philosophy and way of life of society for better or for worse.

     In this context, a public issue emerged in America in 2016 due to the election of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States. I will theorize, utilizing the term “public issue” as it was defined by Sociologist C. Wright Mills, (1.) with an analysis of the causes and the manifestations of what I call Trump Derangement. (2.) My theory requires a brief examination of the personality of Donald Trump, (3.) the public policies that he promotes, and the negative reaction to that personality and those policies by what might euphemistically be referred to as the “eastern seaboard liberal establishment.” I argue that the anti-Trump reaction of the liberal establishment and its constellation of followers, a reaction that is unprecedented in its rage and ferocity, is primarily motivated by a major departure, a significant social shift away from a mileau that has dominated American public institutions, including both major American political parties, for at least the last half century.

     The extreme reaction to President Trump and his movement has, I argue, triggered a general condition of derangement in those who are reacting as such. The term “Trump Derangement” (4.) is not used here to in any way denigrate any person or group but, rather, the term is used here to describe what I contend is a psycho-social reaction. The majority of Americans who opposed President Trump’s policies, or those who dislike Trump as a president or as a person, or those who oppose him for partisan reasons, it should be noted, are not nessasarily part of the Trump derangement phenomena but, rather, their opposition is more likely to be conventional. The tell-tale sign of Trump derangement is a consuming and obsessive hatred that is beyond reason or objectivity. In this context the derangement, which finds its political locus in the hard-core left, becomes an ideology itself, almost an article of religious faith, by which every action by President Trump and, to varying degrees, every problem in society and even in personal life, including bad weather, can be negatively tied to Trump.

      The first cause of what has become a public issue regarding Trump derangement is the fact that Donald Trump, the penultimate outsider, the first businessman elected president of the United States and the first president to have never held public office previously, a man who is an example of an alpha-male that harkens back to a previous era, does not speak and does not communicate in the authoritarian style the establishment and its followers expect. He does not speak in the usual clipped establishmentese, the usual vague British accent, a method which routinely utilizes euphemism, indirection, double-speak, lies, and the deceptive style of sophistic intellectualism. Trump does not usually consult with experts and focus groups to find out who he is and he does not depend upon political handlers to help him decide what to say and how to say it, nor does he constantly read off a tele-prompter. President Trump speaks plainly which, putting aside his occasional lack of veracity, his lack of precision and clarity, his tendency to embellish, comes across as honest to a fault. This factor, as much as any other, drives the establishment into a lather of rage.

     Trump can be crude, he can be cruel and bombastic, and he often has the subtlety of a broken leg. While most politicians send out surrogates to do the dirty work of smearing opponents, Trump will often take the task upon himself. He conducts an end-run around the pundits and the media filters by getting his message directly to his fellow citizens, in his own voice, through his Twitter account. His use of social media has transformed politics in the same way that FDR used radio broadcasts, his “fireside chats,” and JFK used TV to his advantage. (5.) A billionaire businessman, Donald Trump largely spent his own money, and used his own experience and contacts as a media star to get elected which means that he is not beholden to the usual establishment special interests and lobbyists. Trump cannot be easily bought or controlled and his actions cannot be easily predicted. “Draining the swamp,” flies in the face of a liberal establishment in a manner that reminds me, metaphorically, of Guy Fawkes showing up at the Parliament with dynamite.

     President Trump has either ignored or he has attacked nostrums of political correctness that have become accepted as social norms, ones that have come to dominate the high ground of our culture, nostrums that are selectively used as weapons against people or against groups that fail to genuflect to liberalism. Racism, discrimination, white supremacy, these all have been a negative part of the American mileau since the the first colonists arrived on the American shore. Particularly since World War II, racial and ethnic barriers began to melt away at an accelerated rate as racism began to recede. Perhaps it is a testament to the success, albeit imperfect and there still is a long way to go, of the decline of racism that liberals insists on resurrecting the old bugbear by means of what I would argue is the pseudo-science of micro-aggression. (6.) By this means, anyone who fails to bow to the liberal establishment runs the risk of being put under a proverbial microscope and examined for a racist gene. Indeed, the politicizing, the scientizing of racism has turned this genuine and serious social problem into a political football. The politicization of racism serves the dual purpose of obscuring the de-facto racist programs and ideas, emanating from the left, that have wracked havoc on the black family, the black church, education, culture, entrepreneurialism and advancement since the 1960’s. 

     While President Trump challenges microaggressions, which constitute an informal form of tyranny, those afflicted with Trump derangement, many of whom themselves embrace extreme forms of racial, ethnic, gender and sexual identity politics, place his every public utterance under the micro-aggression microscope. By this means, Trump derangement leads to a parcing of his words, usually out of context, and the manufacture of many self-serving scenarios that, in the de-facto sense, could be described as hoaxes. This fallacy of propaganda is destructive to the fabric of American society and the process is cynically utilized by conscious and witting enemies of Trump to divide constituencies and mobilize groups based upon prejudice and shared hatreds. (7.) Examples of this type of propaganda include the false portrayal of Trump as having mocked a disabled person, the claim that Trump supported white supremecists and Nazis at the Charlottesville riots and the claim that Trump supported a “Muslim ban.” Indeed, these destructive articles of propaganda have became articles of faith for the Trump deranged and their unwitting followers. His enemies employ the fallacy of dramatic instance by stringing together manufactured memes to create a critical mass, the necessary atmosphere to support a false argument.

     While the mainstream media has often made normal mistakes in the past and, according to evidence gathered over time, tends to slant coverage in the direction that illustrates a liberal bias and a liberal culture, the level of bias, due to Trump derangement, has crossed into the realm of what Trump has accurately called “fake news.” Indeed, false stories have become routine and are now part of the drum-beat used to delegitimize Trump and his movement. The result is a preceptable drop in journalistic standards and, conversely, a decline in public confidence in the honesty and dependability of the media. While hundreds of examples could be sited of this phenomena, I will confine myself to one example, albeit a minor one in the greater scheme of things, in order to illustrate my contention. 

     In July, 2019, a local African-American politician from Georgia, Erica Thomas, claimed that a man told her to “go back” to her country because she cut in front of him at the check-out counter at the local Walmart. This incident occurred after a massive media event a few days previous by which Trump had criticized a group of congresswoman, known as “the squad.” The angle of the coverage of Trump’s criticism was that it was motivated by the fact that two of the four congresswomen he criticized happened to be African-American. This contention fits neatly into the ongoing narrative that Donald Trump has something against minorities, an article of faith for Trump derangement, a smear that many followers have actually come to believe.  While Trump's comments were crude and needlessly belligerent, as Trump tends to be an equal-opportunity offender, the media reportage sidestepped the substance of his criticism. Besides grabbing the opportunity to promote Trump as racist, this side-step may have been a means to divert attention away from the legitimate issues that Trump raised, issues that were not helpful to the liberal narrative.

     The man accused of a racially charged incident by the Georgia politician at Walmart turned out to be Hispanic and a liberal Democrat and Erica Thomas recanted her accusation when challenged. This recantation by Thomas, and this local story, did not stop the New York Times, the most influential newspaper in America, from publishing a feature story on this incident. (8.) Amazingly, the NYT included the fact that Thomas had recanted her story but, in classic agit-prop style, they saved the recantation for one sentence that is buried near the end of the article. The bombshell NYT report, no-doubt taking valuable space away from real news, was picked up by several mainstream media outlets including Time Magazine, USA Today, Newsweek and the Huffington Post.

     The underlying cause of Trump derangement amongst the more witting members of the liberal establishment involves their real concern over the principles that Trump articulates, principles that caused his election, an election that they conspire to undo. Those principles are captured in a simple slogan that he frequently used which was “America First.” This is the type of slogan that candidates from both political parties have often used disingenuously in order to get elected, mainly because the slogan makes sense. In the case of Trump, the concern amongst the establishment was that he actually means what he said. Trump’s style of communication, as previously noted, is plain and is sincere as opposed to politicians who use slogans for bumper-stickers, as means to manipulate and deceive the public by means of emotion.

     Once the sophistries and the half-truths are stripped away, the sloganeering liberal establishment is not interested in placing the interests of America first but, rather, they support an ideology and an agenda that is globalist, that includes unfettered free trade, that promotes an amalgamation of America into a world community, one that is un-democratic in terms of their support for rule by appointed bureaucrats and judges, and one that views such social institutions as national borders and private property as regressive anachronisms. President Trump, by appealing to the common sense of Americans, has tried to re-negotiate trade agreements so that they favor American industry and labor. He has sought to end American military embroilment in foreign wars by de-escalazation and the insistence that allies pay for their own defence. He has reduced onerous domestic regulation and has worked to secure the national border. The liberal establishment fears that Trump might wake up the giant beast, the American people, to an awareness of the importance of placing the national interest as well as their own personal interests first as a matter of culture and as a matter of policy.

     Thus, enters Trump derangement, the need to demonize President Trump and anyone who dares to support his presidency and his movement. Trump represents a move away from the old regressive socialistic authoritarian past and toward a future where individual rights are honored first and foremost. This is why the opposition to Trump is so fierce and so deranged. It is normal, indeed it is laudable, for citizens to oppose presidents on political and partisan grounds. The opposition to Trump, however, is not normal. It is not normal for me to be told in advance that a family Thanksgiving dinner, held immediately after the election, is to be a “Trump free zone.” It is not normal for College students to go to safe-rooms, after the election, where thay can play with playdough and receive counciling as happened at Tufts University and elsewhere. It is not normal for a president to have to undergo a two-year investigation, one that was supported by a drum-beat of hysterical conspiracy theories from the mainstream media, only to find out at the end of the day that the whole thing was based on a hoax, at best, and possibly seditious activity and an attempted coup at worst.

     Regardless of whether Donald Trump is impeached, which is part of an ongoing process that began his first day in office, or whether he is re-elected in 2020, Trump derangement has already damaged American society. (9.) It has legitimized and normalized a mainstream media that regularly twists the truth in the service of an ideological agenda. It has given a pass to police actions by which a 21 member Swat team, with machine-guns drawn and with the media filming outside, can arrest a harmless old man, Roger Stone, on a minor charge. It has allowed and has  justified innuendo, rumour, and outright lies to become engraned into the public consciousness which has promoted deep devisions that could take generations to overcome. Hopefully, enough Americans will wake up in time to the danger before the derangement further engulfs ever greater and more vulmnerable segments of our society.

1. The Sociological Imagination: Chapter 1, The Promise, C. Wright Mills, Oxford University Press, New York, 1959. P. 8.

2. Ibid: p. 21: Mills: I am hopeful of corse that all my own biases will show, for I think judgements should be explicit….Let those who do not care for mineuse their rejections to thim to make their own as explicit and as acknowledged as I am going to try to make mine!

3. Ibid. p.3 Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both.0

4. Bush Derangement Syndrome: Charles Krauthammer, TownHall, December 5, 2003. Krauthammer: Bush Derangement Syndrome: the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency -- nay -- the very existence of George W. Bush.  

5. The Sociological Imagination. P. 4.

6. The Psuedo-Science of Microaggressions, Althea Nagai, National Association of Scholars, Spring 2017 edition.

7. The Education of Henry Adams, Henry Adams, 1907: Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, had always been the systematic organization of hatreds, and Massachusetts politics had been as harsh as the climate.

8. ‘The Hate Is Real’: Black Georgia Lawmaker Says She Was Berated at Supermarket, Audra Melton, The New York Times, July 21, 2019 p. 1.

9. The Campaign to impeach President Trump has begun, Matea Gold, The Washington Post, January 20, 2017.