1. Logotheory as
Philosophical Anthropology,
Phenomenological Philosophy, and
Phenomenological Practice
THE FUTURE OF LOGOTHERAPY
2ND INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON
LOGOTHERAPY AND EXISTENTIAL ANALYSIS
VIENNA, MAY 15-18, 2014
Timo Purjo, PhD, Diplomate in Logotherapy
Accredited member of the International Association of
Logotherapy and Existential Analysis
12. • The psychical awareness
• Psychic = non-objectivized individual fundamental experience of
awareness (Scheler). In this sense psychic is also possible for animals
• In a psychic state the person only undergoes
experiences, basic moods or emotions (aggression, anxiety, fear,
joy, lust, pleasure, sadness, satisfaction, etc.), instinctual needs,
desires, passion, wants, indefinable states, etc.
• but he doesn’t observe them as such as phenomena
phenomenologically, by means of phenomenological analysis)
• A person is in his psychic state completely with his experience, without
being able to distance himself from current occurring in the
awareness. Hence he is in a state of e.g. irritation or anger.Then he
might also act accordingly.
Differencies between the psychic and spiritual
13. The spiritual awareness
• By means of attitude change in awareness the person can bring a recent affect
under examination as a matter-of-fact. One’s own psychic state of awareness
becomes then a fact or object. Hence the function of the spiritual can be called as
factualizing or objectifying.The person in a way distances in his awareness from
being in power of anger to a higher level, where he can evaluate his earlier
experience.This makes it possible for him to reflect afterwards on what happened
in a more objective manner. As a consequence might well be guilt and remorse.
• At the spiritual level, the person can also form a concept of his affects – e.g. anger –
which enables him to recall over and over again in his consciousness the general
essence of this phenomenon – to understand at any time what anger is, without
actually having to live it through by getting angry.
• By means of concepts the person can communicate about his psychic states to
other people intersubjectively
• Conceptualizing and the possibility of managing of generalized information on
phenomena, is according to Scheler the most essential feature of the
spirituality
Differencies between the psychic and spiritual
14. • The spiritual awareness
• Scheler emphasizes the participation of feelings in high-level
spiritual functions. Love and hatred are not psychic emotions, but
spiritual, intentional acts of the person, which Scheler categorizes as
"intentional feelings”. Love, compassion, sympathy etc. humanize
the human being and characterize him as a person. Love enhances
the ability to feel values as beauty, truth, goodness and holiness,
while hatred prevents from experiencing them.
• It is also important to notice, that factualizing doesn’t mean
rationalizing. Objectifying has to correspond to the nature of the
qualities of experiencing. Adequate is that a psychic emotion is
objectified with spiritual feelings.The wholeheartedness of an
attachment doesn’t manifest itself in rationalizing, but in that
spiritual level of feelings, that the person has achieved.
Differencies between the psychic and spiritual
15. The spiritual awareness
• The talk on spiritual growth and education and their goals is obscured by the lack of
precision of the concept of spirituality
• In order to give real content to spiritual being (or existence) some essential functions
of it can be sketched
• Knowing, conceptualizing
• Awareness of values: discovering values and purposes, respecting human worth and worth of
life in general, making decisions based on highest values
• Responsibility for oneself, fellow-men, nature and even for cosmic harmony
• Consciousness and actualization of self-developmental tasks: self-acceptance, enliven one’s
potentials for personal growth, sensitizing of experiencing love, holy and other highest values
• Consciousness of the transcendental dimension of one’s own existence
• Growing to an authentic personality with the goal of self-guidedness in one’s life, criticality to
mass behavior, independent creativity within personal possibilities
• Being socialized: fulfilling ethical principles in one’s life, enhancing the good of others,
constructive civil activism
Differencies between the psychic and spiritual
21. Viktor Frankl’s 10Theses on the Human Person
1. The person is an individual: the person is in-dividable, an oneness (Einheit)
2. The person is not only in-dividable, but also in-summable, a wholeness (Ganzheit);
the person as such can not be reproduced or procreated: only the organic, the
organism is reproduced, created by parental organisms.The person, the personal
spirit, the spiritual existence, can not be passed on by a human being.
3. Every individual Person is an absolute Novum (lat. for “new thing”). By a new
human being, who comes to the world, an absolute Novum is set in existence, to
reality.The spirit proves itself here to be real imponderable (an Imponderabile).
Only the “bricks” or the structure are reproducible.
4. The person is spiritual…
5. The person is existential…
6. The person is liable, responsible for itself…
22. Viktor Frankl’s 10Theses on the Human Person
7. The person is not only an oneness and a wholeness, but he constitutes,
establishes and guarantees a wholeness of lived body, soul (psychic). and
spirituality (leiblichen, seelischen und geistigen, cf. Scheler). A person
depicts a point of intersection, a crossing place of the three levels.These
levels of existence can not be separated clean enough from one another
(cf. Jaspers, N. Hartmann – reference by Frankl). However, the person is
not assembled of lived body, soul, and spirituality as it is a oneness and
wholeness. But within this oneness and wholeness, the spiritual in the
person is grappling with the lived body and the soul (psychic).
8. The person is dynamic. (At this point Frankl speaks about self-
distancing…)