Logotherapy — Viktor Frankl's meaning-centered psychotherapy developed from his experiences as a Holocaust survivor — proposes that the primary human motivational drive is the will to meaning rather than pleasure (Freud) or power (Adler), and that existential frustration (the failure to find meaning) is the primary cause of the 'noögenic neurosis' of meaninglessness that Frankl identified as distinct from psychogenic neurosis. Logotherapy employs specific techniques including dereflection (redirecting attention from self-preoccupation to the meaning available in the world), paradoxical intention (using humor to reduce avoidance anxiety), and the analysis of specific meaning sources in the individual's life.
Role
Logotherapy is both an existential theoretical framework and a clinical methodology — offering what no other psychological school provides in its direct centrality: the explicit treatment of the loss of meaning as a primary clinical target rather than a symptom or correlate of other conditions. Most contemporary mental health treatment addresses symptoms (depression, anxiety, relationship dysfunction) without examining the underlying meaning architecture that their resolution requires — producing the persistent symptom management without genuine wellbeing improvement that characterizes treatment that is technically successful (symptom reduction) while experientially insufficient (the person is less distressed but no more engaged with life as worth living).