Psychology and philosophy in the existential-phenomenological approach: A study on Frankl and Heidegger

Abstract

Martin Heidegger’s philosophical work is decisive to existential-phenomenological psychology’s development. Despite this it has been considered difficult to understand and to apply at the psychological level. This study exemplifies how heideggerian ideas can be of use in psychology by approaching them to Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy. Though Frankl had studied the philosopher’s work, his theory is not primarily based on Heidegger’s Dasein Analytic. In this article, Logotherapy’s key concepts are discussed as a possibility of Heidegger’s analytic psychological understanding. Frankl’s concepts like self-transcendence, meaning of life, values, noodynamics and existential frustration are presented as psychological implications of Heidegger’s existential structures like being-in-the-world, potentiality of being, possibility, and disposition.