ABSTRACT
Paul Johnson once ventured to say, “Logotherapy is not a rival therapy against others, but it may well be a challenge to them in its plus factor.” What this plus factor is, however, is revealed by N. Petrilowitsch when he claims that logotherapy, in contrast to all other psychotherapies, remains not on the level of neuroses, rather it goes beyond them into the sphere of specifically human phenomena.2 In fact, psychoanalysis sees in neuroses the result of psychodynamic processes and accordingly attempts to treat neuroses so as to bring new psychodynamic processes into play, that is, transference.3 Grounded in learning theory, behavioral therapy views
neuroses as the product of learning processes or conditioning processes and accordingly tries to influence neuroses by bringing about a kind of unlearning or reconditioning. In contrast, logotherapy enters into the human dimension and in this manner is enabled to incorporate the specifically human phenomena that it encounters there into its techniques. Indeed, we are here dealing with no more and no less than the two fundamental anthropological4 characteristics of human existence: first, selftranscendence,5 and second, the capacity of self-distancing (SelbstDistanzierung)—which distinguish human existence precisely as human.6
