ABSTRACT
In conclusion, we must mention logotherapy’s broadest sphere of indication. While logotherapy in its narrow sphere of indication was specific, and in its wider sphere of indication it was nonspecific but nevertheless still therapy, in its widest sphere of indication it is no longer an actual therapy, but is transformed into what we characterize as medical ministry (ärztliche Seelsorge). As such, it is in no way a specialized medical ministry: the surgeon needs it as much as the neurologist and the psychiatrist-the surgeon who has to confront inoperable cases, or cases that are not only operable, but must be operated, such as amputations. Likewise, the orthopedist is also confronted with problems of medical ministry, not in working with people maimed through operations, but with those crippled from birth, with the physically and sensory impaired. The same can be said of the dermatologist working with disfigured patients, or the gynecologist working with infertile women, or the internist treating the incurably ill, or the gerontologist treating infirm persons. In other words, not only specialists, but all doctors must provide medical ministry, whenever they have before them a patient whose destiny confronts them with inescapable suffering. The neurologist, relatively speaking, will be least confronted with this task; we point out as an example that the illness of the central nervous system which makes up the greater part of severe neurological cases, multiple sclerosis, leaves 63.8 percent of the patients suffering from it in euphoria.
