A Case of Hypnosis in Viktor E. Frankl (2004) On the Theory and Therapy of Mental Disorders: An Introduction to Logotherapy and Existential Analysis.

A Case of Hypnosis in Viktor E. Frankl (2004) On the Theory and Therapy of Mental Disorders: An Introduction to Logotherapy and Existential Analysis.

Brief Comments.¹

Edward S Gardner.

Heaton Hypnosis and Psychotherapy Practice

UK

Email: ipnoetic@gmail.com

One of the significant aspects of the therapeutic practice of Viktor Frankl in his Logotherapy and Existential Analysis was his openness to utilising different therapeutic interventions and modalities which was applicable to the benefit of the patient. As Dubois (2004:xxxii) points out this can be seen in his utilisation of a wide spectrum of modalities such as Autogenic Training as developed by J. H. Schultz in relation to De-reflection, the early use of anti-depressant medication, ECT, Group therapies, the use of Paradoxical Intention as a behavioural intervention,and the use of dream interpretation in relation to neuroses of a psychogenic and noological origin. Here I wish to draw brief attention to a description of the utilisation of hypnosis as refereed to by Frankl.

In Chapter Three of On the Theory and Therapy of Mental Disorders. Frankl addresses psychosomatic medicine. Frankl maintains that the problem of psychosomatic medicine is that it ultimately does not provided a firm enough ground for the explanation of the psychogenic causes if illness. Here Frankl raises the question of 'the old problem of organ suggestion (Organwahl)' which he states is a more general question than that relating to the the problem of symptom suggestion. Frankl then makes reference to the Freudian notion of 'somatic cooperation' and the Adlerian concept of 'Somatic substructure' in relation to Adler's study of organ selection. Frankl points out that Adler spoke of neuroses as having their own 'organ dialect.' Thus, linguistically people will speak in colloquial terms such as 'This is hard to stomach, it is hard to swallow.' We all know of such metaphorical and symbolic expressions which are expressive of our states of health and disease.

Frankl by reference to an experimental use of hypnosis raises some significant point on the relation of metaphor and symbolism and its relevance to the aetiology of psychosomatic illness. Here Frankl (2004:84) is quoted:

'The professional literature contains an unusually instructive experimental contribution by an Italian author that is relevant to our last point. He placed a series of subjects under hypnosis and suggested that they were insignificant employees who worked for a tyrannical boss, and that they could not revolt against him, rather they needed to “just swallow” what he did. He then viewed their stomachs through an X-ray machine and found they had all become aerophagic: they showed a marked increase of air in their stomachs. That is, they not only figuratively, but also literally swallowed something, namely, air. Thus, it is no wonder that real employees who suffer under tyrannical bosses occasionally come to their doctors and complain, for example, about pressure around their heart (caused by diaphragmatic elevation) or similar complaints. In such cases, where the affected organ—in our case, the stomach—“cooperates” in the characteristic sense as the symbolic expression of a neurotic event, we can also speak of a “symbolic cooperation” of the affected organ (as I did in my book, Psychotherapie in der Praxis).

Prescinding from somatic cooperation in general and from symbolic cooperation in the previous special sense just discussed, there is also a “social” cooperation. I am thinking in particular of the “cooperation” of social insurance, the welfare payments that the patient is presented with. For it is not unusual that a neurosis is cultivated or at least fixated with an eye toward income. Just as Freud spoke of “secondary motives for illness” or of “the prize of illness,” so too in connection with what I have described as social cooperation one could speak literally of a financial prize of illness that plays a large role in the aetiology of neuroses, or in general, in psycho genesis.'

The interesting point of this experimental use of hypnosis highlights the role of metaphorical and symbolic suggestion in illness which goes beyond an understanding of the psychogenic origins of illness as simply the transposition of mental events in to somatic ones. Frankl raises the importance of not only the symbolic and metaphorical mediation of mental and somatic states in the experience of illness but also the social significance of the psychological and physical lived experience of complaints of a psychogenic origin.

Keywords: Hypnosis, Viktor Frankl, psychosomatic medicine, psychogenic, organ suggestion, symptom suggestion, Freud, Adler, secondary gains, symbolic cooperation, On the Theory and Therapy of Mental Disorders: An Introduction to Logotherapy and Existential Analysis (2004), Edward S Gardner, Heaton Hypnosis.

1Frankl, E. V. (2004) On the Theory and Therapy of Mental Disorders: An introduction to Logotherapy and Existential Analysis. (Trans. James M. Dubois) New York and Hove: Brunner-Routledge. P, 82.