A Case of Hypnosis in Viktor E.

Frankl 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.
1 Frankl, 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.

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 organin our case, the stomachcooperates 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,