Date: 10-22-2025
Source: Man’s Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl
I was skimming through Man’s Search for Meaning to extract the highlights from it, when I came across a chapter in which I had highlighted many segments, but I had since forgotten the contents. Viktor Frankl applied a technique in his therapeutic practice called “paradoxical intention”, where he advised his patients to face their fears by actually intending that the fear come true. This intention somehow paradoxically reduced the likelihood that the feared outcome would take place. He suggests that this result is due to the fact that in the human psyche there are certain rules:
- Neurotic fears, through anticipatory anxiety, produce precisely that which the patient fears. “The fear is the mother of the event.”
- In the same way that fear brings to pass what one is afraid of, likewise a forced intention makes impossible what one forcibly wishes. “Hyper-intention” repels the desired outcome.
So, if one acts on a reversal of these rules, by wishing for that which he or she fears, the result will be that the feared thing will not come to pass.
He gives an example:
“A young physician consulted me because of his fear of perspiring. Whenever he expected an outbreak of perspiration, this anticipatory anxiety was enough to precipitate the sweating. In order to cut this circle formation I advised the patient, in the event that sweating should recur, to resolve deliberately to show people how much he could sweat. A week later he returned to report that whenever he met anyone who triggered his anticipatory anxiety, he said to himself, ‘I only sweated out a quart before, but now I’m going to pour at least ten quarts!’ The result was that, after suffering from his phobia for four years, he was able, after a single session, to free himself permanently of it within one week.” - Man’s Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl, pg. 124
And another, remarkable example here:
“A similar case, dealing, however with speaking…was related to me by a colleague in the Laryngological Department of the Vienna Policlinic Hospital. It was the most severe case of stuttering he had come across in his many years of practice. Never in his life, as far as the stutterer could remember, had he been free from his speech trouble, even for a moment, except once. This happened when he was twelve years old and had hooked a ride on a streetcar. When caught by the conductor, he thought that the only way to escape would be to elicit his sympathy, and so he tried to demonstrate that he was just a poor stuttering boy. At that moment, when he tried to stutter, he was unable to do it. Without meaning to, he had practiced paradoxical intention, though not for therapeutic purposes.” - Man’s Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl, pg. 126