Jesus and Logotherapy

“Tested in the rigors of concentration camp living, logotherapy offers a philosophy of life and a method of counseling which is more consistent with a basically Christian view of life than any other existing system in the current therapeutic world.”

Beginning with this thesis, Dr. Leslie compares the modern counseling methods of Viktor Frankl, famed Viennese psychiatrist, with Jesus’ own approach to counseling.

The author presents vivid images of the people with whom Jesus dealt and illustrates how their situations and solutions are relevant today. He concerns himself with three basic, underlying the pull of immediate pleasures, ambition for status and prestige, and the evasion of responsibility. Dr. Leslie incorporates many examples from his vast experiences and those of Frank., drawing especially from the years Frankl spent in concentration camps. Depth psychology, with its emphasis on determining past causal factors, is contrasted with “logotherapy.” The latter proclaims the ‘defiant power of the human spirit” to rise above restraints of the past.

This is indeed a book that should cause every reader to look at his own life with questioning comparisons and reappraisals.