A Unique Approach to Family Counseling

Logotherapy, Crisis, and Youth

Elisabeth Lukas

The young search for meaning most urgently,
because they have found it the least.

Translated by Joseph Fabry
Edited by Charles McLafferty, Jr.

PaperbackAmazon Barnes & NobleHardcoverAmazon Barnes & Noble

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Published2020

Pages148

ISBN9781948523011

ISBN, hardcover9781948523219

SeriesViktor Frankl’s Living Logotherapy, book 2

About this book

Family counseling requires a holistic approach to address complex problems that emerge in families. Elisabeth Lukas has helped hundreds of families using ideas embodied in Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy. In this book, topics include:

Meaningful education
The search for meaning in youth
Self-transcendence in conflict resolution
Self-help and crisis intervention
Meaning-centered family counseling
The meaning of children’s play

“Only with courage can we educate children to courage—including the courage to bear unavoidable blows of fate.”p. 17

From the book

Education to a meaningful life requires education to courage and love. Only with courage can we educate children to courage—including the courage to bear unavoidable blows of fate—and only with love can we educate to love—including love for life.p. 17

Young people are on a continuous search for meaning. This does not mean that adults do not also search for a meaningful life. But most adults have at least partly succeeded; they have had meaningful experiences already and are nourished by what they found. The “full granaries of life’s harvest” are among the joys of old age.
In contrast, young individuals have not had much chance to discover meaning structures. Their existence is full of yet-unlived possibilities. But precisely because they have not discovered many meaning potentials, their search is more urgent. If they want to fulfill innate longings for a meaningful life, they have to start the quest. To start a harvest for their empty granaries they must go out into the fields, rain or shine.p. 30

On Elisabeth Lukas

For Lukas, there is no human being who does not retain a chance to grow, no situation which does not have its spark of meaning.… To elucidate meaning possibilities is the art of Elisabeth Lukas and entirely in the tradition of logotherapy.
Viktor E. Frankl, M.D., Ph.D.

[Dr. Lukas is] a compassionate logotherapist who understands that the personal/spiritual dimension of a given client has to be considered in order to give hope, purpose, and meaning to the windstorms of life.
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, M.D.Author of On Death and Dying

1The Message of Logotherapy to Parents and Teachers1
2Meaningful Education9
3The Meaning of Children’s Play19
4Youth: A Continuous Search for Meaning23
5“Family First”: The Meaning of Love and Family37
6Love and Work in Frankl’s View of Human Nature51
7From a Wrong Idea to the Desert Storm: The Logotherapeutic Approach to Conflict Resolution65
8Meaning-Centered Family Counseling87
9Logotherapeutic Crisis Intervention: A Case History101
10Self-Help and Crisis Intervention107
11Personal Attitudes and the Preservation of Life119

About Elisabeth Lukas

Elisabeth Lukas is one of the leading practitioners of logotherapy in the world. A former student of Viktor Frankl, she is a clinical psychologist and a licensed psychotherapist and supervisor with more than thirty years of professional experience. She has lectured at more than fifty universities and trained an entire generation of logotherapists. She has written fifty-four books, which have been translated into nineteen languages.