Viktor Frankl's Method to Overcome Fear (Paradoxical Intention)

The neurotic who learns to laugh at himself may be on the way to self-management, perhaps to cure. Austrian psychiatrist, philosopher, and author Viktor Frankl spent four years in different concentration camps during the second world war. From the ashes of his horrific experiences during his imprisonment arose a school of psychotherapy called logotherapy. Logotherapy aims to help people find personal meaning in their lives, assuming that meaning is what ultimately keeps us going.

Working as a psychiatrist, Frankl experienced patients who suffered from neuroses (as he described in his book Man’s Search for Meaning). One of his patients was a young physician who feared sweating profusely in the company of other people. But his fear of sweating made him even more fearful, which only made him sweat more. Frankl, then, used a pretty unconventional method that ultimately cured his patient: “paradoxical intention.”

Paradoxical intention is one of the techniques found in logotherapy. Therapists can use paradoxical intention to treat people with anxiety, fear, phobias, and even insomnia. Instead of escaping or minimizing the fear, paradoxical intention encourages us to face it head-on and actually desire and wish for it as a means of conquering it (how strange this may sound). But this reverse psychology that tricks the mind out of its neurosis makes Frankl’s approach interesting and worth examining.

This video explores the ideas behind this technique and how it works. It's not surprising that people tend to avoid situations that evoke fear in them. We generally experience fear as deeply unpleasant, often more so than the situations that produce it. But according to Frankl, this “flight from fear” is “the starting point of any anxiety neurosis.” The very endeavor of avoiding fear ironically strengthens it. As soon as we fear the fear, we tumble down a rabbit hole of never-ending dread.

In the book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, author Mark Manson describes what he called the “feedback loop from hell.” I quote: There’s an insidious quirk to your brain that, if you let it, can drive you absolutely batty. Tell me if this sounds familiar to you: You get anxious about confronting somebody in your life. That anxiety cripples you and you start wondering why you’re so anxious. Now you’re becoming anxious about being anxious. Oh no! Doubly anxious! Now you’re anxious about your anxiety, which is causing more anxiety. Quick, where’s the whiskey? End quote.

Viktor Frankl argued that even though someone who has a phobia tends to “flight from fear,” as in avoiding the situations that usually evoke fear, there’s also an element of “fighting against fear” involved. So, the sufferer tries to remove the fear forcefully. A prevalent example we often see nowadays is social anxiety. When we experience the discomfort of fear (or even a panic attack) when giving a presentation, for example, we likely try to avoid it in the future. We can avoid it by refraining from giving presentations altogether until we die.

But when that isn’t an option, we will have to face fear nevertheless. So, how do we deal with this? First, we try to reason ourselves out of it. If we use common sense, we can intellectually comprehend that most social situations are not life-threatening. There’s generally nothing to fear when giving a presentation unless, perhaps, we’re doing it in front of an audience carrying guns that they’ll use to shoot us when we fail.

But despite our rational understanding, the prospect of these situations still evokes fear. It's a fear that we cannot seem to subdue with sheer effort or thought. Frankl called this “anticipatory anxiety.” When we experience anticipatory anxiety, we fear a specific outcome. In this case, it’s not the situation itself (which is pretty harmless); it’s the uncontrollable, absurd, and, first and foremost, unwanted fear it evokes.

After an employee who fears public speaking hears that she needs to give a presentation in front of her colleagues, she experiences antic...