Distinguishing Spiritual Care

Guest post by Rev. Josiah Hoagland, Sr., DMin. Hoagland is a Spiritual Care Coordinator at Essentia Health. He was included in This Is What A Chaplain Looks Like. 

One of the greatest challenges I have experienced as both a full-time hospice chaplain and as a part-time Army Reserve chaplain is distinguishing chaplaincy from other helping disciplines. There are numerous disciplines that intersect with chaplaincy and spiritual care, including social work, therapy, behavioral health, and more.  What unique contribution does chaplaincy provide that differentiates itself from other disciplines? An old friend of spiritual care may provide a fresh lens. Dr. Victor Frankl, the renowned therapist, psychologist, author, and Nazi concentration camp survivor developed a unique therapy: logotherapy.

Frankl’s logotherapy provides a way of spiritual analysis and care for the counselee by examining their meaning for existence. By resurrecting Frankl’s logotherapy chaplaincy can focus on a distinct form of spiritual care that is distinguished from other disciplines.

In his seminal work, Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl discusses humanity’s primary desire in life to explore and pursue meaning.[1] Frankl argues that this will to meaning in life is specific to the individual.[2] Each human has a set of morals and values which push them to find meaning. Regardless of whether someone has a religious or spiritual framework, they operate from a set of morals and values that comprise their worldview. These values become especially apparent when an individual encounters an existential crisis. This existential crisis forces a person to question the meaning of their existence.[3] Logotherapy emphasizes confronting this challenge directly.[4] This is an intricate process, guided by an individual trained in discerning spiritual realities and exploring the individual’s purpose and meaning in life. This kind of meaning-based therapeutic process is ideal for chaplains across all domains and disciplines from the military to healthcare, educational institutions, and beyond.

Defining the Greek word logos includes both “meaning” and “spirit.”[5] This definition gives logotherapy its unique intervention of exploring meaning and existence from a spiritual lens, though not necessarily a strictly religious lens. This kind of spiritual lens is ideal for chaplains due to their training in pluralistic environments and ability to focus on the needs of the individual. Frankl argued that the chief tasks of logotherapy were to care for the spiritual realities in the meaning of the individual’s existence to be fulfilled, and their will to meaning.[6] Put another way, every human being has values in life that are congruent with their ultimate meaning for existence that need to be actualized.

This kind of meaning-based therapy is distinct from other helping disciplines which are more focused on treating emotional wounds, disappointments, and psychosomatic pains. Many other helping professions focus on the symptoms of the existential crisis, while chaplains utilizing logotherapy focus on the purpose of the individual’s existence and what they need to do to actualize their purpose.

This kind of meaning-based therapy is something that many chaplains already do intuitively. Many chaplains provide spiritual care to those they serve by exploring what gives meaning to each individual’s life, what tasks they need to do to live out their purpose, and what the existential crisis reveals about the congruence between what they say they believe and how their behaviors interact with their stated beliefs. This kind of meaning-based spiritual therapy transcends the religious and the non-religious, the spiritual and the non-spiritual. Logotherapy is individualized to the point that two people with seemingly identical spiritual identities will have two distinctly different meanings for existence. This therapy reveals the need for chaplaincy, as simply identifying one’s religious or spiritual beliefs in the intake process does not give other clinicians enough information to adequately treat the need for meaning in the individual. The individual in crisis needs a spiritual guide. They need a chaplain.

How Chaplains Can Use Logotherapy

The challenge in logotherapy is the need for courageous chaplains. As the title of Frankl’s book indicates, meaning is found through searching. Many deeply held beliefs and values lie within the deep recesses of the core of humanity. To pry these out takes courage from both the chaplain and the counselee. This revelation of the inner meaning of a person requires the arousal of tension.[7] In turn, this tension requires chaplains to ask poignant questions that cut through to the central locus of a person’s life. Doing so can be an uncomfortable process. Chaplains must acquire this critical skill of being able to sit with discomfort. They must be self-aware, other-aware, and spiritually aware. Chaplains must be able to challenge the counselee by noticing discontinuity between what they say they value and what their behaviors reveal. Chaplains must be willing to assign the counselee the task of fulfilling meaning in their life. When the counselee is able to actualize their meaning for existence and their will to meaning, they are then capable of surviving and living in difficult situations. Frankl, quoting Nietzsche, wrote “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”[8]

Chaplains are distinctly suited for logotherapy. This method of meaning-based, spiritual therapy distinguishes chaplains from other helping professionals. Chaplaincy is non-sectarian; regardless of the religious or theological training of the chaplain, logotherapy can be utilized with skill based on the spiritual, meaning-based work of chaplains. In so doing modern chaplaincy finds a framework that distinguishes and differentiates itself from other helping disciplines and helps individuals find their meaning for existence and explore their existential crisis through the lens of their will to meaning.

[1] Frankl, Victor E. Man’s Search for Meaning (New York, Washington Square Press, 1963) pg. 154.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid., 159

[4] Ibid., 153

[5] Ibid., 160

[6] Ibid., 163

[7] Ibid., 164

[8] Ibid., 164