Trouncing Noogenic Neuroses through Logos: a Logotherapeutic Reading of Paul Auster’s The Brooklyn Follies

Abstract

The Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy, as Viktor E. Frankl's Logotherapy is commonly hailed, veers around the proposition that the primary motivational force of human existence is neither 'will to pleasure' as propounded by Psychoanalysis nor 'will to power' of Adlerian concept but a sheer 'will to meaning'. Logotherapy encapsulates the Greek word 'logos' in the sense of meaning, thus making itself a meaningcentred therapy to cure neuroses. Frankl quite sagaciously creates an ontological hiatus between noogenic neuroses and somatogenic neuroses declaring the former an offshoot of lack of meaning in life. Logotherapy aims to unlock the will to meaning and to assist the patient in seeing a meaning in his life under any miserable condition. This paper seeks to read Paul Auster's novel The Brooklyn Follies in juxtaposition with the fundamental aspects of Logotherapy to discover the journey of the characters from noogenic neuroses to amiable social existence, from dark pessimism to bright optimism, from solipsistic life to family life, and from existential vacuum to richness of survival.