The Theoretical-Conceptual Review of Hyper-Reflexivity from the Perspective of Lohgotherapy and Existential Analysis

Abstract

characterized by excessively reflective or rationalizing behavior. Our goal was to understand the phenomenon of hyper-reflexivity more broadly from the perspective of Logotherapy and Existential Analysis, an approach developed by the Viennese physician Viktor Émil Frankl. Logotherapy represents a school in the field of psychotherapy that developed a psychotherapeutic technique and is considered by several authors to belong to “existential psychiatry.” It was observed that the problem of excessive reflexivity does not concern an exaggerated rationality associated with mental function, but rather the way in which something normally implicit becomes focal and explicit, leading to a decrease in the subject’s spontaneous vitality in the world. Thus, hyper-reflexivity should not be included in a merely cognitive aspect. What we mean by this is that hyper-reflexivity, to the extent that it can restrict the resources of the spiritual unconscious, can therefore hinder the realization of values ​​and the finding of meaning in life, accentuating the possibility of mental illness. Furthermore, we can see that the concept of hyper-reflexivity appears in Frankl, basically, from two interrelated problematizations: the first of them refers to one of Frankl's main criticisms in relation to psychological theories; the second corresponds to the way of life of man in modernity, the result of which can produce the “existential void”.