Family Development and the Martial Arts: A Phenomenological Study

This article outlines the results of a grounded-theory, phenomenological study about the impact of the martial arts on the process of family development. Thirty-two couples and families with at least four months of martial arts study experience were interviewed to identify data and data themes about how the martial arts enhanced family development. Themes identified were self-defense, self-confidence, physical vitality, concentration, respect, friendship, moral development, spirit, training for life, grades, respect for life, and the importance of the martial arts instructor.     

Depression, Existential Family Therapy, and Viktor Frankl's Dimensional Ontology

In existential family therapy, it is believed that Viktor Frankl's dimensional ontology is a useful way to understand the different levels of depression that are important in both family assessment and family treatment. This article reviews Frankl's dimensional ontology, its usefulness for existential family treatment, the must, can, and ought levels of family depression, and presents clinical material illustrating the described existential family treatment approach.     

Existential Family Trauma Therapy

In this article the process of existential family trauma therapy is outlined and described. This process includes the treatment elements of holding, telling, mastering and honoring the family's trauma experiences and trauma pain. Case illustrations are provided and previous research is reviewed.     

Dream Reflection in Logotherapy: Facilitating the Psychotherapeutic Process and Case Studies

Logotherapy or Existenzanalyse is a treatment orientation developed by the late Viennese psychiatrist, Dr. Victor Frankl. Frankl's orientation places primary emphasis upon helping the client to notice, actualize and honor the meaning and meaning potentials in his or her life. This helps the client to shrink his/her existential meaning vacuum, and the symptoms and problems that grow and flourish in this existential vacuum. In this article Frankl's treatment orientation is briefly outlined, with a focus on the use of dream reflection to facilitate the Logotherapeutic process which is illustrated through case material.     

Re-Collection in Existential Psychotherapy with Couples and Families Dealing with Death

Re-collection is a treatment dynamic in existential family therapy in which the client family is helped to remember and honor meanings that family members have previously actualized and deposited in the past. This shrinks the family meaning vacuum and those symptoms and problems that grow and flourish in a family meaning vacuum. In this article, an existential orientation to re-collection with families who are dealing with the death of a loved one is presented, described, and illustrated with case material.     

Heidegger's Brightness as a Responsibility of the Therapist in Existential Family Therapy

The author reflects upon the Heideggerian concepts of thrown-ness, death imagery, arrogance and brightness and their usefulness in existential family therapy. The article describes and illustrates with clinical material the process of helping a couple or family to move from an arrogance response to thrownness and death imagery to the response of brightness as attendants of Being. The responsibilities of the therapist in facilitating such a process are also described.Director of the Worthington Logotherapy Institute, co-director of Lantz and Lantz Counseling Associates, and a professor at The Ohio State University. College of Social Work     

Resistance in family logotherapy

The author describes a logotherapy view of family resistance and its occurrence in a variety of family situations. In family logotherapy resistance is understood as a manifestation of the human fear of meaning, which is a reaction to the family's discomfort with the two side effects of meaning awareness: vulnerability and responsibility.     

Franklian psychotherapy with adults molested as children

A Franklian approach to treatment with adults who were molested as children recognizes that the trauma client's experiences of trauma and terror as a child can be transformed to discover real meaning potentials in the adult's daily life. In this paper the authors present a five-stage treatment approach based upon the Logotherapy concepts of Viktor Frankl which they have found to be helpful with adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Case material is presented to illustrate the described intervention approach.     

Extreme itching treated by a family systems approach

A case study is presented in which a 16-year-old daughter developed extreme itching and scratching behavior that was triggered by the occurrence of manifested parental conflict. The daughter's scratching also served the family function of helping the parents avoid marital conflict. Family treatment consisted of helping the parents manifest, negotiate, and resolve marital conflict issues in front of the daughter so that she could experience the benefits of dealing with a family conflict in a functional way. This approach has helped the daughter decrease her anxiety about conflict situations which, in turn, has resulted in a significant decrease in her itching and scratching behavior. In addition, the parents report an improved marital relationship now that the daughter's itching no longer occurs and no longer interrupts the parents' attempts to negotiate marital conflict issues.