Sufferance, freedom and meaning : Viktor Frankl and Martin Heidegger

The aim of this paper is to show the relationship between Viktor Frankl's logotherapy and Martin Heidegger Daseinsanalyse. I will underline a proximity between Frankl's approach to sufferance and Heidegger's one, in the framework of existential analysis and phenomenology. Starting from the common assumption that in suffering our capacity to be free is reduced and our freedom is always threatened, both Frankl and Heidegger developed different approaches to signify sufferance, to give meanings to our life, even when terrible circumstances happen. Suffering and freedom are reciprocally related because of the original constitution of human being: human being is essentially in need of help because he is always in danger of losing himself and of not coming to grips with himself. Both Frankl, through his logotherapy, and Heidegger, with his hermeneutical phenomenology, give to psychiatry and psychology a radical contribution in interpreting human being, its finitude, its sufferance and its radical freedom.