Exploring the principles of logotherapy in genetic counseling: Enhancing decision-making, adaptation, and justice

Logotherapy is a psychological approach originated by Viktor Frankl, shaped by the thesis that meaning can be discovered even in the most tragic of human circumstances, and through a human's will-to-meaning, that individuals have both freedom and responsibility to discover meanings in the moment and ultimate meanings from their unique standpoints and life stories. The authors submit that as the genetic counseling profession straddles the givens of science and disease alongside the openness of human choices, logotherapy is a particularly effective and potent framework for its practitioners. Logotherapy holds space for the painful experiences of guilt, death, and suffering alongside genetic conditions and the responsibility to make decisions about what to do and how to live. Attention to the emerging psychological concerns and possibilities for meaningfulness in these spaces of tension can enhance the core goals of genetic counseling, including informed decision-making and healthy adaptation. This paper aims to demonstrate the efficacy of meaning-centered counseling skills to actively empower a patient's narrative and capacities as essential and alongside other health care needs and concerns. This paper focuses on the general approach of logotherapy and highlights two specific techniques: Socratic Dialogue and Dereflection. From the authors' own multiplicity of practice and teaching perspectives in the genetic counseling field, the paper argues that logotherapy is highly applicable to the profession, highly compatible with short-term counseling interventions and across varied specialties, offering counselors and their diverse patient populations a more meaning-rich experience of care, respect, and decisional empowerment.