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ABSTRACT
Logotherapy is a school of Psychotherapy that focuses upon the individual’s feeling that life has meaning and purpose. Logotherapy offers particular assistance to therapists working in hospice/palliative care settings where it may be necessary to help the individual change from a person in despair to a person living as meaningful a life as possible with the time and the ability that the individual retains. Several assessment techniques have developed out of Logotherapy. The Purpose-in-Life (PIL) test and the Life Purpose Questionnaire (LPQ) were developed to assess an individual’s level of perceived meaningfulness of life. The Values Awareness Technique (VAT) was developed to assess specific values that, when actualized, make an individual’s life personally meaningful. In the present paper, these techniques are reviewed and critiqued. It is concluded that they require further psychometric development before they can be used to make individualized predictions about hospice/ palliative care patients, but they may be useful for research purposes where group comparisons are made, and they can serve as a starting point for therapy with individuals experiencing the despair of perceiving their life as meaningless.
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Notes on contributors
Robert R. Hutzell
Robert R. Hutzell, PhD, is a clinical psychologist in the Palliative Care Unit and the Department of Psychology, Knoxville V. A. Medical Center, Knosville, IA 50138.