I was watching the sun set behind the Eiffel Tower with my lovely wife while on a 'working' vacation. I was attending a DBT workshop nearby and when the sun set we walked back to our hotel so I could rest up for the next day's class. For some odd reason I decided to check my e-mail before going up to our room and I discovered that indeed someone had sent me a communication from the states! I really did not expect to be sending nor receiving e-mail from Paris but opened it as it was from one of my colleagues in the practice.

They were inquiring about some possible and not previously discussed painting of the walls in the WDM waiting room to include one main waiting room wall that was covered in vinyl wallpaper with a design that I had personally chosen some years ago for both esthetics and for it's 'clinical impact' on clients who were waiting to be seen. I e-mailed back from Paris that they should wait on the painting of the vinyl papered wall until I got back in a week but to go ahead and paint the water cooler area that was not covered in any wallpaper and also not as prominent as the main wallpapered wall. I thought that was that.

As it turned out due to some interpersonal intra-practice communication errors between my office colleagues back in West Des Moines BOTH walls were painted contrary to my expressed wishes. However, I had no idea that they had not gotten and heeded my directions and when I walked in at 6:00 am on the first day back in the office I immediately 'ran into the wall'.

I was dumbfounded, angry and hurt that my practice of almost 20 years had evolved to the point that while I was out of town the people I trusted and loved would go against my clearly stated wishes and paint the vinyl wall papered wall that I asked not to be painted. They, of course, had no idea that I had run into a past fellow member of the American Academy of Psychotherapist (AAP) at the workshop in Paris nor that this rather obnoxious person rekindled some very old reminders and thus feelings of my being betrayed by my own therapist some 20 years ago. The net result was a much more reactive sequence of emotions that one would likely predict.

Logtherapy, an adjunctive form of psychotherapy, posits that we can and DO choose our attitudes especially towards the uncontrollable events in life. Frankl, of course was dealing with Nazi concentration camp situations in his life and death circumstances and thus the magnitude and importance of his choice of his attitude(s) in his situation had a much more profound and essential impact on him than my mere 'painted wall' situation. But the Logotherapeutic notion was important for me to remember and to use in my life as a way of making meaning of the moment. My task here was to right myself from this whirlwind of truly irrational emotions that I was experiencing and at the same time to find meaning despite the storm of emotions. I reason that if I could not do intrapsychic Logotherapy with myself then I should not attempt it with clients. So it was my turn to 'do the work'.

To give myself the space and time that I needed to do this work I abruptly left the office for the day (thankfully having no clients to see) and took time to vent, think and try to figure out what had happened to my work world. I know the people that I work with and the two individuals most directly involved in the vinyl wall caper were and are the most trusting and caring people that I know, other than my wife Pat. I knew that they would never purposely do anything to hurt or harm me in any way. Yet I was hurting and did feel violated much like many years ago when as my late wife was dying of breast cancer and at the same time my therapist of many years, in my view, abandoned and worse betrayed me in a 'bad' business situation of mostly his making.

After some time alone, some venting and finally, 'looking for the meaning' in all of this I decided that I COULD choose my attitude toward this situation and that the one that I decided to choose was, 'I will see this series of events and actions as a practice building opportunity.' I reasoned that since both parties were therapists, friends and in no way had any ill will towards me that I could and would choose to see these actions of the person who did most of the painting, and was relatively new to the practice, is indeed expressing their desire and wish to be both vested and an more active part of the practice. In fact at that time one of them had signed a buy-sell agreement with me for majority ownership of the practice and the other was considering a minority ownership purchase. Thus, I chose to see the wall painting as a physical representation and symbol of their 'ownership' desire' which I wanted too. Once I was able to choose that attitude I was much more centered and since have discussed, joked and kidded about my 'running into the wall' with both of these trusted colleagues.

Making, discovering or choosing the meaning of the moment and in life events is to me the essence of both Logtherapy specifically but also of Existential Psychotherapy in general. I do not see this as making up a good fantasy but rather relying on Frankl's suggestion that 'meaning potential is always possible.' Additionally his position as I understand it is, 'We do not get to ask life questions. Life asks us questions and we must answer with our own human behaviors.' My work life was, as it were, asking me several questions that demanded attention. I see here a core notion of Logtherapy; that we may not be able to control all of the aspects of our lives but still we are all responsible (able to respond using a Gestalt reframe) for our choices, living our life and for the attitudes that we adopt to life in general and specifically in situations like 'hitting the wall' as I did.

Logtherapy does not usually try to solve behavioral problems with paradox, (paradoxical intention being an exception) but it can be used as part of a self imposed intrapsychic paradox as I think I did inside my head?(how can people who love you and you trust do things to hurt you at your core?). Because Logtherapy is adjunctive by nature and intent it can of course be used within a Bowen systems perspective as well. My work system was sending me a message, or rather several messages about my 'leaving' the practice. One message is that I have been known to be, as the Bowen people say, over function and now it was time to pull back some from the stance that grew the practice from nothing to where it is today. Additionally, my job, to this day is to pay attention, stay as non reactive as I can possibly be and then when blindsided with an issue use what I know of Logtherapy and Bowen Family Systems Theory combined in a way to 'make the meaning of the moment' salient and meaningful in the context of the practice and my life.

It was Michael Widdon and Minong Eisenburg and Bob Hutzel that I learned the basics of Logtherapy as an adjunctive part of my therapeutic stance and I am eternally grateful to all three of them.

In the midst of winter,
I learned there is in me,
An invincible summer.

Author: Dr. Donald M. Kaesser