Logotherapy and Coaching

Abstract

The coaching has been spread rapidly in Japan for its use in business and for the purpose of self-enlightenment since about 2002. In the medical field also, trials to utilize the coaching technique have been made and studies on smooth management of patients proceeded. The coaching originally started from the meaning of leading subjects by giving instruction and advice. Galway et al. advocated addition of factors such as looking into one's inside, autonomy, and potentialities to the coaching, with fruitful results achieved in the sports and business fields through its application. However, in Japan the coaching is applied chiefly for self-enlightenment and group coaching, and this way of application of the coaching may sometimes present forward strongly the conviction and reception or hierarchy and management. It is considered risky that the coaching associated with these characteristics tends to be propagated as a coaching business. In this study, the author would like to introduce a clinical application of the coaching in the medical field in the sense of its true meaning(using “coaching” translated into Japanese words, not in the Japanese syllabary). The origin of the word of the coaching is the “coach”, which “carries one wherever he wants to go”. From this original sense, the coaching is considered to be able to draw out the autonomic ability to make one start toward the future from the present time and place. In the clinical field, in our efforts to find what could be applied in the control of patients'adherence to the past happenings and utilized to lead them to initiate activities for the future, we have encountered logotherapy. Through introducing the paradoxical intension into the coaching technique to utilize difficulties and sufferings as the energy to face distress voluntarily and removal of one's reflection about adherence to the past(dereflection), we could successfully make the coaching as the one that is helpful for subjects to find their possible hope. On the other hand, on the basis of appreciation of the three values as advocated by Frankl-namely, the “Value of Creation”, with which one deliberates and feels the art so as to create art, with generation of hope for the life from the splendidness of Nature, “Value of Experience” to convert the experiences of having encountered difficulties and adverse circumstances to one's strong points, and “Value of Attitude” to make to one choose what attitude to take under the fate which seems to be unfortunate from any aspect-we can apply the coaching approach to help subjects to find their meaning of life and hope. We are assured of the efficacy of use of the coaching in the context of logotherapy. Thus, as we got an indication of possibility of constructing the “logotherapy-coaching” in the future, we describe our experience in this study.