"The Unconscious God" by Viktor Frankl

This book is divided in two parts: the first part consists of several lecture given to a small group of Austrian intellectual in the early 50s, as Frankl was just starting to develop his theory of 'logotherapy, or 'existential analysis' and the second part, written especially for the American edition of the book, explores the research and developments in logotherapy from the 50s until 1975, when the book was first published in the United States.

In the lecture part of the book Frankl explores the spiritual unconsciousness, the existential analysis of dreams and conscience, the transcendental quality of conscience, which forms the foundation of logotherapy, just as pleasure forms the foundation of Freud's psychoanalysis, and self-esteem and inferiority forms the foundation of Adler's individual psychology. Frankl criticizes both Freud's and Adler's approach to psychotherapy, exposing their errors and pointing where logotherapy has more advanced explanations, but he also takes a hit at Jung, and his theories of collective unconsciousness, archetypes, etc. accusing Jung that by collectivizing these phenomena he is excluding the 'human' in them, and dehumanizes them, thes precluding the individual subjects of psychotherapy from embracing them.

Frankl shows that logotherapy is very individual and human, and tries to find the motives of people's behaviors within the people themselves, and their need for spirituality, for personal religiousness, and not imposed on them from without by some genetic code, or some dispersonal, omnipresent collective unconsciousness. The last of the lectures concerns the relationship of logotherapy and theology, where Frankl presents a view that they not only do not have to be mutually exclusive, but can complement each other, and bring a holistic benefit to the patient and his worldview.

In the second part of the book Frankl presents all the research and results obtained in logotherapy in the score or so years between the original lectures and the publication of the American edition of the book. The text is ripe with quotations form scientific publications and can be difficult to read at times because of its technical nature. However the first part of the book presents a very concise and clear, if somewhat unfinished, exposition of the relationship between logotherapy and the spiritual.