The psychiatric credo
Frankl called it his “credo” because it cannot be proven - only accepted: behind every illness, even psychosis, the spiritual person remains unshaken. Illness may completely conceal it, but cannot destroy it. “Beyond the barricade of psychosis there is a spiritual person.”
Two tasks of the doctor follow from this: to repair the organism and always to protect the patient's dignity.
Why so firmly?
Frankl defended this credo with the memory of the Nazi era, when the mentally ill were deemed “life unworthy of life” (the T4 programme). As a doctor at the Rothschild Hospital he recorded “dementia” instead of schizophrenia in order to save patients from euthanasia. Once someone is denied personhood, their dignity is lost immediately.
The psychotherapeutic credo
The second credo is faith in the capacity of the human spirit to distance itself and take a stand towards its own conditions - see defiant power of the spirit and noo-psychic antagonism.
In practice
Even in severe illness a “noetic gap” may open: a person with well-treated schizophrenia can, together with a therapist, draw up a list of their early warning signs and become the agent of their own treatment. In depression, simply getting out of bed and washing can be an expression of this power of the spirit - “at least I could do that much”, as Frankl recalled from the camp.
The piano metaphor
Frankl compared the doctor to a piano tuner: we can tune the instrument (body and psyche), but we do not correct the pianist. The spirit does not fall ill - the instrument through which it expresses itself does.
Sources
V. E. Frankl, Homo patiens; The Doctor and the Soul; Viktor Frankl Institut Wien - biography.