Three dimensions
Frankl described the human being as unity in diversity of three dimensions:
- somatic - body, biology,
- psychological - emotions, drives, habits, psychological mechanisms,
- noetic (Gr. nous - spirit, mind) - what is specifically human: freedom, responsibility, conscience, values, humour, love, dignity, self-transcendence and self-distancing.
The Greek nous is the “human” spirit - as distinct from pneuma, Spirit in the religious sense; its closest equivalent would be “mind” as distinct from brain. Frankl also used the term personal dimension. The noetic dimension does not mean religiousness - although it is the place for it.
The biological dimension is fully determined and the psychological largely so; in the spiritual dimension there is room for indeterminism - for freely taking a stand.
Two laws of dimensional ontology
Frankl illustrated them with geometric images (he also drew them in chalk on the blackboard during his visit to the Catholic University of Lublin):
- First law - one and the same object projected onto different planes produces different, even contradictory images. A cylinder (Frankl drew a glass - a cylinder open at the top, because the human being is open) projected from the side gives a rectangle and from above a circle. Likewise, a person studied only biologically or only psychologically appears “contradictory” - hence the disputes between genetics and environment, or behaviourism and psychoanalysis.
- Second law - different objects (cylinder, cone, sphere) projected onto the same plane give the same image (a circle). Likewise, different human experiences may look identical at the level of symptoms - e.g. endogenous depression and a crisis of meaning. A symptom is ambiguous unless we consider somatogenesis, psychogenesis and noogenesis.
An aeroplane on the runway
Another of Frankl's comparisons: an aeroplane can also drive along the runway like a car. Only when it takes off does it become clear that it is something different. Likewise the human being - only in the third dimension does it become visible how we differ from other creatures. Rollo May added that to help a person it is more important to know how they differ from animals than what they have in common with them.
Conclusion for therapy
No particular science exhausts the human being. Reducing a person to one dimension Frankl called reductionism and regarded it as a contemporary form of nihilism - see reductionisms and nihilism. Science should “keep the door open” to the realm of the spirit, but not take over the tasks of philosophy or theology.
The spirit does not fall ill
According to Frankl it is the body or the psyche that falls ill, but the spiritual person does not - it remains intact even in severe mental illness. This is the basis of the psychiatric credo, the defiant power of the spirit and the hope of logotherapy.
In Poland
The concept of the noetic dimension of personality was developed at the Catholic University of Lublin by Fr. Prof. Kazimierz Popielski.
Sources
V. E. Frankl, The Will to Meaning; Homo patiens; R. May, Love and Will; K. Popielski, Noetyczny wymiar osobowości (1994); Wikipedia: Noogenic neurosis.