Paradoxical Intention
Defeat anxiety by deliberately wishing for the very thing you fear
Paradoxical intention is Frankl's specific logotherapeutic technique for breaking the vicious cycle of anticipatory anxiety. The mechanism is straightforward: fear brings about precisely what one is afraid of. A person afraid of blushing blushes more. A person afraid of sweating sweats more. A person afraid of sleeplessness lies awake. The fear of the symptom feeds the symptom, which reinforces the fear.
The technique inverts the cycle. Instead of fleeing from the feared outcome, the patient is invited to deliberately intend it -- even exaggerate it to an absurd degree. A man afraid of sweating resolves to show everyone how much he can sweat. A stutterer tries to stutter as badly as possible. A person with insomnia is told to stay awake as long as possible rather than trying to fall asleep.
The mechanism works through the specifically human capacity for self-detachment, which is activated through humor. When you can laugh at your symptom, you are no longer fused with it. The wind is taken out of the sails of the anxiety. Frankl documented cases where phobias lasting years were resolved in a single session, and the results proved permanent. The technique has been validated in obsessive-compulsive cases, sleep disorders, writer's cramp, stuttering, and sexual dysfunction.
- Fear brings about precisely that which one is afraid of (anticipatory anxiety)
- A forced intention makes impossible what one forcibly wishes (hyper-intention)
- The vicious circle can be broken by intending the opposite of what you normally flee from
- Humor and self-detachment are the therapeutic agents that make the reversal possible
- The technique works regardless of the underlying cause of the neurosis
- Identify the Anticipatory Anxiety LoopMap the vicious circle: what symptom do you fear? How does fearing it make it worse? For example: you fear blushing, which makes you anxious when entering a room, which causes you to blush, which confirms the fear. Name the exact feedback loop.
- Formulate the Paradoxical WishCreate a deliberately exaggerated wish for the very thing you fear. Make it absurd and humorous. The sweating patient was told to say: 'I only sweated out a quart before, but now I am going to pour at least ten quarts!' The key is absurd exaggeration that activates humor.
- Deploy It in the Feared SituationWhen you enter the anxiety-provoking situation, actively wish for the symptom with full exaggeration. Try to sweat as much as possible. Try to stutter as badly as possible. Try to stay awake all night. The reversal of intention breaks the feedback mechanism.
- Observe the Paradoxical ResultNotice that when you deliberately try to produce the symptom, it diminishes or disappears entirely. The bookkeeper who tried to write the worst possible scrawl found he could not scribble. The stutterer who tried to stutter could not. The insomnia patient who tried to stay awake fell asleep. Let this observation reinforce the new pattern.
A young physician had suffered for four years from a fear of perspiring. Whenever he anticipated sweating, the anticipatory anxiety caused excessive sweating. Frankl advised him to deliberately resolve to show people how much he could sweat -- aiming for ten quarts instead of one. After a single session, the four-year phobia was permanently resolved within one week.
Frankl first described paradoxical intention in German in 1939, before the war. He drew on the observation that a twelve-year-old stutterer, caught riding a streetcar without a ticket, tried to stutter to gain the conductor's sympathy -- and found he could not stutter when he deliberately tried to. The technique was further refined in the clinical setting of the Vienna Poliklinik Hospital, where Frankl's team applied it to severe obsessive-compulsive cases including a woman who had suffered from a washing compulsion for sixty years.