Resilience in persons with disabilities: the logotherapy vision

Viktor Frank’s logotherapy (1905-1990) offers a vision of humankind which can instrument, and provide tools to understand and foster resilience in persons with disabilities. This theoretical approach anticipates the human spirit’s potential for resistance to face adversity, which includes being born with or acquiring a disability throughout life. Both logotherapy, as well as the concept of resilience have in common the recognition of protective factors, and the transformation of difficulties into new opportunities, distancing itself from a pathological focus on deficits to prioritize potential mechanisms that every human being possesses when it comes to resistance and recovery. The perspective which encompasses a biological, psychological and spiritual view, and the logotherapy concepts of the meaning of suffering, the possibility of realization of values in any situation, the ability of human beings to distance themselves from problems, as well as the ability to self-transcend, offers the theoretical and practical reference for the pillars of resilience in persons with disabilities.