© AesthetixMS 2016. This Open Access article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For citation use the DOI. For commercial re-use, please contact editor@rupkatha.com. Trouncing Noogenic Neuroses through Logos: a Logotherapeutic Reading of Paul Auster’s The Brooklyn Follies Avijit Pramanik 1 & Arindam Modak 2 1 Assistant Professor (W.B.E.S.), Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Purulia Government Engineering College, Purulia, West Bengal, India. Email: apmanik90@gmail.com 2 Assistant Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology Durgapur, Durgapur, West Bengal, India. Email ID: arindam_m@yahoo.com Received April 11, 2017; Revised July 12, 2017; Accepted July 15, 2017; Published August 11, 2017. Abstract The Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy, as Viktor E. Frankl’s Logotherapy is commonly hailed, veers around the proposition that the primary motivational force of human existence is neither ‘will to pleasure’ as propounded by Psychoanalysis nor ‘will to power’ of Adlerian concept but a sheer ‘will to meaning’. Logotherapy encapsulates the Greek word ‘logos’ in the sense of meaning, thus making itself a meaning- centred therapy to cure neuroses. Frankl quite sagaciously creates an ontological hiatus between noogenic neuroses and somatogenic neuroses declaring the former an offshoot of lack of meaning in life. Logotherapy aims to unlock the will to meaning and to assist the patient in seeing a meaning in his life under any miserable condition. This paper seeks to read Paul Auster’s novel The Brooklyn Follies in juxtaposition with the fundamental aspects of Logotherapy to discover the journey of the characters from noogenic neuroses to amiable social existence, from dark pessimism to bright optimism, from solipsistic life to family life, and from existential vacuum to richness of survival. Key-words: Logotherapy, Noogenic Neuroses, Homeostasis, Noo-dynamics, Existential Vacuum. A Holocaust survivor and Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at the University of Vienna Medical School, Viktor Emile Frankl stormed the whole world with his idea of Logotherapy, which is far different in nature and form from Freudian Psychoanalysis and Adlerian Individual Psychology. The Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy, as Logotherapy is commonly hailed, veers around the proposition that the primary motivational force of human existence is neither ‘will to pleasure’ as propounded by Psychoanalysis nor ‘will to power’ of Adlerian concept but a sheer ‘will to meaning’. i Logotherapy encapsulates the Greek word ‘logos’ in the sense of meaning, thus making itself a meaning-centred therapy to cure neuroses. Frankl quite sagaciously creates an ontological distinction between noogenic neuroses and somatogenic neuroses declaring the former an offshoot of lack of meaning in life. Noogenic neuroses do not emerge from the battleground of multitudinous drives and instincts but from a frustrated ‘will to meaning’. Psychotherapy is hardly applicable and effective for curing noogenic neuroses, which demands logos for extinguishing existential frustration and motivating the depression to achieve a new goal. Psychotherapy merely tranquillizes the patient suffering from noogenic cases by burying his existential despair and urge for a true meaning in life. Logotherapy is the apposite treatment Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities (ISSN 0975-2935), Vol. IX, No. 2, 2017 DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v9n2.22 Full Text: http://rupkatha.com/V9/n2/v9n222.pdf