Logotherapy: Dereflection

Breaking the loop of self-surveillance by redirecting attention toward meaning

What is dereflection in logotherapy and how does it reduce self-obsession?

Dereflection is Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy technique for breaking hyperreflection — obsessive self-monitoring that makes a problem worse the more you attend to it. The method redirects attention outward toward a meaning or person in the world, which paradoxically dissolves the self-preoccupation that hyperreflection sustains.

Viktor Frankl observed that many human problems are not simply present but are made worse — sometimes created — by the act of watching oneself. He called this hyperreflection: an excessive self-focus that turns a natural difficulty into a chronic one. The insomniac who tries to fall asleep makes sleep impossible; the anxious speaker who monitors their own anxiety amplifies it; the person searching for happiness as an object of pursuit drives it away. Dereflection is the logotherapy technique that interrupts this loop — not by willpower but by genuine redirection toward something in the world that matters more than the self-monitoring. Below are the practices that operationalize it.