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'Friday Meaning' - tools to realise a meaningful life.

A short series of three Friday mornings in just a little different way. 

Participants will have a special breakfast together, 
followed by a group meeting in which the basic principles of logotherapy (prof. Viktor E. Frankl) will be taught. 
In the group meeting participants will be stimulated to sheare thoughts and experiences.

The happening will take place in Haifa in Israel,
(27/4, 4/5, 11/5 2018), more details below in Hebrew.








The first year of our program for psychotherapy with elderly people with emphasis on Logotherapy was a fantastic year, both for the students, as for the teachers in the program. The students learned a lot of Logotherapy and are making this way of thinking part of their personal and professional thinking, adding to the quality in elderly's lives. In the second year more Logotherapy will learned, as well as Narrative Therapy, Existential therapy, and Buddhism. All in all, we are excited to start the second year and bring these methods together for the use of Logotherapy with elderly people. Recruitment for a new second first year is in full process: http://cont-edu.haifa.ac.il/programs/psicoprogram/2004-2016-04-04-11-06-54


  • Sometime therapists ask me why there is a need for psychotherapy with elderly people and if this is not specifically discrimination of elderly people. Why should they be treated different from younger people. To our view, every age has its special characteristics and developmental stages, and here we specify some of these subjects.
  • Retirement. At the moment of retirement, people are usually healthy and full of energy, and the question rises how to use time without being in some setting, and do something meaningful, something that gives satisfaction, pleasure and the feeling that one leaves her or his positive marks in life.
  • The sandwich generation. The feeling to be torn between the care for an elderly parent (85 years or more), and the wish to help the younger generation, including grandchildren. How to preserve your stable and satisfying life for yourself.
  • Transition. The profound change in life by entering a nursing home or protected living. How to preserve your self worth and your independency, when you say farewell to a long and independent life, with your own choices, freedom and your functions you had in society.
  • Finally, coping with (chronic) illnesses, with loss, the end of life and grieve. These subjects receive their special character due to the awareness that the time one will have to live is shorter than what one has already lived.
Psychotherapy for elderly people with an emphasis on Logotherapy gives powerful skills to deal with these subjects in these ages, while in the second year of the study, narrative therapy, and existential therapy are added to Logotherapy.









On September 25, 2016 at the Logotherapy conference in Vienna, I presented preliminary results of my 



research project, based on logotherapy’s principles and feministic 

gerontology with groups of 53 elderly women. In the course of eight meetings, 

participants connect to meanings in their lives, they perceive more controle 

and more satisfaction in their lives and they show less symptoms of 

depression, which are all significant, related to these rates before the 

meetings.

All these achieved results remain also after half a year!

At the conference there was a lot of interest in this project, with ideas to extend 

the populations who could benefit to, amongst others: young women of 18-20 

years old, mothers who just gave birth, partners taking care of an ill partner at 

home, formal caregivers, alzheimer patients.


At the moment I am writing the results in an article in order to have it submitted 

for professional publication as soon as possible.

* The project was carried out in de the frame of the Center for Research and Study of Aging at the University of Haifa, with funding of this Center, as well as of Joint Israel. Furthermore, Milav, the organization who provides social-cultural services for the elderly people in Haifa, the administration personal of the University of Haifa, and the Herzelya Welfare for elderly people provided the possibility to work with their peoples.
Maha Ali co-conducted with me one of the groups.





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