A reflection on Viktor Frankl's man's search for meaning

Frankl, many people seek therapy because of the "feeling of the total and ultimate meaningless of their lives," (p. 62). Frankl mainly refers to the "super-meaning" or to the ultimate meaning of life from a general existential or cosmological perspective -- not the personalized meaning in one individual's purpose in life, which is a different question (p. 74). A state of meaninglessness is the inability to move forward and progress through pain, not just in spite of pain and suffering but because of it. Meaningless is a "feeling of emptiness," and an "existential vacuum," (p. 143). Meaninglessness is the inability to learn from suffering, and thereby transform suffering into something that is meaningful. According to Frankl, meaningfulness cannot be located in the propagation of the species because one must find meaning whether or not one procreates. Meaning comes from feeling useful, and feeling useful needs to arise independently of external circumstances, somehow. Of course, it is challenging to find meaning in a life that is both transitory and filled with pain. As a challenge, finding meaning requires energy expenditure and effort. Finding meaning is an active process; meaning is not going to suddenly appear without any effort. Frankl also points out that people who take drugs are reacting to a sense of meaninglessness and that to achieve recovery from addiction or to prevent suicide and mental illness, one must actually search for and find meaning. Depression is essentially the feeling of meaninglessness, it is learned helplessness or learned meaninglessness. Meaningless is when "people have enough to live by but nothing to live for; they have the means but no meaning," and "some do not even have the means," (p. 142).

Death camps are obviously one way a person can learn meaninglessness. However, death camps are not the only way a person can learn meaninglessness. People under otherwise ordinary circumstances feel a sense of meaninglessness, just as people who survive death camps can recover a sense of meaning, even when it seems they have lost everyone and lost all hope. Granted, recovering meaning will be more difficult for people who have lost everything because it will require more effort. Meaninglessness is learned "from a frustration of our existential needs," common in industrial societies (p. 141). People who are unemployed, for example, tend to get depressed because they feel useless, which leads to feeling meaningless. People who are employed in a work that seems to lack meaning can also develop a sense of meaninglessness. People need "something to live for," a feeling that whatever they are doing is useful or meaningful (p. 142).

Part II

Frankl urges a strong "meaning orientation" in order to overcome meaninglessness and depression (p. 143). Developing a meaning orientation often entails working with other people. Frankl mentions a study of boy scouts who had been exhibiting aggressive behavior, and that aggressive behavior subsided when they were put to the task of working together. The collaboration process provides people with a sense of meaning.

There is more to finding meaning than simply working with others on collaborative tasks, of course. Frankl finds that people struggle to find meaning when they focus too much on the big picture before they learn how to find meaning in the small details, in the mundane, or in daily life. Frankl uses the analogy of the movie. To understand the whole movie, one must also understand the individual parts that make up that movie -- the scenes that comprise the whole story or the characters that are involved. Then, meaning must be located in one's ability to take action, to feel powerful enough to understand each situation and change it. One must ultimately be capable of finding meaning in suffering.

The role of the therapist in helping a person to find meaning, whether in daily mundane affairs or in an ongoing experience of suffering is as a facilitator or trainer. Frankl's therapeutic model is called "logotherapy," in which the therapist is "concerned with the potential meaning inherent and dormant in all the single situations one has to face throughout his or her life," (p. 145). The therapist also has role in facilitating cognitive shifts, and shifts in perspective that allow a person to locate meaning in mundane affairs or in suffering. A common pitfall is slipping too far into nihilism, according to Frankl. While it is important to help the client develop a realistic sense of place in the world, it is dangerous to cultivate cynicism that only exacerbates meaningless. Cynicism and nihilism are actually components of the meaninglessness mindset. Frankl claims that the therapist "should see their task in immunizing the trainee against nihilism rather than inoculating him with the cynicism that is a defense mechanism against their own nihilism," (p. 153). Logotherapy differs from psychoanalysis and many other forms of therapy in that it is future-oriented, not designed to direct the client's mind inward or towards the past. The therapy needs to be action-oriented, solution-focused, and change-oriented in order to empower the client to take the action necessary to find meaning. Creating tension, challenging the patient's faulty beliefs, and breaking down the client's schemas to show how those schemas can be reassembled in productive ways are also goals of the logotherapeutic process. Finally, therapists need to practice withholding judgment, and to remember that it is the patient's life to live. The therapist provides the client with the tools he or she needs to see the world and herself differently.

Part III

Finding meaning in "ordinary situations" is the essence of finding the meaning in one's own life. Frankl's book shows how people who have gone through extraordinary suffering such as living through a concentration camp, and people who go through the "ordinary situations" of life can both lose meaning or develop learned meaninglessness. Applying Frankl's message to one's daily life requires a cognitive shift.

Meaning can be located in the mundane in many ways. One is through humor. Remember, Frankl recalls how life inside the camps was often punctuated by absurd or grotesque humor. Finding humor in ordinary life is one way of locating meaning in it, because humor has meaning in and of itself. Humor is a "trick learned while mastering the art of living," and it is even possible to practice the art of living in devastating circumstances like concentration camps (p. 55). Therefore, it is certainly possible to practice the art of living in ordinary life. This in no way diminishes the real pain that depressed people feel, for as Frankl notes, suffering is all relative. What seems like trivial suffering is actually total suffering; it only takes a small bit to "completely fill the human soul and conscious mind," (p. 55). Frankl even uses the grotesquely absurd analogy of gas filling a room to talk about how the smallest bit of suffering or joy can fill one's mind and consciousness. This is why it is important to cultivate humor even in small things, for even the smallest bit of laughter found in the most trivial of affairs can alleviate suffering.

Another way of locating meaning in ordinary life is by taking responsibility for cultivating meaning. Frankl notes that "the person who attacks the problems of life actively" is one who lives life to the fullest (p. 125). Life is transitory and it is easy to slip into nihilism. Instead of doing so, one can find meaning in each and every trivial element, such as cleaning the bathroom or making the bed. When the small items become meaningful, then life as a whole becomes meaningful.

Works Cited

Frankl, Viktor. Man's Search for Meaning. Beacon Press. Online: https://www.sonoma.edu/users/s/shawth/mans%20Search