Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
Viktor Frankl (1905-1997); C. G. Jung (1875-1961);
Friedrich Nietzsche (1875-1900); Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
Viktor Frankl was a Jewish psychologist who was captured by
the Nazis and sent into the concentration camps. In the most horrific
circumstances that seemed to be completely meaningless, he nevertheless
found meaning. He went on to found a school of thought or
philosophy as well as psychotherapy he came to call Logotherapy ("meaning
therapy").
Frankl continues to further develop the Existentialist
emphasis on the unique significance of the individual's life or existence.
For him, each person can find meaning in his or her life that is distinct
to his or her own existence. What Frankl means by a "meaningful life" is
inextricably bound up with moral meaning.
- Human beings are doomed to a double loss: loss of
life based purely on instinct, and loss of meaning.
- Human beings find meaning primarily in three realms:
love, work, and enduring suffering: "He who has a why to
live can bear almost any how" (from Nietzsche).
- Human existence is intrinsically meaningful because
there is a "Super-meaning" that pervades all of existence; yet, human
beings cannot know this "Super-meaning" directly, can only know it
indirectly: "It did not matter what we expected from life, but what
life expected from us."
Further themes of Man's Search for Meaning:
- The relation between mind and body and the role of a
rich inner life, imagination and intellect
- The idea that we should seek meaning wherever we can
find it
- The idea that survival often entails compromising
what is most meaningful, and that this compromise can lead to loss of
one's humanity.
- "The best of us did not survive."
Comparisons
Kierkegaard: faith and doubt; sin and redemption; good and
evil
Krishna, Arjuna, and the Bhagavad Gita: karma and liberation
(moksa); delusion and knowledge (jnana; gnosis)
Jung: conscious and unconscious; the shadow, complexes, and archetypes;
the healing power of the Self (vs ego-consciousness)
Frankl: meaning and meaninglessness