Man’s search for Meaning – Victor E Frankl

Life is not a quest for Pleasure – It’s a quest for meaning

• 3 possible sources of meaning
  • Work – Finding purposeful work or doing something significant
  • Love – By Caring for another human
  • Courage – Showing courage at the face of difficulty
• What matters is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment.
  • Like in Chess, there’s no best move in the world, there’s only what is right for the specific game at the specific time depending on the personality of the opponent etc.
• Find meaning for the suffering in your Life
  • Faith, hope, and purpose helps with survival, story of a warden who thought the war would end by a month and how he died when that didn’t happen. While many said the reason was typhus, his body stopped fighting back once he had lost hope.
  • How suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning.
    • “Once, an elderly general practitioner consulted me because of his severe depression. He could not overcome the loss of his wife who had died two years before and whom he had loved above all else. Now, how can I help him? What should I tell him? Well, I refrained from telling him anything but instead confronted him with the question, “What would have happened, Doctor, if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive you?” “Oh,” he said, “for her this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!” Whereupon I replied, “You see, Doctor, such a suffering has been spared her, and it was you who have spared her this suffering — to be sure, at the price that now you have to survive and mourn her.” He said no word but shook my hand and calmly left my office. In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.”
  • “Suffering is not necessary to find meaning in life, meaning is possible inspite of suffering”
  • Question : “Do monkeys / guinea pigs who get pricked multiple times know they are serving a great cause for the humans?” – they most certainly don’t but they still server a purpose. The same way there may be situations when we humans don’t understand the reason for the suffering, but deep down there’ll always be a meaning to it.
• You always have a choice
  • What is to give light must endure burning

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

• There are always external forces you can’t control – you can only control the internal forces – your response and attitude to .
  • It’s your attitude towards your existence that makes all the difference.
  • Even in the most dire situations you have the power – E.g inmates from Auschwitz.
• You are more resilient that you think
  • We are way stronger than we think. E.g of how people survived the concentration camp , harsh weather etc.
• Take Responsibility
  • Life ultimately means taking responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.
  • If you find its your destiny is to suffer, you must accept the suffering as a task;his unique task and your opportunity lies in the way in you bear your burden
• Everybody’s why is different
• Love
  • Being human always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself — be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself — by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love — the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself. Self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.
  • Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality.
• Happiness and Success cannot be pursued – It must ensue
  • The more you aim at it, the more you are likely to miss
  • It can only be the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a purpose /cause greater than oneself or one’s surrender to a person other than himself
  • You have to let it happen by not caring about it.
  • Listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run—in the long run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it (*Gita*)
• Cherish your memories
  • “The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest. What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which is in store for him?

Logo Therapy

• Logo Therapy – School of thought in psychotherapy that focusses on finding the meaning and purpose in your life.
  • Dereflection
    • Focus away from oneself, towards other people so they can become whole and spend less time being self absorbed about a problem or how to reach a goal
  • Paradoxical Intention
    • is a technique that has the person wish for the thing that is feared most. This was suggested for use in the case of anxiety or phobias, in which humor and ridicule can be used when fear is paralyzing. For example, a person with a fear of looking foolish might be encouraged to try to look foolish on purpose. Paradoxically, the fear would be removed when the intention involved the thing that was feared most.
    • Reversal of attitude by replacing fear with a paradoxical wish
      • “Paradoxical intention can also be applied in cases of sleep disturbance. The fear of sleeplessness12 results in a hyper-intention to fall asleep, which, in turn, incapacitates the patient to do so. To overcome this particular fear, I usually advise the patient not to try to sleep but rather to try to do just the opposite, that is, to stay awake as long as possible. In other words, the hyper-intention to fall asleep, arising from the anticipatory anxiety of not being able to do so, must be replaced by the paradoxical intention not to fall asleep, which soon will be followed by sleep.”
  • Socratic Dialogue
    • Help someone realize the answer to their question / self discovery through the use of their own words
• No-o Dynamics
  • Man’s search for meaning may arouse inner tension rather than inner equilibrium. However this tension is a pre-requisite of mental health

Quotes & References

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s way”

“He who has a WHY to live for can bear almost any HOW” – Fredrick Nietzsche

“In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning.”

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are forced to change ourselves”

“Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!”