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A man who survived the Nazi concentration camps came home with a question: what makes life worth enduring? This lecture from Academy of Ideas tells the story of Viktor Frankl and the school of therapy he built from that question — logotherapy. Frankl argued that humans are not driven most by pleasure or power, but by the search for meaning. When that search fails, depression, aggression, and addiction rush in; when even suffering finds a purpose, the worst situation can become a triumph. As he loved to quote Nietzsche: he who has a why can bear almost any how.
Full Video Transcript
The truth is that as the struggle for survival has subsided, the question has emerged, survival for what?
Even more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.
These are the words of Viktor Frankl, a 20th century Viennese psychiatrist, most famous for his book Man’s Search for Meaning.
In that book, Frankl details his time spent as a Nazi concentration camp prisoner, and reflects on how one can find meaning in life, even in the harshest of conditions.
Frankl, whose interest in the topic of life’s meaning began as a teenager, came to the realization that while ever more people in western nations were living lives of material comfort, all too many lived in a detrimental psychological state he called the existential vacuum.
As he explained,
At the beginning of human history, man lost some of the basic animal instincts in which an animal’s behavior is embedded and by which it is secured.
In addition to this, however, man has suffered another loss in his more recent development, inasmuch as the traditions which buttressed his behavior are now rapidly diminishing.
No instinct tells him what he has to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do.
Sometimes, he does not even know what he wishes to do.
Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do, conformism, or he does what other people wish him to do, totalitarianism.
The preponderance of people living lives absent of meaning led to the emergence of what Frankl called the mass neurotic triad.
This was a term he coined to describe the three most common symptoms associated with lives lived in the existential vacuum,
namely depression, aggression, and addiction.
To help counter the dire effects that accompany a life without meaning,
Frankl founded a school of psychiatry called logotherapy which in Frankl’s
words, considers man as a being whose main concern consists of fulfilling a
meaning and in actualizing values rather than in the mere gratification and
satisfaction of drives and instincts. In the remainder of this video we will
outline some of the key insights of logotherapy, insights Frankl believed
could greatly assist one in living a more fulfilling life. A key tenet of
logotherapy is that the pursuit of meaning or what Frankl sometimes referred
to as the will to meaning, is the primary motivational factor in humans.
This can be contrasted to other schools of psychiatry which maintain that the pursuit
of pleasure or the will to power are the primary factors.
According to Frankl, it is when individuals fail to find meaning in their lives that they
turn to the dogged pursuit of pleasure or power, in the false belief that so doing will
fill the void that an absence of meaning has left in them.
For those who decide to pursue a more meaningful existence, Frankl emphasized that doing so
did not mean searching for the ultimate meaning of life, as he put it,
this ultimate meaning necessarily exceeds and surpasses the finite intellectual capacities of
man. What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the
meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness
in rational terms. While the ultimate meaning of life is unknowable, Frankl held that each person
had the opportunity to realize meaning in their life at a personal level, and so doing
would greatly improve the quality of their life.
It should be noted that Frankl did not believe that individuals created such meaning, rather,
he believed it was discovered and was present in every living moment whether one was aware
of it or not, as he put it,
“…I am convinced that in the final analysis there is no situation that does not contain
within it the seed of a meaning.”
In order to discover and realize these personal seeds of meaning, Frankl suggested that for
most people a change of attitude is required.
We need to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as
those who are being questioned by life, daily and hourly.
Our answer must consist not in talk and meditation, but in right action and right conduct.
Life ultimately means the responsibility to find the right answers to its problems, and
to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.
Frankl stressed that as unique individuals, meaning will present itself in different ways
to each person. Each of us face different situations in our lives, some of which are
more and some of which are less under our control and influence. Frankl’s belief was
that no matter what fate brought, if one took appropriate action and adopted the right attitude
to the situation, a meaningful life could be realized. In a passage in Man’s Search
for Meaning, Frankl nicely distinguished how actualizing personal meaning differs from
the search for abstract answers to life’s meaning. To put the question of the meaning
of life in general terms, would be comparable to the question posed to a chess champion.
Tell me master, what is the best move in the world?
There simply is no such thing as the best or even a good move apart from a particular
situation in a game and the particular personality of one’s opponent.
The same holds for human existence.
One should not search for an abstract meaning of life.
Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment
which demands fulfillment.
As Frankl notes, often the best way to live a life rich with meaning is to find one’s
unique vocation.
Nothing contributes more to the feeling of a meaningless existence than boredom, and
nothing counters feelings of boredom better than having a specific mission to carry out
in one’s life.
In this respect, Frankl was fond of quoting Nietzsche’s famous passage that,
“…he who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
Finding one’s why was, according to Frankl, the best way to live a meaningful and therefore
fulfilling life.
However, for some, adopting a vocation and striving to achieve the goals associated with it is beyond their reach.
Instead, some people face situations which they have little control over,
situations which can cause immense suffering,
such as being diagnosed with a terminal illness or, in Frankl’s case, being imprisoned in a concentration camp.
But even in such situations, as Frankl discovered first-hand, one has the opportunity to find meaning.
And we will conclude this video with a passage which reflects this important belief of Frankl’s.
We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation,
when facing a fate that cannot be changed.
For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best,
which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one’s predicament into a human achievement.
When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
ourselves.
Source: Academy of Ideas