Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl

Man's search for meaning and logotherapy (meaning-therapy). I did not realize this was an entire school of psychology. My copy ends with a 34 page bibliography of "english language books on logotherapy."

A short form of what Frankl argues is that A) Man (human beings) are self-deteriming, can choose what their existence will be, despite any conditions (background here is that Frankl survived four different concentration camps during the holocaust). B) Human's find meaning in three areas: work, love and suffering with dignity. The book begins with a hundred page description of his experience in the camps. There it is his desire to complete his book (jotting notes when he can and keeping in his pocket); his love of and thoughts of his wife; and in his (and others) human ability to rise above in the most horrible "unavoidable" suffering. (attitude toward unavoidable suffering remains our choice).

I am a believer of the view that man is ultimately self-determining. This makes sense of my own experience of the world and I find myself rankling wherever I see the other side, whether scientifically in determinism and behaviorism or theologically in predestination. Of course, I can think of examples where determinism seems to be the case ... drug addicts for instance, but I wonder if this exception doesn't prove the rule and what is so obvious is also so tragic because we see a broken will and must turn and question whether in some way our will has been given over and whether there is not a way to take it back.

He also discussed that it is not a constant search for "the meaning of life" ... thinking of high school when the biggest joke seemed to be "What is the meaning of life?" and then laughing that this was a ridiculous and unanswerable question. Frankl says that this is the wrong way round, it is Life that is asking us for meaning ... what are we doing with this gift, it says. You are unique and your task is specific and no one else can do it ... so get on with it, it seems to say. Well Frankl says "Man's search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life ... This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can be fulfilled by him alone."

This reminds me of Heschel's masterwork arguing that our "search for God" is all wrong, but it is "God in search of man." A search he has been pursuing since we hid in the garden of eden.

Another concept that stood out to me was his view and language to describe the past and the problem of transitory life (men are like grass ...)

"Man constantly makes his choice concerning the mass of present potentialities; which of these will be condemned to nonbeing and which will be actualized? Which choice will be made an actuality once and forever, an immortal 'footprint in the sands of time'? At any moment, man must decide, for better or for worse, what will be the monument of his existence."

This idea of the hard and fast past that makes the present moment full of responsibility was powerfully expressed. He continues on: "Usually, to be sure, man considers only the stubble field of transitoriness and overlooks the full granaries of the past, wherein he had salvaged once and for all his deeds, his joys and his sufferings. Nothing can be undone, and nothing can be done away with. I should say having been is the surest kind of being." In a different section he actually talks of "rescuing it [deeds, loves, etc.] into the past wherein it has been safely delivered and deposited. In the past, nothing is irretrievable lost, but rather, on the contrary, everything is irrevocably stored and treasured."

Rescued into the past ... I can't help but think, thus exposing my utmost respect of Viktor Frankl and the difference between his life and mine, about regret and the things locked in the past that are unchangeable despite every desire for something different. Nietzsche, whom he quotes a few times in the book, wrote, I think with sadness, "To redeem the past ... that alone do I call redemption ..." but this was his argument that it was impossible.

I find myself wondering if I am like Joe Alston in the Spectator Bird by Stegner: "he has been a wisecracking fellow traveler in the lives of other people, and a tourist in his own. There has not been one significant event in his life that he planned. He has gone downstream like a stick, getting hung up in eddies and getting flushed out again, only half understanding what he floated past, and understanding less with every year.”

But, I am given hope with his words about the past being granaries from which to draw and perhaps those treasure chests where moths and thieves are barred away. It gives me hope that some of the people and deeds of my past are not lost, but still bright and alive in some way. And it does confront one with the responsibility of what monuments to erect in the present.

"To us, the basic problem is neither what is the right action nor what is the right intention. The basic problem is: what is right living? And life is indivisible. The inner sphere is never isolated from outward activities. Deed and thought are bound into one. ... Spiritual aspirations are doomed to failure when we try to cultivate deeds at the expense of thoughts or thoughts at the expense of deeds. Is it the artist's inner vision or his wrestling with the stone that brings about a work of sculpture? Right living is like a work of art, the product of a vision and of a wrestling with concrete situations." --- Abraham Joshua Heschel God in Search of Man (296)