May 15, 2006

• Will To Meaning

  Viktor Frankl, an Austrian existential psychiatrist, has emphasized the importance for people of the will to meaning, or finding a sense of purpose and a direction in life. He quotes Friedrich Nietzsche line e who has a why to live can bear with any how? When we are in severe danger, our ability to survive may be all the point and purpose we need. When continued survival is not immediately at risk, though, we week purpose and meaning elsewhere. In some societies and historical periods, religion serves this need. In the contemporary Western world, Frankl considers, most people live in an existential vacuum. They have few accepted religious or cultural values to guide them. Each person hy? he argues, must therefore be constructed by him or herself.

  
  

  Frankl distinguishes four ways in which personal meaning may be sought. One way is through actions, in particular creative activity. By building a machine, creating a garden, a poem or a painting we give value and meaning to our life. A second way is through experience ?of beauty, nature or music, for example. A third way is through love, ncountering another unique being in the very uniqueness of this human being? Finally, in situations of inescapable difficulty, we may find meaning through fortitude. For example, Frankl himself spent several years incarcerated in Auschwitz and Dachau. He found that one way in which some prisoners were able to give meaning to their lives, even in these awful circumstances, was by the strength of spirit with which they bore their suffering.

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