Episode 22: Man’s Search for Meaning
From the most important and notable contributor in the field of Psychotherapy, since the days of Freud, Adler and Jung, Dr. Viktor E. Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning is a perennial classic that emerged from the Holocaust.
Dr. Frankl, founder of the school of Logotherapy, writes his account of personal experiences as a Doctor of Medicine and Philosophy who spent three years at Auschwitz, Dachau and other concentration camps during World War 2.
His book’s content can be distilled into various dry theories, as it contains the exact nature of the experiences of the prisoners in concentration camps. It begins with a cross-sectional description of what was happening as Frankl set foot into the camp. As he progresses and adapts to the life that is described as a multitude of small torments, he reflects on a core philosophical question: How does one find meaning despite all these horrors?
To generalise, the book deals with the deepest question that continues to trouble each human being. According to the author, there is a unique purpose for each individual. Man’s search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a “secondary rationalization” of instinctual drives.
It is impossible to fathom the horrors and struggles of prisoners, in a place where cigarettes and soups were the real respite from starvation, a privilege of sorts, the strength to carry on and the will to live was measured in the exchange of dangerous jobs for the same. This book is replete with expertise and gravitas as it exudes observations made in light of detachment and explains them in the light of present-day knowledge.
As Frankl writes, “In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning such as the meaning of a sacrifice.”
How can a man who has nothing left in this world still know bliss, be it only for a brief moment?
Through Love.
Finding the deepest meaning in a man’s spiritual being is often through Love, which goes far beyond the physical person of the beloved. This is to say that love is the ultimate and highest goal to which a man can aspire.
For Frankl, his mind clung to his wife’s image as he got transfixed on a thought, the greatest secret of human poetry and human thought: ‘the salvation of man is through love and in love.’ Frankl noted that every man in the camp reflected their mindset with one thought – to keep themselves alive for their family back home.
This intensification of inner life helped the prisoner find refuge from the emptiness, desolation and spiritual poverty of his existence. As the inner life of a prisoner became more intense, he also experienced the beauty of art and nature as never before.
Through Humor.
Humor is another of the soul’s weapons in the fight for self-preservation. Frankl writes that it is possible to practice the art of living even in a concentration camp, where suffering is omnipresent and developing a sense of humor is a trick that can be useful.
In a wonderful analogy Frankl wrote, man’s suffering is similar to the behaviour of gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill it completely. Thus, suffering fills the human consciousness no matter how big or little.
While reading this analogy one can understand the importance of pouring inevitable suffering in constrictions – in acts of catharsis that are reigned in control of the mind. Additionally, one is introduced to the relativity of suffering and inherent nature of comparison. To which Frankl writes, that no man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.
One has to acknowledge that suffering is deeply intimate and personal and no one can relieve us of it or take our place and suffer instead. This uniqueness distinguishes each individual and has an equal bearing on creativity and love.
Dostoevski’s words are all-encompassing when he said, “There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.”
The second half of the book is about Logotherapy and its principles, where Frankl uses examples from theories and case studies to help us find meaning in life.
My first takeaway is:
‘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 own way.’
As Frankl wrote, “Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways. The sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone.”
This quintessential observation gleaned from both experience and principle helps answer the following questions:
Does man have no choice of action in the face of dire circumstances?
Is man but an accidental product of conditional and environmental factors?
Can he escape influences of his surroundings?
Frankl’s account provides sufficient proof that any man under any circumstance can still decide what shall become of him mentally and spiritually. A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes- within the limits of endowments and environment – he has made out of himself.
In moments when life hits rock bottom one needs to learn and teach despairing men that it doesn’t really matter what we expect from life, but rather what life expects from us. When the impossibility of replacing a person is realised, it allows the responsibility which a man has for his existence and its continuance to appear in all its magnitude.
One needs to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of oneself as someone being questioned by life - daily and hourly. It is this spiritual freedom and understanding which cannot be taken away- that makes life meaningful and purposeful.
My second takeaway is to
“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!”
There is nothing that would stimulate a man’s sense of responsibleness more than this maxim, which invites him to imagine first that the present is past and, second, that the past may yet be changed and amended. Such a precept confronts him with life’s finiteness as well as the finality of what he makes out of both his life and himself.
The meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment.
In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life, he can only respond by being responsible. Thus, responsibleness is the very essence of human existence.
Frankl further expounds his theory on discovering the meaning of life through these three ways:
1) By creating a work or doing a deed;
2) By experiencing something or encountering someone;
3) By the attitude one takes towards unavoidable suffering.
My final takeaway is in remembering:
“What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you. Having been is also a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind. For in the past nothing is irretrievably lost but everything is irrevocably stored.”
Not only our experiences, but all we have done, whatever great thoughts we may have had, and all we have suffered, all this is not lost, though it is past we have brought into being.
Therefore, the transitoriness of our existence in no way makes life meaningless. Man must continuously make his choice concerning the mass of present potentialities; 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.
For someone who has understood this essence of reality/realities, he might remove each successive leaf from his calendar to file it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back.
Such a man 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.
Instead of possibilities, such a man would have realities in the past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of suffering bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which a man may be most proud, though these are things which cannot inspire envy.
This brings us to the end of this episode, and like every other episode, here are a few words to live by Frederich Nietzsche.
“He who has a why to live can bear almost anyhow”
Viktor Frankl’s timeless and fount manuscript represents this idea that meaning is not found in circumstances but rather in the pursuit of objects, people, or activities in which an individual finds purpose.
Thank you for reading through this episode of Metamorphosis!
