Making Meaning with Logotherapy
I have a vivid memory from my days of door-to-door Christian proselytizing of an encounter I had with a man on a random Saturday morning. I think it was 17 years old. My ministry partner was a mentor of mine was a man in his mid-40s. We had knocked on the door of a man in his late 50s, early 60s.
That morning, our preaching group had convened for a kickoff meeting. During the kickoff meetings, we normally discussed what we were planning to say at the door that morning. The religious organization was happy to provide scripts for our morning ministry so that if any were unsure of what to say when appearing uninvited at someone’s door, they could follow a suggested presentation. Many of the group’s proselytizers would jot these suggested presentations on an index card and slide them into the first page of their Bibles.
The script when something like this:
Good morning, sir, madam. Have you ever wondered what is the meaning of life?
The introductory question was followed by a Bible verse and a publication that provided a succinct answer to this most elusive question that has plagued humanity ever since the species developed the ability for abstract thought. I was caught off guard when the gentleman abruptly answered, “come back when you’re 28 and we’ll talk about the meaning of life”.
I glanced at my ministry partner nervously. He gave me a shrug of confusion, and I, stuttering, ended the conversation and sculked back to the minivan where the rest of the preaching group awaited my return.
My Life Used to Have Meaning
The interchange stuck with me. My group promised meaning with pamphlets and articles providing scriptural answers to life’s biggest questions such as the meaning of life. It wasn’t until much later, after awakening from the fog of my religious upbringing, that I learned an important truth: anyone claiming to know the answer to the question “what is the meaning of life?” clearly has not thought long enough about the question.
So, you can imagine my reluctance to read Viktor Frankl’s seminal work Man’s Search for Meaning. I didn’t need another old guy telling me that they had all the answers. To be clear, despite the book’s title, Austrian psychiatrist and philosopher Viktor Frankl does not attempt to provide the final answer to this question in his brief 165-page book. He asserts that the search for meaning is a primary motivating force for the human organism and that embracing that search is a therapeutic benefit.
Whatever you think about Frankel’s theories, one thing is for sure, when a psychologist and Holocaust survivor claims to have developed a therapeutic modality based on his expert observations of life, death, and survival in a Nazi concentration camp.
Well, you pay attention.
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
Viktor Frankl was a Viennese neurologist, even before he was taken to a concentration camp shortly after his marriage in 1942. By 1945, Frankel had spent a total of three years in four different Nazi concentration camps. While Frankl is clear in Man’s Search for Meaning that he does not take on the task of providing a full description of the horrors of camp life, he does describe the psychology of survival that he observed, from the perspective of a clinical professional, during his time in the camp.
One such observation occurring in the first half of the book explains how abnormal psychology can become quite normal when the context is abnormal. Notice this passage on page 22:
“A man with a corpse approach the steps were early he dragged himself up, the body first, the feet, thenn the trunk. Finally, with an uncanny rattling noise, the head of the corpse bumped up the two steps.
My place was on the opposite side of the hut, while my cold hands clasped the bowl of hot soup from which I sit greedily, I happen to look out the window. The corpse, which had just been removed, stared in at me with glazed eyes. Two hours before I had spoken to that man. Now, I continued sipping my soup.
If my lack of emotion had not surprised me from the standpoint of a professional interest, I would not remember this incident now because there was so little feeling involved in it” (Frankl, 1984).
Frankl also discusses suicide as another brutal reality of camp life. He says:
“From personal convictions, I made myself a firm promise on my first evening at camp, that I would not “run into the wire”. This was a phrase used in the camp to describe the most popular method of suicide, touching the electrically charged barbed wire fence” (Frankl, 1984).
Most importantly, were the psychological mechanisms that he observed prisoners use to survive unimaginable suffering.
“In spite of all the enforced physical and mental primitiveness of the life in a concentration camp, it was possible for spiritual life to deepen. Sensitive people who are used to a rich intellectual life may have suffered much pain, (they will often have a delicate constitution) but the damage to their inner selves was less. They were able to retreat from their terrible surroundings to a life of inner richness and spiritual freedom.
Only in this way, can one explain the apparent paradox that some prisoners with a less hardy makeup often seem to survive camp life better than did those who have a robust nature” (Frankl, 1984).
In a passage of considerable inspiration and vulnerability, Frankel talks about his own spiritual vision and how it enabled him to endure camp life. It was a vision of his wife, who we later find out was killed in a concentration camp. Frankl talks about the spiritual significance of this vision of his wife.
“A thought transfixed me. For the first time in my life, I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret to human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: the salvation of man is through love, and in love.
I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved, in a position of utter desolation. When a man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way, an honorable way. In such a position man can, through the loving contemplation of the image he carries of His Beloved, achieve fulfillment.
For the first time in my life, I was able to understand the meaning of the words, ‘the angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory’” (Frankl, 1984).
There are a number of passages like this in Frankl’s book that might seem overly poetic to be of clinical significance if it weren’t for how beneficial they were, in at least the author’s case, for overcoming the most overwhelming of human suffering.
Introducing Logotherapy
Frankl wrote Man’s Search for Meaning in nine days following his release from concentration camp in 1945. But more importantly, he developed a therapeutic approach that continues to be used in clinical practice today. He called it logotherapy, from the Greek word logos which denotes “meaning”. In the book, Frankel mentions that the full description of logotherapy was published in 20 separate volumes in the German language. But he provides a simplified overview in the second half of Man’s Search for Meaning.
Logotherapy is considered a branch of existential humanism, which I discussed in a previous article about Carl Rogers. Logotherapy is based on the assumption that human beings have an innate will to meaning. Whereas Freudian psychoanalysis focuses on the will to desire and the Algerian approach focuses on the will to power logotherapy focuses on the will to meaning.
At least twice, Frankl cites a quote from the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. “He has a why to live for can bear almost anyhow”. Frankl says:
“Man’s search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a secondary rationalization of instinctual drives. This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can be filled by him alone. Only then does it achieve a significance which will satisfy his own will to meaning” (Frankl, 1984).
So to Frankl, meaning in life is not just a defense mechanism that humans use to avoid thinking about uncomfortable existential realities. On the contrary, it is an existential reality, a very real part of the makeup of human beings. It follows, then, that many modern neuroses come from a frustration of the will to meaning. Frankel talks about what he calls “Sunday Neurosis”, when humans busy themselves rushing around with jobs and taking care of children all through the week. And then when it all stops on Sunday, they are caught in the void; the existential vacuum. In these moments, there is a frustration in their will to meaning, which may lead to depression, aggression, or addiction.
This is where logotherapy comes in. Frankl puts it this way:
“Logotherapy regards its assignment as that of assisting the patient to find meaning in his life. In as much as logotherapy makes him aware of the hidden logos of his existence” (Frankl, 1984).
It isn’t that the logotherapist provides meaning for the client or dictates what their meaning ought to be. Frankl illustrates it this way, with the metaphor of an eye specialist and a painter:
“A painter tries to convey to us a picture of the world as he sees it. An ophthalmologist tries to enable us to see the world as it really is. The logotherapist's role consists of widening and broadening the visual field of the patient so that the whole spectrum of potential meaning becomes conscious and visible to him” (Frankl, 1984).
And it isn’t that an individual just once for all time with a pithy statement comes up with a way of expressing the meaning for their life. No, rather:
“The meaning of life always changes, but it never ceases to be. According to logotherapy, we can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: 1. by creating a work or doing a deed, 2. by experiencing something or encountering someone, and 3. by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering” (Frankl, 1984).
To repeat, it isn’t about just finding a single meaning in life. Rather, it is about constantly finding meaning, no matter what life puts before us. Frankl refers to this constant meaning finding in the face of suffering as tragic optimism. He says that life puts before us a tragic triad, made up of 1. pain, 2. guilt, and 3. death.
But the purpose of the meaning-making of logotherapy is to understand that life is potentially meaningful under any conditions, even those that are most miserable. If successful, the result will be for 1. pain — turning suffering into a human achievement and accomplishment, 2. guilt — the opportunity to change oneself for the better, and 3. death — deriving from life’s transitoriness an incentive to take responsible action.
Frankl sums it up this way:
“The logo therapist is concerned with the potential meaning inherent and dormant in all the single situations one has to face throughout his or her life. To invoke an analogy, consider a movie. It consists of 1000s upon 1000s of individual pictures, and each of them makes sense and carries a meaning. Yet the meaning of the whole film cannot be seen before its last sequence is shown” (Frankl, 1984).
Is All Meaning Illusory?
In Buddhist thought, all of the narratives that we use to bring structure to our life are illusory. Included in this statement would be meaning in life. These are fictions of our minds. We create these stories unknowingly. And then live in the delusion that our life has specific significance and purpose.
However, from a clinical perspective, it seems that these delusions may be beneficial despite their fictionality. It seems that there is well-being in accepting a purpose and creating meaning, even in the face of extreme suffering. If, as Frankl suggests, we do have an innate need as human beings to find meaning in our lives from moment to moment, then these fictions and illusions are no less necessary to our continued existence than the food and water that we consume.
For any of my readers who, like me, have experienced religious trauma syndrome, they will likely attest that the loss of purpose is perhaps the most grieved. Although simplistic, the life purpose that I was given from my religion was a beacon of light through all of my challenges. Losing it was breathtaking.
Interestingly, Frankl discusses religion as a tool that many will use to create meaning in their lives:
“When a patient stands on the fertile ground of religious belief, there can be no objection to making use of the therapeutic effect of his religious convictions, and thereby drawing upon his spiritual resources” (Frankl, 1984)
Leveraging religion as a therapeutic mechanism may be a particular challenging for a therapist who has experienced trauma at the hands of a religious group. But they will likely need to prepare themselves to do so if religious faith is how the client chooses to create meaning in their lives. Those for whom religion is not a useful framework, will have to create an individualized meaning system and apply deliberate effort and creativity.
This is the very presenting problem that brings an individual to a therapist's office in the first place. They seek assistance to create meaning in the suffering and the challenges that they face on the day-to-day. I suppose the hope is that by the end of the course of therapy, the client has created, with the help of the therapist, the meaning needed to find hope amid suffering even if this is temporary. Of course, the client may return again in the face of new challenges. This creating and recreating meaning may be the arc of all of our lives.
An Evidence-based Approach to Psychotherapy
I recently wrote a review of an article from 2020 that appeared in the North American Journal of Psychology. It was called “Effective Logotherapy Group Counseling in Reducing Repression and Improving Life Satisfaction Among Elderly Males”. The article explored the effects of logotherapy-based group counseling to reduce depression and improve life satisfaction in a group of older adult males living in care homes.
In order to test their hypothesis, that logotherapy would reduce depression and improve satisfaction in life, they divided the sample of men into two groups, an experimental group, and a control group. The experimental group received 12 weeks of logotherapy-based group counseling. The control group were told that they were on a waiting list for group therapy.
Using psychometric measures, they tested the men for depression and life satisfaction before the 12 week period and then again afterward. The results of the experiment showed significant improvement in wellbeing for the group that received the logotherapy. The men especially benefited from the sessions that focused on reminiscing about their past life experiences. According to the researchers, reliving their past experiences in the therapy room enabled the men to recreate a meaningful state of self.
In the past, I’ve indulged in the meaninglessness of life, Frankl’s “existential vacuum”. One cannot argue with the rationality of this stance. But as Frankel states, logotherapy is not logical. By buying into a purpose, if only temporary and illusory we embrace the tension of psychological growth that is fundamental to psychological well-being. Accepting and applying the self-created meaning of logotherapy is essential for us to face suffering with dignity.
This is part of our existential responsibility. It’s as if to say, “his is my meaning for now, and I know it’s meaningless, but it is mine. And I accept it.”
I have found that this meaning-making can be used as a quick tactic in challenging situations by holding our ground and asking, “what is the meaning of this moment? What am I learning here? What is my responsibility at this moment?” It’s as if we prompt our minds to creativity and as a result experience numerous potential possibilities of meaning, allowing us to lean into the suffering.
So, No. Viktor Frankl does not give us a succinct answer to the meaning of life in Man’s Search for Meaning. But he does leave us with this:
“Ultimately, men should not ask what the meaning of life is. But rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. 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” (Frankl, 1984).
References:
Frankl, Viktor E. Man’s Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984. Print. Turabian (6th ed.).
