Our need for meaning:

Reading from some of the Viennese psychologist this summer to remember what they gleaned: I always look first at what someone thinks drives us to be human, and to change. The core motivational factor helps essentialize method. In Man’s Search for Meaning, by Victor Frankl that core would be our need for meaning!

For if we really don’t believe in meaning, it’s hard to make it through any level of suffering. His logo therapy was aimed at meaning formation or discovery! For he came to think that life had meaning regardless of suffering. How we interpret suffering is the key.

Freud put the will to pleasure at the center what it means to be human, Adler, the will to power, but Frankl put the search for meaning as the most important human need. Feels closer to the truth to me!

I’m enjoying re-reading, “Man’s Search for Meaning” this Summer. His philosophy of course came out of working with holocaust people, and his own life. He calls his theory, “logo-therapy”. Meaning therapy.

I still like returning to this book. Clear and humble toned, and kind.
Doesn’t meaning and what we value in life end up being one key motivation for dealing with pain and suffering as well. I think Frankl made a simple and profound observation about what it means to be human. We need meaning.

We need to be involved in a story which has meaning, even if there is great suffering in it!

Of course, Christianity might add that we have a suffering servant savior who is familiar with all our suffering and offers a meaningful narrative rather than escape to them. We don’t escape but rather enter suffering with Him, which gives them meaning. Rather than escaping suffering we fellowship with His through ours. That’s basic christian spirituality.

Regardless, this book is clear, helpful and even hopeful! Good re-read! And like Aristotle wrote about art in “Poetics”-we simply like and need to have a beginning middle and end in stories and in life! We need things to mean things, and have meaningful progressions. And according to Viktor Frankl, they do!