On logo-therapy.

Shawn

I've been dabbling with all sorts of therapy techniques and methods, and think that logotherapy is a underappreciated art.

I used to live in Poland and visited one of concentration camps unfortunately located in thereabouts. I find it fascinating that a doctor of psychology used his experience to derive a method of therapy based on meaning. I've read Frankl's book on Man's Search for Meaning, and he doesn't answer the question himself from what I gather. What was the meaning that Dr. Frankyl found in such a horrible and despicable place? He noticed that in the stark conditions imposed on the inhabitants of said concentration camp, that when one's hope or desire to live wavered, typhus or other diseases would take hold and lower the resistance of one's immune system and allow the infection or disease to take hold and welcome the poor soul to death.

The meaning in my life has been to help my mother with finances and happily live with her. But, I don't feel the desire or passion or zest for life as many other people feel. Does meaning have to be an active goal or can it be a passive goal? Is there a difference, and finally, what gives your life meaning?

In the past, work has given me meaning, not for money; but, for the sake of working and doing something constructive. However, work has been perverted nowadays to the accumulation of wealth. Work, has lost meaning to many people or as mentioned has been perverted to a lesser goal. Money has become synonymous with happiness, which people more often than not find not to be true in any sense bar satisfying the basic needs in life through money. Which, leaves me questioning as to whether meaning is a purely subjective matter or can it be made objective in some sense, such as public work or volunteering?

Has anyone else found meaning beyond the mundane activities, or is there some ultimate telos to meaning?

Thanks.

Shawn

It seems to me, that meaning has two aspects that are hard to reconcile without resorting to 'compassion' or 'empathy'. There is a strong subjective component to meaning; but, without compassion or empathy, it turns into often narcissism or some other form of neuroticism or obsession with the self. One goes about in the world constantly unsatisfied at the perceived flaw or lack of esteem in oneself. Then there's compassion, where the results of one's work can be seen or perceived and noticed in the lives of others and not ones-self.

I see people constantly disenfranchised with how much they make (money), and are constantly comparing themselves and their worth to the amount they have in the bank. A car, a glorious house, and loving wife are not enough for these people. Nothing seems to satisfy them, and they die almost despairing.

To avoid the Nietzschean interpretation that life is meaningless and power solves all, or the pessimism of Schopenhauer, one needs to remedy this situation with not deep philosophy or psychology on the matter, as if made with some pretentious intention about the grandiosity of one's existence. The solution seems to be in the form of compassion and a sense of love for someone other than oneself. Caring for another is often dismissed as stupid or futile, where the answer is presented in the form of some lofty neo-liberalist goals of free trade and the efficiency of the markets. Yet, people remain the same, nothing has changed, for the better at least. Are compassion and empathy really the answer or is this some other pretentious attempt at giving one's life more meaning than it already has or doesn't at worst?

BC

The meaning in my life has been to help my mother with finances and happily live with her. But, I don't feel the desire or passion or zest for life as many other people feel. Does meaning have to be an active goal or can it be a passive goal? Is there a difference, and finally, what gives your life meaning? — Posty McPostface

Maybe "meaning" and "passion or zest" are not necessarily linked. Passion and zest are attributes belonging to an object. Feeling passion and zest by themselves might not be a good thing. What gives your life meaning need not be active, passive, passionate, or zestful.

What it is that gives my life meaning has changed over time, several times. At one time being a college student (back in the carboniferous period) gave my life meaning. Then having a job I liked was a contributor, as was being out on my own, establishing new relationships, making a life, such as it was. Strong beliefs have given my life meaning (sometimes positively, sometimes not). There were stretches of time when life seemed meaningless to me. Refining the meanings of my life so far (70 years) is a source of meaning.

Shawn

What it is that gives my life meaning has changed over time, several times. — Bitter Crank

Haven't you felt a sense of confusion or apathy due to the ever changing aspect of meaning? I'll go on a limb and assert that half of philosophy is the difference between objective measures (normative) of meaning and the differing subjective measure.

Anyhow, I desire one thing, but will it give me happiness? Is meaning a purely subjective matter or is there more to meaning than what whims my mind comes up with desiring or wanting to be so or be bona fide a reality.

BC

Some people are inner directed and some are other directed. Some people are very dependent on approval from others people, and some are much less so. Some people are very hard on themselves because (among other things) they can not meet some very high standard they have themselves set.

People have been complaining for a long time about work being perverted, and of course, it has been perverted for the many.

BC

Haven't you felt a sense of confusion or apathy due to the ever changing aspect of meaning? — Posty McPostface

Of course I've felt confusion; apathy -- not so much. Meaning, for me anyway, hasn't been "ever changing"; it's more like "punctuated change". Several years of confident meaning might suddenly run into the ditch. The search for meaning then bubbles up and is itself a meaning.

One has meaning when one's life feels like it is meaningful -- so yes, it's subjective. Meaning is a very dear thing, but it isn't life itself. Meaninglessness is unpleasant. It's like that quip about hell: "If you find yourself in hell, keep going." (Otherwise, you might get stuck there.) Life seems meaningless at times but we mostly keep going. Why? Because life is itself a meaning, and we will not find additional meanings if we just drop dead from ennui and apathy.

BC

Are compassion and empathy really the answer or is this some other pretentious attempt at giving one's life more meaning than it already has or doesn't at worst? — Posty McPostface

Compassion and love are eminently good things, real and true.

...the Nietzschean interpretation that life is meaningless and power solves all, or the pessimism of Schopenhauer — Posty McPostface

There are aspects of some philosophers / philosophy that one is better off laying aside.

Wayfarer

There was always a copy of Frankl's book around in my house when I grew up (along with books by Erich Fromm, whom I see as comparable.) I never read it cover to cover but I did read from it, and about it, and I admire Frankl.

But I'm puzzled by your remark that 'he doesn't answer the question himself from what I gather. What was the meaning that Dr. Frankl l found in such a horrible and despicable place?' Even the Wikipedia summary of the book provides an answer:

Frankl concludes that the meaning of life is found in every moment of living; life never ceases to have meaning, even in suffering and death. In a group therapy session during a mass fast inflicted on the camp's inmates trying to protect an anonymous fellow inmate from fatal retribution by authorities, Frankl offered the thought that for everyone in a dire condition there is someone looking down, a friend, family member, or even God, who would expect not to be disappointed. Frankl concludes from his experience that a prisoner's psychological reactions are not solely the result of the conditions of his life, but also from the freedom of choice he always has even in severe suffering. The inner hold a prisoner has on his spiritual self relies on having a hope in the future, and that once a prisoner loses that hope, he is doomed.

You see, this is why I think Frankl is a religious thinker, even if not in the mainstream or obvious sense - maybe 'spiritual but not religious', as some would say. I note in the Wikipedia entry on his life, that he did a PhD thesis on the relation of religion and psychology called 'The Unconscious God' (which also mentions Jung, whom I also admire.)

In respect to 'meaning', generally - isn't it obvious that the 'crisis of Western culture' which I think we're all experiencing, is precisely the loss of or lack of meaning? This is what Nietzsche foresaw with his 'death of God'. I think my response to that is the individual has to find meaning - that is the meaning of being a 'seeker' - rather than accept something that is handed down and given to us on a platter. We indeed do have to 'search for meaning'.

Notice the etymological link between logo (as in logotherapy), logos, and logic. Originally, 'logic' was thought to be a feature of the Universe itself; now Western culture by and large thinks the Universe is 'objectively meaningless' and that meaning is subjective, social, cultural or at any rate derivative. That is what we have to overcome, somehow. It's as much a matter of understanding the cultural history of Western thought, as a matter of philosophy - you have to understand how 'Western' thinking culminated in this notion of the Universe being meaningless.

Shawn

But I'm puzzled by your remark that 'he doesn't answer the question himself from what I gather. What was the meaning that Dr. Frankl l found in such a horrible and despicable place?' Even the Wikipedia summary of the book provides an answer:

Frankl concludes that the meaning of life is found in every moment of living; life never ceases to have meaning, even in suffering and death. In a group therapy session during a mass fast inflicted on the camp's inmates trying to protect an anonymous fellow inmate from fatal retribution by authorities, Frankl offered the thought that for everyone in a dire condition there is someone looking down, a friend, family member, or even God, who would expect not to be disappointed. Frankl concludes from his experience that a prisoner's psychological reactions are not solely the result of the conditions of his life, but also from the freedom of choice he always has even in severe suffering. The inner hold a prisoner has on his spiritual self relies on having a hope in the future, and that once a prisoner loses that hope, he is doomed. — Wayfarer

Yes, but that is almost making it sounds like a tautology. He makes the metaphysical claim that everything has to mean and thus makes meaning redundant and inherent in anything we do. How does morality factor in with everything having so much meaning?

Notice the etymological link between logo (as in logotherapy), logos, and logic. Originally, 'logic' was thought to be a feature of the Universe itself; now Western culture by and large thinks the Universe is 'objectively meaningless' and that meaning is subjective, social, cultural or at any rate derivative. That is what we have to overcome, somehow. — Wayfarer

Yes, but (as I like to reference the problem of evil another way) what about the burning fawn in the forest? Does one not have to address the problem of evil when bringing out such a profound, even Pollyanna'ian, statement that the universe is filled with meaning? This was my gist with Frankyl when he says that the universe, and life itself, demands that we give it meaning instead of the other way around.

Wayfarer

It's not 'a metaphysical claim', although the absence of meaning may indeed be a metaphysical ailment.

Does one not have to address the problem of evil when bringing out such a profound statement that the universe is filled with meaning? — Posty McPostface

Not at all. Suffering is the cost of existence. The price of being physical, is physical pain. That is why the point of wisdom teachings is to go beyond the physical - something a materialist culture has entirely lost sight of.

Shawn

It's not 'a metaphysical claim', although the absence of meaning may indeed be a metaphysical ailment. — Wayfarer

Meaning is an observer dependent concept. No observer, no meaning to get all quantum on you.

Not at all. Suffering is the cost of existence. The price of being physical, is physical pain. — Wayfarer

But, is it necessary?

Shawn

↪Wayfarer

Maybe your point is that suffering gives rise to the impetus to meaning in a Buddhist sense? Is that correct?

Wayfarer

Meaning is an observer dependent concept. — Posty McPostface

I don't know about that. The point about 'the modern age' is that it is characterised by disenchantment. That was a term coined by Max Weber referring to 'the cultural rationalization and devaluation of the mystical in modern society. The concept was adopted from Schiller by Weber to describe the character of modernized, bureaucratic, secularized Western society, where scientific understanding is more highly valued than belief, and where processes are oriented toward rational goals, as opposed to traditional society, where for Weber, "the world remains a great enchanted garden" '. So that's to address the point in the OP. I don't think it means you have to wander about starry-eyed but I think we need to be able to get back to that sense of the meaning of things. We are culturally conditioned against that state of being; the way we are educated, the way that us moderns are conditioned to see life, can only drain it of meaning. It's a cultural malaise.

As for the nature of meaning - it's not necessarily a grand romantic vision by any means. In a prosaic sort of way, nature herself is replete with meaning. There's a philosopher of biology that I really like, called Steve Talbott - many of his essays are published on The New Atlantis. I recommend his essays, such as What to organisms mean? (although they're all worth reading.) He says:

Meaning is notoriously difficult to define — and, in fact, meaning lies at the opposite pole from precise definition. Words gain fullness of meaning only when they are removed from the dictionary and placed in a concrete context, where an interplay of qualities, connotations, suggestions, and metaphorical juxtapositions enables the words to interpenetrate and pulsate with many-dimensioned significance. To “nail something down” in a definition is rather like removing all the overtones from what had once been the richly resonant song of a violin string in order to get a precise, definable rate of vibration. Qualities are reduced to number. As semantic historian Owen Barfield has pointed out, every effort at definition, to the degree it achieves the desired endpoint of abstract, decontextualized precision, becomes mere counting. Water, for example, might be defined in terms of boiling point, melting point, density, transparency (percent transmission of light), and so on.

But despite the loss of meaning in the very attempt to define it, we all have a certain sense for what meaning is, because we all know what we mean when we speak.

But what has happened in modern culture is that we locate the sense, or source, of meaning, 'inside ourselves' - not in the mystical sense of 'the within' but in the sense that it is subjective, private and personal. 'The world' is felt to be devoid of meaning, it is just dumb stuff being pushed around by physical forces, out of which we have happened to emerge; we then 'project; or 'create' meaning as a kind of personal project. That's what we're educated to believe nowadays; I think that is part of what Frankl was arguing against.

Agustino

I see people constantly disenfranchised with how much they make (money) — Posty McPostface

Well, I suppose that's true, however, most of us don't make enough to the point we can be really safe if say an accident or the like would happen to us. That's why many people are worried about money. Even if your income is in top 10% of your country, you're still not making a lot likely.

To make a lot you have to pull in approximately $10,000+/month (and in places like New York, likely much more!) net positive cash flow. If you have that kind of cash flow, then you can start saving big, and in a few years of that, you'll accumulate a big enough cushion to be undisturbed by money anymore. But it's not easy to start a business pulling in that kind of income.

So suppose you do get that kind of income, then you need to save it. 120K/year. It takes approximately 8.5 years to reach 1 million like that. If you do reach that level, then you're starting to be a big boy that can be unconcerned about money. You can probably even quit your business or sell it by that point - you'll likely get another $1-2 million cash out of there. With $3 million if you don't live an extravagant lifestyle, you're finally free of all money worries and can focus on other things completely.

But most of us don't reach that level. So money continues to be a worry through out life. That's kind of sad if you ask me. Most of us are forced by circumstances to remain financial prisoners, only one step away from being broke.

On logo-therapy.

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