Viktor Frankl

A Search for Meaning

Marshall H. Lewis

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781532659157
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

This book accomplishes two distinct tasks. First, it develops the psychological theory of Dr. Viktor E. Frankl as a literary hermeneutic. Second, it applies the hermeneutic by reading the book of Job. Key issues emerge through three movements. The first movement addresses Frankl's concept of the feeling of meaninglessness and his rejection of reductionism and nihilism. The second movement addresses the dual nature of meaning; an association is revealed between Frankl's understanding of meaning and the Joban understanding of wisdom. The third movement involves an exploration of Frankl's ideas of ultimate meaning and self-transcendence.As a Holocaust survivor, Frankl had a personal stake in the effectiveness of his approach. He lived the suffering about which he wrote. Because of this, reading the book of Job with a hermeneutic based on Frankl's ideas will present readers with opportunities to discover unique meanings and serve to clarify their attitudes toward pain, guilt, and death. As meaning is discovered through participation with the text, we will see that Job's final response can become a site for transcending suffering.

1

The Terrible Paradox of Suffering

This book will develop a hermeneutic based on the existential approach to suffering of Dr. Viktor E. Frankl. The process will first situate Frankl’s logotherapy and existential analysis within the disciplines of psychology and hermeneutics. Frankl’s therapeutic approach will be explored. This approach does not dictate a specific meaning for any given event, but consists of a set of psychological principles that allow for the discovery of personal meaning within any given event.1 Frankl’s indebtedness to existentialism and phenomenology will be explored.2 Finally, Frankl’s principles will be developed into a hermeneutic that will be applied to the Book of Job. A logotherapy hermeneutic is one that can provide a vocabulary to reveal truths discovered in the text. As a vocabulary closely associated with both meaning and suffering, it is in a unique position to do so; that is, it is in a unique position to read and understand the text. Special emphasis will be placed on the question of whether Job will “curse God and die.” The question of disinterested piety, or whether Job “fears God for nothing,” will be explored. Job’s final, ambiguous response to the speeches of God will be treated as an existential challenge to the reader. The book will conclude with a discussion of how a logotherapy hermeneutic is of benefit in understanding and responding to this challenge.

The hermeneutic developed here may best be described as a postmodern reading of the book of Job falling within what David E. Klemm describes as practical philosophy, “when interest shifts from the understood meaning to the activity of understanding.”3 Klemm goes on to explain, however, that such a shift does not mean that one looses interest in the meaning presented by the text. Rather, meaning is understood in terms of an interaction between the reader and the text.4 In other words, meaning is not something to be reconstructed, but, rather, is something the reader discovers through an act of dialogue with the text. Jeffrey Boss captures the essence of such a hermeneutic when he writes, “If one reads not simply about Job, but also sees oneself as traveling Job’s journey with him, then it is possible for the reader to be changed or enriched by the experience.”5 As with other contextual hermeneutics, a logotherapy hermeneutic will be conscious of its specific bias, its specific location in place and time. This location is defined by Frankl’s logotherapy and existential analysis. Boss continues, “As the story of Job unfolds it has theological and philosophical implications, and these in turn raise psychological questions.”6 The hermeneutic will be one in which Frankl’s system of psychology—a system that specifically addresses meaning in life despite unavoidable suffering—is set in dialogue with a text that describes unavoidable suffering.

As a Holocaust survivor, Frankl had a personal stake in the effectiveness of his approach. He lived the suffering about which he wrote. Because of this, reading the Book of Job with a hermeneutic based on his understanding will provide fresh insight into meaningful responses to unjust suffering. The text when read with a logotherapy hermeneutic will present opportunities for the reader to discover her own unique meanings as she clarifies her attitudes toward pain, guilt, and death as reflected in each section of Job. The reader informed by logotherapy will actively participate with the text. As meaning is discovered through this participation, we will see that Job’s final response can become a site for the transcending of suffering.

The association of hermeneutics with a system of psychology is not new. For example, Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis is viewed as a form of hermeneutics by Paul Ricoeur.7 As part of Ricoeur’s larger project to mediate among various theories of interpretation, he argues that objective models, such as psychoanalysis, are not incompatible with hermeneutics when hermeneutics is conceived of as either practical philosophy or ontology.8 Ricoeur views hermeneutics as developing in two directions. One direction is “archaic” and belongs “to the infancy of mankind.” Psychoanalysis exemplifies this direction inasmuch as Freud reduces the meanings of dreams, symbols, and religion to primitive psychodynamic processes. The other direction is said to “anticipate our spiritual adventure.” It is understood as a “recollection of meaning.”9 Consequently, logotherapist and psychoanalyst Stephen Costello situates Frankl within Ricoeur’s meaning-oriented hermeneutic.10 Such a hermeneutic renounces psychoanalytic reductionism as does Frankl.11

Ricoeur has called another psychological model for understanding the Book of Job, Carl Jung’s Answer to Job, “one of the most important spiritual texts of the twentieth century.”12 What might be described as Jung’s hermeneutic discerns within the text of Job the beginning of a transformation in the very nature of God, or, at least, in the image of God in the Western psyche.13 This transformation includes the incorporation of the divine feminine within the Godhead through the introduction of the wisdom poem (Sophia/Logos) in chapter 28, a growth in consciousness and in the capacity to love, and an integration of the dark and light sides of God through a reconsid...