The Unheard Cry for Meaning

Psychotherapy and Humanism

Viktor E. Frankl

• Publisher: Touchstone
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781451664386
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Existentialpsychologie

In our age of depersonalization, Frankl teaches the value of living to the fullest. Upon his death in 1997, Viktor E. Frankl was lauded as one of the most influential thinkers of our time. The Unheard Cry for Meaning marked his return to the humanism that made Man's Search for Meaning a bestseller around the world. In these selected essays, written between 1947 and 1977, Dr. Frankl illustrates the vital importance of the human dimension in psychotherapy. Using a wide range of subjects—including sex, morality, modern literature, competitive athletics, and philosophy—he raises a lone voice against the pseudo-humanism that has invaded popular psychology and psychoanalysis. By exploring mankind's remarkable qualities, he brilliantly celebrates each individual's unique potential, while preserving the invaluable traditions of both Freudian analysis and behaviorism.

The Unheard Cry for Meaning*

A literal translation of the term “logotherapy” is “therapy through meaning,” Of course, it could also be translated as “healing through meaning,” although this would bring in a religious overtone that is not necessarily present in logotherapy. In any case, logotherapy is a meaning-centered (psycho-) therapy.

The notion of a therapy through meaning is the very reverse of the traditional conceptualization of psychotherapy, which could rather be formulated as meaning through therapy. Indeed, if traditional psychotherapy squarely faces the issue of meaning and purpose at all—that is, if it takes meaning and purpose at face value rather than reducing them to mere fake values, as by deducing them from “defense mechanisms” or “reaction formations”†—it does so in the vein of a recommendation that you just have your Oedipal situation settled, just get rid of your castration fears, and you will be happy, you will actualize your self and your own potentialities, and you will become what you were meant to be. In other words, meaning will come to you by itself. Doesn’t it sound somewhat like, Seek ye first the kingdom of Freud and Skinner, and all these things will be added unto you?

But it did not work out that way. Rather, it turned out that, if a neurosis could be removed, more often than not when it was removed a vacuum was left. The patient was beautifully adjusted and functioning, but meaning was missing. The patient had not been taken as a human being, that is to say, a being in steady search of meaning; and this search for meaning, which is so distinctive of man, had not been taken seriously at its face value, but was seen as a mere rationalization of underlying unconscious psychodynamics. It had been overlooked or forgotten that if a person has found the meaning sought for, he is prepared to suffer, to offer sacrifices, even, if need be, to give his life for the sake of it. Contrariwise, if there is no meaning he is inclined to take his life, and he is prepared to do so even if all his needs, to all appearances, have been satisfied.

All this was brought home to me by the following report, which I received from a former student of mine: At an American university, 60 students who had attempted suicide were screened afterward, and 85 percent said the reason had been that “life seemed meaningless.” Most important, however, 93 percent of these students suffering from the apparent meaninglessness of life “were actively engaged socially, were performing well academically, and were on good terms with their family groups.” What we have here, I would say, is an unheard cry for meaning, and it certainly is not limited to only one university. Consider the staggering suicide rates among American college students, second only to traffic accidents as the most frequent cause of death. Suicide attempts might be fifteen times more frequent.

This happens in the midst of affluent societies and in the midst of welfare states! For too long we have been dreaming a dream from which we are now waking up: the dream that if we just improve the socioeconomic situation of people, everything will be okay, people will become happy. The truth is that as the struggle for survival has subsided, the question has emerged: survival for what? Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.*

On the other hand, we see people being happy under adverse, even dire, conditions. Let me quote from a letter I received from Cleve W., who wrote it when he was Number 049246 in an American state prison: “Here in prison … there are more and more blissful opportunities to serve and grow. I’m really happier now than I’ve ever been.” Notice: happier than ever—in prison!

Or let me take up a letter that I recently received from a Danish family doctor: “For half a year my very dear father was seriously ill with cancer. The last three months of his life he lived in my house—looked after by my beloved wife and myself. What I really want to tell you is that those three months were the most blessed time in the lives of my wife and me. Being a doctor and a nurse, of course, we had the resources to cope with everything, but I shall never in my life forget all the evenings when I read him sentences from your book. He knew for three months that his illness was fatal … but he never gave a complaint. Until his last evening I kept telling him how happy we were that we could experience this close contact for those last weeks, and how poor we would have been if he had just died from a heart attack lasting a few seconds. Now I have not only read about these things, I have experienced them, so I can only hope that I shall be able to meet fate the same way my father did.” Again, someone is happy in the face of tragedy and in spite of suffering—but in view of meaning! Truly, there is a healing force in meaning.

Returning to the subject of therapy through meaning, does this imply that neurosis is caused in each and every case by a lack of meaning? No; the only thing I wanted to convey is the fact that if there is a lack of meaning, filling up the vacuum will result in a therapeutic effect, even if the neurosis was not caused by the vacuum! In this sense the great physician Paracelsus was right when he said that diseases originate in the realm of nature, but healing comes from the realm of the spirit. To put it in more technical terms, in the terminology of logotherapy, a neurosis is not necessarily noögenic, i.e., resulting from a sense of meaninglessness. There is still a place for psychodynamics as well as conditioning and learning processes underlying a psychogenic neurosis, which is a neurosis in the traditional sense. But logotherapy insists that beyond these pathogenic factors there is also a dimension of specifically human phenomena, such as man’s search for meaning, and unless we recognize that the frustration of this search may also cause neurosis we cannot understand, let alone overcome, the ills of our age.

In this context I would like to stress that the human dimension—or, as it is also called in logotherapy, the noölogical dimension—goes beyond the psychological dimension, and thus is the higher; but being “higher” means only that it is the more inclusive, encompassing the lower dimension. Findings within the individual dimensions cannot be mutually exclusive. The uniqueness of man, his humanness, does not contradict the fact that in the psychological and biological dimensions he still is an animal.

Therefore it is perfectly legitimate for us to use the sound findings of both psychodynamically and behavioristically oriented research, and to adopt some of the techniques that are based on them. When these techniques are incorporated into a psychotherapy that follows man into the human dimension, as logotherapy does, their therapeutic effectiveness can only be enhanced.

I have spoken of the biological dimension. In fact, along with noölogical and psychological factors, somatic ones also are involved in the etiology of mental illness. At least in the etiology of psychoses (rather than neuroses) biochemistry and heredity are of some importance, even though the bulk of symptomatology is psychogenic.

Last but not least, we must note the fact that there are also sociogenic neuroses. This designation is particularly applicable to the mass neurosis of today, namely, the feeling of meaninglessness. Patients no longer complain of inferiority feelings or sexual frustration as they did in the age of Adler and Freud. Today they come to see us psychiatrists because of feelings of futility. The problem that brings them crowding into our clinics and offices now is existential frustration, their “existential vacuum”—a term I coined as long ago as 1955. I described the condition itself in publications that date back to 1946. Thus we logotherapists may say that we were aware of what was in store for the masses long before it became a widespread, worldwide phenomenon.

Albert Camus once contended “There is but one truly serious problem, and that is … judging whether life is or is not worth living.…”* I was reminded of this recently when I was given a report in which I see a confirmation of what I said before, namely, that the existential question of a meaning to life and the existential quest for a meaning to life are haunting people today more than their sexual problems. A high-school teacher invited his students to present him with any questions they might wish, and they were allowed to do so anonymously. The questions ranged from drug addiction and sex down to life on other planets, but the most frequent subject—one wouldn’t believe it!—was suicide.

But why should society be blamed for this state of affairs? Are we really justified in diagnosing a sociogenic neurosis? Consider today’s society: it gratifies and satisfies virtually every need—except for one, the need for meaning! One may say that some needs are even created by today’s society; yet the need for meaning remains unfulfilled—in the midst of and in spite of all our affluence.

The affluence of our society is reflected not only in material goods but also in leisure time. In this connection we should give a hearing to Jerry Mandel, who writes: “Technology has deprived us of the need to use our survival skills. Thus, we have developed a system of welfare which guarantees that one can survive without making any effort on one’s own behalf. When as few as 15 percent of the country’s labor force could in fact supply the needs of the entire population through the use of technology, then we have to face two problems: which 15 percent will work, and how will the others deal with the fact that they are dispensable, and the consequent loss of meaning? Perhaps logotherapy may have more to say to twenty-first century America than it has already said to twentieth-century America.”*

Today, to be sure, we also have to cope with unintentional leisure in the form of unemployment. Unemployment may cause a specific neurosis—“unemployment neurosis,” as I called it when I first described it in 1933. But again, upon closer investigation it turned out that the real cause was the confusion of one’s being unemployed with his being useless and, hence, his life’s being meaningless. Financial compensation, or for that matter social security, is not enough. Man does not live by welfare alone.

Take the typical welfare state of Austria, which is blessed with social security and is not plagued by unemployment. And yet in an interview our Chancellor Bruno Kreisky expressed his concern about the psychological conditions of the citizens, saying that what is most important and urgent today is to counteract the feeling that life is meaningless.

The feeling of meaninglessness, the existential vacuum, is increasing and spreading to the extent that, in truth, it may be called a mass neurosis. There is ample evidence in the form of publications in professional journals to indicate that it is not confined to capitalist states but can also be observed in Communist countries. It makes itself noticeable even in the Third World.*

This brings up the question of its etiology and symptoms. As to the former, let me offer you this brief explanation: Unlike other animals, man is not told by drives and instincts what he must do, and unlike man in former times, he is no longer told by traditions and traditional values what he should do. Now, lacking these directives, he sometimes does not know what he wants to do. The result? Either he does what other people do—which is conformism—or he does what other people want him to do—which is totalitarianism.

James C. Crumbaugh, Leonard T. Maholick, Elisabeth S. Lukas and Bernard Dansart have developed various logotherapeutic tests (PIL, SONG and Logo tests) to ascertain the degree of existential frustration in a given population, and thus it is also possible empirically to verify and validate my hypothesis on the origin of the existential vacuum. With reference to the role ascribed to the decay of traditions, I see some corroboration in Diana D. Young’s dissertation at the University of California. As she could evidence by tests and statistical research, young people are suffering from the existential vacuum more than older generations. Since it is also the young in whom the wane of traditions is most pronounced, this finding suggests that the crumbling of traditions is a major factor accounting for the existential vacuum. It is also in accordance with a statement made by Karol Marshal of the East Side Mental Health Center in Bellevue, Washington, who “characterized the feeling among those in the pre-30 age group who come in for help as a sense of purposelessness.”*

Speaking of the young generation brings to mind a lecture I was invited to give at a major American university, and its student sponsors’ insistence that the lecture be titled “Is the New Generation Mad?” It is time, indeed, to ask whether people suffering from the feeling of meaninglessness are in fact neurotic, and if so, in which sense. In short, the question reads: Is what we have called the mass neurosis of today really a neurosis?

Let me postpone answering and first briefly review the symptomatology of the existential vacuum, what I would like to call the mass neurotic triad, comprising depression, aggression and addiction.

Depression and its sequel, suicide, we have discussed. As to aggression, I refer the reader to the chapters on sports and on humanistic psychology. So we have here to elaborate only on the third aspect of the triad, in order to show that, alongside depression and aggression, addiction too is at least partially to be traced back to the feeling of meaninglessness.

Since I advanced this hypothesis numerous authors have supported it. Betty Lou Padelford devoted a dissertation to “The Influence of Ethnic Background, Sex, and Father Image upon the Relationship Between Drug Involvement and Purpose in Life” (United States International University, San Diego, January 1973). The data generated by her study of 416 students “failed to identify significant differences between the extent of drug involvement reported by students having a weak father image as opposed to students having a strong father image.” However, a significant relationship between drug involvement and purpose in life was found beyond reasonable doubt (r = –.23; p < .001). The mean drug-involvement index for students with low purpose in life (8.90) was found to differ significantly from the mean drug-involvement index for students with high purpose in life (4.25).

Dr. Padelford also reviews the literature in the field which, like her own research, is favorable to my existential vacuum hypothesis. Nowlis addressed the question of why students were attracted to drugs and found that one reason often given was “the desire to find meaning in life.” A survey of 455 students in the San Diego area, conducted by Judd et al. for the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse, found that users of both marijuana and hallucinogens indicated they were bothered by and had suffered over the lack of meaning of life more than had nonusers. Another study, conducted by Mirin et al., found that heavy drug use was correlated with a search for meaningful experience and diminished goal-directed activity. Linn surveyed 700 undergraduates at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, in 1968 and reported that marijuana users, compared with nonusers, were more concerned about the meaning of life. Krippner et al. theorize that drug use may be a form of self-administered psychotherapy for people with existential problems, citing a 100-percentpositive response to “Have things seemed meaningless to you?” Shean and Fechtmann found that students who had smoked marijuana regularly over a six-month period scored significantly lower (p < .001) on Crumbaugh’s Purpose-in-Life (PIL) Test than did the nonusers.

Parallel findings have been published with regard to the addiction to alcohol. Annemarie von Forstmeyer has shown in a dissertation that 18 out of 20 alcoholics looked upon their existence as meaningless and without purpose (United States International University, 1970). Accordingly, logotherapeutically oriented techniques have proved superior to other forms of therapy. When James C. Crumbaugh measured existential vacuum to compare the outcome of group logotherapy with results achieved by an alcoholic treatment unit and a marathon therapy program, “only logotherapy showed a statistically significant improvement.”*

That logotherapy equally lends itself to the treatment of drug addiction has been shown by Alvin R. Fraiser at the Narcotic Addict Rehabilitation Center at Norco, California. Since 1966 he has used logotherapy in working with narcotic addicts and as a result, he says, “I have become the only counselor in the history of the institution to have three consecutive years of the highest success rate (success meaning that the addict is not returned to the institution within one year after release). My approach to dealing with the addict has resulted in a three-year 40 percent success rate as compared to an institutional average of about 11 percent (using the established approach).”

It goes without saying that, in addition to the three covert symptoms of the existential vacuum subsumed in the mass neurotic triad, also other symptoms occur, be it on a covert or an overt level. To come back to the question of whether or not the feeling of meaninglessness itself constitutes mental illness, Sigmund Freud, it is true, once wrote in a letter to Princess Bonaparte: “The moment one inquires about the sense or value of life, one is sick.” But I think that, rather than exhibiting mental illness, someone worrying about the meaning of life is proving his humanness. One need not be a neurotic to be concerned with the quest for a meaning to life, but one does need to be a truly human being. After all, as I have pointed out, the search for meaning is a distinctive characteristic of being human. No other animal has ever cared whether or not there is a meaning to life, not even Konrad Lorenz’ grey geese. But man does.

THE WILL TO MEANING

Man is always reaching out for meaning, always setting out on his searc...