Mans Search for Meaning

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Mans Search for Meaning

• By Viktor Frankl

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Logotherapy

• Logos denotes meaning (OTS)
• What UTS ideas do you see in the word meaning?

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Logotherapy

• Compared with psychoanalysis, it is less
  retrospective and less introspective
• Focuses on the future
• Its meaning making centered

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Neurosismental or emotional disorder

• Think emo
• Logotherapy breaks up the self-centeredness of
  the neurotic
• It aint all about me?!

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The will to meaning

• Distinguish this will from will to pleasure
  (Freudian) and will to power (Adlerian)
• What values would you die for?

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Existential Frustration.

• with existence itself,
• the meaning of existence,
• the striving to find a concrete meaning in
  personal existence

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This frustration leads to Noogenic Neuroses

• noos denotes from the mind
• Neuroses do not emerge from conflicts between
  drives and instincts but rather from existential
  problems.

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Logotherapy

• About assisting the patient to find meaning in
  his life.
• Make something conscious
• Potential meaning of his existence to be
  fulfilled as well as his will to meaning.

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Freuds Id, Ego, Superegothe creation of tension

• ID
• The id acts as according to the 'pleasure
  principle', seeking to avoid pain or unpleasure
  aroused by increases in instinctual tension.
  (unconscious)

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• Ego
• The Ego acts according to the reality principle
  i.e. it seeks to please the ids drive in
  realistic ways that will benefit in the long term
  rather than bringing grief.

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• Superego
• The Super-ego aims for perfection8. It
  comprises that organised part of the personality
  structure, mainly but not entirely unconscious,
  that includes the individual's ego ideals,
  spiritual goals, and the psychic agency (commonly
  called 'conscience') that criticises and
  prohibits his or her drives, fantasies, feelings,
  and actions.

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Tension is inherent in all of us

• The tension between what one has already achieved
  and what one still ought to accomplish, or the
  gap between what one is and what one should
  become.
• Frankl feels its not about tensionless but
  rather striving to fulfill potential meaning.

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Existential Vacuum

• Struggle with inner void
• Mainly, in a state of boredom

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Search to fill void

• Will to meaning compensated for by the will to
  power,
• The will to money (most primitive)
• The will to pleasure

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Nietzsche

• He who has a why to live for can bear almost any
  how.

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What do you stand for?