First Option
Defend, support, or refute the argument that Man’s Search for Meaning gives us a cogent, appropriate and insightful analysis for evaluating Nikolai’s moral dissolution in the Chekhov short story “Gooseberries.”
Second Option:
Defend, support, or complicate the argument that the determinism evident in the 1999 Alexander Payne film Election is a compelling refutation of Frankl's notion that we are free to find meaning as a cure for our despair and self-destruction. Recommended Research Link for Alternative Option: http://sensesofcinema.com/2012/feature-articles/chance-and-choice-biology-and-theology-in-alexander-paynes-election/
Third Option
Defend, support, or complicate the argument that even though Frankl’s philosophy is informed by his religious faith, one need not be religious to embrace Frankl’s precepts and principles. You can concede that Frankl’s book is “religious” but not in the narrow sense of the word. Rather, it is universally religious. On the other hand, some will argue that the theistic religion that informs Frankl’s philosophy is too narrow to accommodate secular and atheist thinkers. Take a position and explain. You may want to consult Elizabeth Anderson’s “If God Is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?”
Fourth Option
Defend, support, or complicate the argument that Groundhog Day character Phil Connors’ spiritual malaise and eventual spiritual transformation can be analyzed through the lens of the principles in Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.
Fifth Option:
Defend, refute, or complicate the argument that Man’s Search for Meaning is the greatest anti-self-help self-help book ever written.
Consider these distinguishing qualities of traditional self-help books:
- They deny suffering as the central feature of human existence
- They play into reader’s narcissistic fantasy of being special and at the center of the universe.
- They promise easy solutions based on gimmicks intended to look like “insights.”
- They promise easy solutions using common sense dressed up in jargon and pretentious language.
- They tend to condescend to the reader, treating him like a child. There is an infantile, dumbed-down quality to them.
- They make false promises about happiness and self-fulfillment.
- They make being a selfish self-centered lout acceptable and “noble.”
- They place selfish self-interest and self-indulgence over responsibility to oneself and others.
Your guidelines for your Final Research Paper are as follows:
This research paper should present a thesis that is specific, manageable, provable, and contestable—in other words, the thesis should offer a clear position, stand, or opinion that will be proven with research.
You should analyze and prove your thesis using examples and quotes from a variety of sources.
You need to research and cite from at least five sources. You must use at least 3 different types of sources.
At least one source must be from an ECC library database.
At least one source must be a book, anthology or textbook.
At least one source must be from a credible website, appropriate for academic use.
The paper should not over-rely on one main source for most of the information. Rather, it should use multiple sources and synthesize the information found in them.
This paper will be approximately 5-7 pages in length, not including the Works Cited page, which is also required. This means at least 5 full pages of text. The Works Cited page does NOT count towards length requirement.
You must use MLA format for the document, in-text citations, and Works Cited page.
You must integrate quotations and paraphrases using signal phrases and analysis or commentary.
You must sustain your argument, use transitions effectively, and use correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
Your paper must be logically organized and focused.
Lesson 3 Logotherapy
One. Why is logotherapy, a variation of psychotherapy, “difficult to hear”?
Unlike psychotherapy, which is retrospective and introspective, focusing on the patient’s past, logotherapy “focuses rather on the future, that is to say, on the meanings to be fulfilled by the patient in his future.” Logotherapy is “meaning therapy.”
For Frankl, finding meaning is our primary drive, not materialism, power, or sex. We seek purpose first; everything else second.
If we had all our physical needs met either by an inheritance or the government so that we did not have to work and all we did was lounge around, eat, watch TV, engage in social media, and gossip with friends, what would happen to us?
We would die a slow death. We would plummet into despair. We would become zombies, addicts, empty vessels, lost souls. We need a purpose to lift us up from the mire of emptiness and despair.
In John Gatto’s famous essay “Against School,” he writes that students and teachers alike are afflicted boredom. As we read this essay, it becomes clear that boredom is a disease and a psychological cancer that results from engaging in an institution that does not provide meaning but rather wastes our time by warehousing individuals in a glorified baby-sitting service complete with “busy work” that has no meaning whatsoever. A place where we languish and slog toward nothing is equivalent to hell.
In other words, the patient will not play the role of a victim wounded by past events; rather, the patient is held accountable to be responsible to find meaning that will give his or her life purpose out of the mess of suffering.
Frankl criticizes conventional psychotherapy because it puts us in “all the vicious-circle formations and feedback mechanisms which play such a great role in the development of neuroses. Thus, the typical self-centeredness of the neurotic is broken up instead of being continually fostered and reinforced.”
For Frankl, finding meaning is the way to overcome one’s neuroses, not sinking into one’s past wounds.
Too often, revisiting one’s past wounds is an indulgence, an exercise in victimization and narcissism.
Two. Explain why Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning is the greatest anti-self-help self-help book ever written.
Self-help books promise easy happiness and “10 easy steps.” In contrast, Frankl argues that we shouldn’t even strive for happiness. Happiness is the unintended byproduct of meaning.
Second, Frankl says we should seek struggle, tension, conflict, and embrace our suffering as the source of our meaning.
Frankl writes, “What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.”
Three. What is the existential vacuum and what two forces contribute to it?
The existential vacuum is a widespread phenomenon of the 20th century. This is understandable; it may be due to a twofold loss which man has had to undergo since he became a truly human being. At the beginning of human history, man lost some of the basic animal instincts in which an animal's behavior is embedded and by which it is secured. Such security, like paradise, is closed to man forever; man has to make choices. In addition to this, however, man has suffered another loss in his more recent development inasmuch as the traditions which buttressed his behavior are now rapidly diminishing. No instinct tells him what he has to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people tell him to do (totalitarianism).
A statistical survey recently revealed that among my European students, 25 percent showed a more or less marked degree of existential vacuum. Among my American students, it was not 25 but 60 percent.
The existential vacuum manifests itself mainly in a state of boredom. Now we can understand Schopenhauer when he said that mankind was apparently doomed to vacillate eternally between the two extremes of distress and boredom In actual fact, boredom is now causing, and certainly brining to psychiatrists, more problems to solve than distress. And these problems are growing increasingly crucial, for progressive automation will probably lead to an enormous increase in the leisure hours available to the average worker. The pity of it is that many of these will not know what to do with all their newly acquired free time.
Let us consider, for instance, "Sunday Neurosis", that kind of depression which afflicts people who become aware of the lack of content in their lives when the rush of the busy week is over and the void within themselves becomes manifest. Not a few cases of suicide can be traced back to this existential vacuum. Such widespread phenomena as depression, aggression and addiction are not understandable unless we recognize the existential vacuum underlying them. This is also true of the crises of pensioners and aging people.
Moreover, there are various masks and guises under which the existential vacuum appears. Sometimes the frustrated will do meaning is vicariously compensated for by a will to power, including the most primitive form of will to power, the will to money. In other cases, the place of frustrated will to meaning is taken by the will to pleasure. That is why existential frustration often eventuates into sexual compensation. We can observe in such cases that the sexual libido becomes rampant in the existential vacuum.
We see from above the following:
One, humans have lost their instincts and no longer have the animal certainty of their behavior, and they are now prone to second-guessing everything and wondering if they’re “right” in their choices and actions.
Second, there are no longer rituals and traditions that make us feel part of something bigger than us. We therefore feel isolated and out of place.
Not knowing what to do and feeling out of place, we rely on conformism or blind obedience to authority. These actions take away our sense of autonomy, freedom, independence, and sense of higher purpose. We’re merely mindless sheep conforming to society’s standards or obeying orders.
Conformity and obedience may help us “fit in,” but most of us will suffer from the acute disease called boredom.
Boredom is not seen in our society for the disease that it really is. Boredom is a pseudonym for more virulent conditions:
Depression
Ennui, bored not with a specific task or event but with life itself.
Acedia, the sluggishness and lethargy resulting from having no higher purpose
Futility, the sense that our actions don’t amount to anything, that all our actions are useless
Learned helplessness
Hopelessness
Existential vacuum: It's a wasted life and the sick feeling of emptiness that comes from knowing deep down you're living a wasted life.
Frankl writes that boredom causes depression, aggression, and addiction (107).
Four. What “various masks” does the existential vacuum wear?
We read the following:
Moreover, there are various masks and guises under which the existential vacuum appears. Sometimes the frustrated will to meaning is vicariously compensated for by a will to power, including the most primitive form of the will to power, the will to money. In other cases, the place of frustrated will to meaning is taken by the will to pleasure. That is why existential frustration often eventuates in sexual compensation. We can observe in such cases, that the sexual libido becomes rampant in the existential vacuum.
We find that all these masks fail to fill the vacuum in part because of the hedonic treadmill: We adapt to pleasure and power so that they are never enough and we grow numb to the stimulus.
Five. Frankl asserts that the only way to cure ourselves of the existential vacuum is to find the meaning of life. How do we find the meaning of life?
We must now take an excerpt from his book:
The Meaning of Life
I doubt whether a doctor can answer this question in general terms. For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment. To put the question in general terms would be comparable to the question posed to a chess champion, “Tell me, Master, what is the best move in the world?” There simply is no such thing as the best or even a good move apart from a particular situation in a game and the particular personality of one's opponent. The same holds for human existence. One should not search for an abstract meaning of life. Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone's task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it.
As each situation in life represents a challenge to man and presents a problem for him to solve, the question of the meaning of life may actually be reversed. Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible. Thus, logotherapy sees in responsibleness the very essence of human existence.
The Essence of Existence
This emphasis on responsibleness is reflected in the categorical imperative of logotherapy, which is: “So live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!” It seems to me that there is nothing which would stimulate a man's sense of responsibleness more than this maxim, which invites him to imagine first that the present is past and, second, that the past may yet be changed and amended. Such a precept confronts him with life's finiteness as well as the finality of what he makes out of both his life and himself.
Logotherapy tries to make the patient fully aware of his own responsibleness; and therefore it must leave to him the option for what, to what or to whom, he understands himself to be responsible. That is why a logotherapist is the least tempted of all psychotherapists to impose value judgments on the patient, for he will never permit the patient to pass to the doctor the responsibility of judging. It is, therefore, up to the patient to decide whether he should interpret his life task as being responsible to society or to his own conscience. The majority, however, consider themselves accountable before God; they represent those who do not interpret their own lives merely in terms of a task assigned to them but also in terms of the task-master who has assigned it to them.
Logotherapy is neither teaching nor preaching. It is as far removed from logical reasoning as it is from moral exhortation. To put it figuratively, the role played by a logotherapist is rather that of an eye specialist than of a painter. A painter tries to convey to us a picture of the world as he sees it, an ophthalmologist tries to enable us to see the world as it really is. The logotherapist's role consists in widening and broadening the visual field of the patient so that the whole spectrum of meaning and values becomes conscious and visible to him. Logotherapy does not need to impose any judgments on the patient; for, actually, truth imposes itself and needs no intervention.
By declaring that man is a responsible creature and must actualize the potential meaning of his life, I wish to stress that the true meaning of life is to be found in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system. By the same token, the real aim of human existence cannot be found in what is called self-actualization. Human existence is essentially self-transcendence rather than self-actualization. Self-actualization is not a possible aim at all; for the simple reason that the more a man would strive for it, the more he would miss it. For only to the extent to which man commits himself to the fulfillment of his life’s meaning, to this extent he also actualizes himself. In other words, self-actualization cannot be attained if it is made an end in itself, but only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.
The world must not be regarded as a mere expression of one's self. Nor must the world be considered as a mere instrument, or as a means to the end of one’s self-actualization. In both cases, the world view, or the Weltanschauung, turns into a Weltentwertung, i.e., a depreciation of the world.
Thus far we have shown that the meaning of life always changes, but that it never ceases to be. According to logotherapy, we can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by doing a deed, (2) by experiencing a value, (3) by suffering. The first, the way of achievement or accomplishment, is quite obvious. The second and third need further elaboration.
The second way of finding a meaning in life is by experiencing something, such as a work of nature or culture; and also by experiencing someone, i.e., by love.
The Meaning of Love
Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By the spiritual act of love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him; which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true.
In logotherapy, love is not interpreted as a mere epiphenomenon (a phenomenon that occurs as the result of a primary phenomenon) of sexual drives and instincts in the sense of a so-called sublimation. Love is as primary a phenomenon as sex. Normally, sex is a mode of expression for love. Sex is justified, even sanctified, as soon as, but only as long as, it is a vehicle of love. Thus love is not understood as a mere side-effect of sex but a way of expressing the experience of that ultimate togetherness which is called love.
A third way to find a meaning in life is by suffering.
The Meaning of Suffering
Whenever one is confronted with an inescapable, unavoidable situation, whenever one has to face a fate which cannot be changed, e.g., an incurable disease, such as an inoperable cancer; just then one is given a last chance to actualize the highest value, to fulfill the deepest meaning, the meaning of suffering. For what matters above all is the attitude we take toward suffering, the attitude in which we take our suffering upon ourselves.
Let me cite a clear-cut example: Once, an elderly general practitioner consulted me because of his severe depression. He could not overcome the loss of his wife who had died two years before and whom he had loved above all else. Now how could I help him? What should I tell him? Well, I refrained from telling him anything but instead confronted him with the question, “What would have happened, Doctor, if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive you?” “Oh,” he said, “for her this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!” Whereupon I replied, “You see, Doctor, such a suffering has been spared her, and it was you who have spared her this suffering; but now, you have to pay for it by surviving and mourning her.” He said no word but shook my hand and calmly left my office. Suffering ceases to be suffering in some way at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.
Of course, this was no therapy in the proper sense since, first, his despair was no disease; and second, I could not change his fate, I could not revive his wife. But in that moment I did succeed in changing his attitude toward his unalterable fate inasmuch as from that time on he could at least see a meaning in his suffering. It is one of the basic tenets of logotherapy that man's main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life. That is why man is even ready to suffer, on the condition, to be sure, that his suffering has a meaning.
It goes without saying that suffering would not have a meaning unless it were absolutely necessary; e.g., a cancer which can be cured by surgery must not be shouldered by the patient as though it were his cross. This would be masochism rather than heroism. But if a doctor can neither heal the disease nor bring relief to the patient by easing his pain, he should enlist the patient’s capacity to fulfill the meaning of his suffering. Traditional psychotherapy has aimed at restoring one's capacity to work and to enjoy life; logotherapy includes these, yet goes further by having the patient regain his capacity to suffer, if need be, thereby finding meaning even in suffering.
In this context Edith Weisskopf-Joelson, professor of psychology at Purdue University, contends, in her article on logotherapy, that “our current mental-hygiene philosophy stresses the idea that people ought to be happy, that unhappiness is a symptom of maladjustment. Such a value system might be responsible for the fact that the burden of unavoidable unhappiness is increased by unhappiness about being unhappy.” And in another paper she expresses the hope that logotherapy “may help counteract certain unhealthy trends in the present-day culture of the United States, where the incurable sufferer is given very little opportunity to be proud of his suffering and to consider it ennobling rather than degrading” so that “he is not only unhappy, but also ashamed of being unhappy.”
There are situations in which one is cut off from the opportunity to do one's work or to enjoy one's life; but what never can be ruled out is the unavoidability of suffering. In accepting this challenge to suffer bravely, life has a meaning up to the last moment, and it retains this meaning literally to the end. In other words, life's meaning is an unconditional one for it even includes the potential meaning of suffering.
Let me recall that which was perhaps the deepest experience I had in the concentration camp. The odds of surviving the camp were no more than 1 to 20, as can easily be verified by exact statistics. It did not even seem possible, let alone probable, that the manuscript of my first book which I had hidden in my coat when I arrived at Auschwitz, would ever be rescued. Thus, I had to undergo and to overcome the loss of my spiritual child. And now it seemed as if nothing and no one would survive me; neither a physical nor a spiritual child of my own! So I found myself confronted with the question whether under such circumstances my life was ultimately void of any meaning.
Not yet did I notice that an answer to this question with which I was wrestling so passionately was already in store for me, and that soon thereafter this answer would be given to me. This was the case when I had to surrender my clothes and in turn inherited the worn-out rags of an inmate who had already been sent to the gas chamber immediately after his arrival at the Auschwitz railway station. Instead of the many pages of my manuscript, I found in a pocket of the newly acquired coat one single page torn out of a Hebrew prayer book, containing the main Jewish prayer, Shema Yisrael. How should I have interpreted such a “coincidence” other than as a challenge to live my thoughts instead of merely putting them on paper?
A bit later, I remember, it seemed to me that I would die in the near future. In this critical situation, however, my concern was different from that of most of my comrades. Their question was, “Will we survive the camp? For, if not, all this suffering has no meaning.” The question which beset me was, “Has all this suffering, this dying around us, a meaning? For, if not, then ultimately there is no meaning to survival; for a life whose meaning depends upon such a happenstance - as whether one escapes or not - ultimately would not be worth living at all.”
Summary of the Above
One. Meaning is not one size fits all.
Two. Meaning is not abstract.
Three. Meaning is concrete. It is a concrete vocation or mission.
Four. Meaning is problem-based. It’s about problem solving. We find a crisis or a problem and we devote our life to overcoming this crisis or problem.
Five. We don’t choose meaning. Life chooses meaning for us because meaning is based on specific circumstances that are occurring in the moment.
Six. Meaning can only be discovered when we embrace the finiteness of life. We must not treat our lives with reckless contempt as if we are never going to die. Death demands that we change our life so that death cannot take away the meaning of our life.
Seven. Logotherapy, the search for meaning, is not about preaching to the patient: It is about helping the patient see his life through a wider lens so that he can be free to make a wiser decision that will point him to his individual meaning (110).
Eight. Meaning cannot be found in isolation, internally, or “within man or his own psyche”; rather, meaning must be found by engaging in the world.
Nine. Meaning is about self-forgetting: “The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love—the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.”
Ten. We find meaning in 3 ways: our work, our love for others and the connections forged through that love, and the courageous attitude we adopt toward inevitable suffering.
Eleven. When we discover how our suffering has meaning, we embrace our suffering with a changed attitude that allows us to find meaning (113).
Twelve. The belief that we are entitled to be happy makes us less happy and prevents us from finding a life of meaning.
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