The following lecture was presented by Viktor Frankl, MD, on November 14, 1980, in Atlanta, Georgia. He spoke to a group of mental health-care professionals from a variety of mental health institutions and private practices. I was privileged to attend. I taped his presentation, with his permission, and later had my secretary, Elma Hill, transcribe it. I then edited it for readability.
Dr. Frankl was among the most important people of the 20th Century. He was a victim of the Nazis in the concentration camps. He was Jewish, and along with the others, suffered horrors with which the world has not yet completely reconciled. Like the book of Job in the Old Testament, which dealt with the meaning of suffering, Frankl and other Holocaust Jews suffered horribly. However, because Frankl had the specialized training in psychiatry and medicine—and he survived the Nazi horrors—he was able to see aspects of suffering that seemed to elude the writer of Job. In any event he was able to put a more modern, scientific slant on it. His reflections on his personal suffering led him to write the book, Man’s Search For Meaning. He later developed a type of therapy, which he called logotherapy, and spent the rest of his life treating patients, writing, and lecturing. I highly recommend all of his writings for those interested, with Man’s Search For Meaning being sufficient for the general reader interested in the concept of: Why do good people have to suffer, and what can we do about it?
LECTURE
Speaking of counseling centers, I am reminded of the fact that late in the 1920’s I founded, organized, and directed the Youth Counseling Centers in Vienna, after a pattern in several other cities, all capitols of Europe. These centers had already been organized, and I then reported statistically on what had happened throughout these centers in the ensuing years in psychoanalytic journals. And it turned out that most of the people who had consulted these centers had come mostly because of sexual problems.
Then, about fifty years ago, a teacher in Vienna presented me with another study which showed a drastic change. He had invited his students to ask him questions about what was on their minds. There were questions about sex and drugs— and questions such as, “Is there life on other planets?” However, the most frequently asked questions regarded suicide among students thirteen to fourteen years of age! I suppose that now you’ll have an understanding of my contention that the scenery has markedly changed since the times of Sigmund Freud.
No longer is sex the main problem today—but existential questions are paramount! Questions, which according to the philosopher Camus, are the real philosophical concerns: whether life is worthwhile—or is suicide the one thing to commit? No longer, as in the times of psychiatrist Alfred Adler, are inferiority feelings driving our patients to psychologists and psychiatrists, but it is feelings of futility, a feeling of meaninglessness, combined with emptiness—what I have come to call the “existential vacuum.”
I coined this term “existential vacuum” as early as 1955, and since that time it has become widespread and a worldwide phenomenon. And it is worldwide, which can be seen from the fact that it is in no way restricted to our western world or culture, but it makes itself noticed in every communist country and in the third world. All this is evidenced in the scientific literature, by publications throughout communist countries and the third world. A dissertation by Dianna Young of the University of California at Berkley, shows that it is particularly the young generation that is afflicted so much by this present state of affairs, and this evidence is supported and confirmed by something that psychologist Harold Marshall, a counselor in Belleview, Washington, found out: mainly, that those in their thirties who come in for help have a sense of purposelessness, and this deteriorates into depression.
Now, speaking of depression, what comes to mind is what I usually call the “mass-erupted triad,’ mainly depression, aggression, and addiction. Let me report to you what happened a couple of years ago when a lecture of mine was scheduled in Athens, Georgia, at the University of Georgia, upon the invitation of the student body. They wrote to me that I should come, and insisted that I had to lecture under the title, Is The New Generation Mad? I was very resistant, but I couldn’t help it; I had to lecture on this subject.
Arriving in Atlanta there was a thunderstorm and the plane from Atlanta to Athens was cancelled, so I had to take a taxi at the last moment. The driver asked me several times, “What are you doing in Athens in such bad weather?” I said I had to give a lecture.
“A lecture? Aha, upon what subject are you going to speak?”
I replied, “The title of my lecture is “Is The New generation Mad?” I told him not to laugh. “I’ll make you the final composer. I’ll take over the taxi driving and you take over my lecture.”
“Oh, I couldn’t do that,” he replied.
“Why not?” I asked. “You are much closer to the situation of the young generation than I am—and I have just arrived from Vienna!”
“Oh, I couldn’t do that.”
“Now, why don’t you tell me then, what do you believe? Is the new generation mad?”
You know what he said, literally! “Of course they’re mad. They kill themselves, they kill each other, and they take dope!”
Depression, aggression, and addiction!
How should we cope today with this mass feeling of emptiness and meaninglessness? It is very hard to do because our industrial society is eager to satisfy virtually any and every need. The consumer society of today creates, rather than just satisfies needs. And one need is forgotten—even overlooked! The most important human need, the most specific human need. This is frustrating. It is the need to see and fulfill in one’s life a meaning, a function, a mission, an assignment. This is the will to meaning, as I call it, and it is being frustrated by society and psychological science.
Due to certain reasons, which I am going to discuss later on, science and its technology supplies us with the means to live, but it cannot offer us a meaning to live for. Let me quote something a Nobel Prize physicist once allowed: “The world of natural science is lacking in whatever relates to the meaning and purpose of hope. And a similar statement has been made by Einstein.”
Now, the fact has to be acknowledged and faced that science cannot offer you any meaning and purpose. But even worse, the way in which science is transmitted in spirit to our youngsters on most of our campuses, the way young people are being indoctrinated, is such that their natural and original enthusiasm, or idealism, is undermined and eroded because of what is called reductionism. You see, often people are deploring the fact that, increasingly, scientists are specializing, losing sight of the larger picture. This is nothing to be deplored, as I see it, but what is to be deplored is just the contrary—that so many scientists who are specialists are generalizing! They are coming up with over- generalized statements about things they know little about.
Let me give you an example. My natural science teacher in high school was marching up and down the rows of students, speaking in that detached manner of his, which was so typical of the scientists of his day, poker-faced, teaching us that life, in the ultimate analysis, is nothing but a combustion process—or oxidation! I immediately jumped on my feet and threw this question to his face, “If that is so, what meaning then does our life have?” He couldn’t answer that question because he was a reductionist—or should I say an oxidationist!
One book review on Goethe goes as follows: “In the 1530 pages of this book the author portrays to us a genius, Goethe, with earmarks of mania, depression, paranoia, epileptic disorder, homosexuality, incest, voyeurism, fetishism, impotence, narcissism, obsession, compulsive neurosis, hysteria, megalomania, etc.” The author seems to focus almost exclusively upon the instinctive dynamic forces that underlie artistic problems. We are led to believe that Goethe’s work is but the result of pre-genital extensions, that he does not really aim for an idea of beauty, but for the overcoming of the embarrassing problem of premature ejaculation! This is a flagrant instance of reductionism, reducing everything down to a lower dimension.
In another book you come across the following definition of man: “Man is nothing but a biochemically complex mechanism, powered by a combustion system, with the storage facilities for retaining and coding information.” That’s all there is to a human being, apparently.
(At this point Frankel went to a blackboard and drew a picture of cube, casting a shadow, which was a two dimensional square. Then he drew a picture of a three dimensional cylinder, which could cast two shadows: a rectangle or a circle, depending on the direction of the light source.)
Now, do not misunderstand what I am intending to say; after all I am a professor of neurology. I stand for the legitimacy to interpret the central nervous system of man in terms of action, functions, or, in computer terms. But at the same time, I insist that a computer of the human being is also more than a computer. You see, in a way, the computer is included in the human brain. But if you take a three dimensional cube and shine a light on it, it will cast only a two dimensional shadow of a square, but we know that the cube is more than its shadow. In a way the cube also is the square, because it contains the two dimensional square, but at the same time you will note the cube is more than the square. From this projection—which is the essence of reductionism–what results is a contradiction.
Now I hope you are able to follow me with my figures I have drawn. Now you see a rectangle and a circle. In this context they are contradictions, but my contention is that the contradictions seem not to contradict the oneness of a phenomenon that is so contradictorily depicted. As you can see, the three dimensional cylinder can cast two different types of shadows: a circle and a rectangle, which are different projections (shadows) of the one cylinder, depending on the direction of the light source. However, the circle and the rectangle are absolutely different. Now, you can well see that these two contradictions all are projections (shadows) of the one and same cylinder. Here we are taking a three dimensional object and reducing it down to two two-dimensional representations.
The same now holds for the human being. If you project a human being out of his full dimensionality into a dimension lower than his own, the result is either a biological or a psychological projection. In other words, the oneness of the human being necessarily disappears, because the oneness is only perceptible and noticeable in the next higher image, in the three dimensional space where the cylinder is residing. But as to man, the full dimension of the human phenomenon has been shut out of the realm where the dimension of his search for meaning is residing. That is why you have to open up this dimension. You have to enter this human dimension. You have to follow man into his human dimension, if for no other reason than to understand his motivation, because unless you understand one’s motivation you are incapable of overcoming his frustration. So, you have to enter the human dimension to become cognizant of the way to meaning, and to become able to cope with the ills and ailments of our time. If one’s will to meaning is being satisfied then that human being becomes happy—only not by striving for happiness, but by pursuing meaning, because happiness only helps you as a side effect. Now, since a human being, whose will- to-meaning is being satisfied, also becomes happy, at the same time it is most interesting that he also becomes capable of suffering, of enduring tensions and frustrations, and eventually he is prepared to give his life.
Consider the various political resistance movements throughout the world and throughout history. If one’s will to meaning is being frustrated and remains unsatisfied, then one is inclined to take one’s life—and will do it in the midst of, and in spite of, affluence and welfare. What I want to convey to you is that people might have the means to live, but unless they also have a means to live for, they are threatened by depression and suicide.
Now, let us ask for a moment how it is that a psychology that is fascinated by the pattern of natural science, that such a psychology is ignoring these concepts such as meaning and purpose. I’ll try to show why this is happening.
The observation of any process immediately influences a process itself. Now, what about psychological processes? You see, the observing eye of the psychologist is fascinated by the natural science model. He observes the human being, and the human being is the subject–but the observation changes the person into a mere object. Now, it is my personal theory that it is the essence of the subject that it has an object of its own. What do I mean by that? I just mean that the existential thinker sees the intentionality of man as an activity which focuses on something, or someone beyond himself. He sees the essence of the human being basically not concerned with anything within himself, but, on the contrary, he’s reaching beyond himself to meanings to fulfill, to other human beings to love. Now this intentionality, or this directiveness toward objects of its own, is benign, shut out, and excluded and cut off from the subject by its being made into an object. And what it finally does is that in the world in which a human being exists, and this is called being in the world, and this being with other people, rather than being concerned with homeostasis, satisfaction of drives, needs and, conditioning, etc., is being shut out.
Nevertheless, this would constitute the reasons of my act; I’m acting to a world rather than reacting to stimuli, rather than reacting to instincts and drives. The psychodynamic model depicts man abreacting to tensions. The behaviorist model depicts man as reacting to stimuli. But actually man is neither abreacting nor reacting, but is acting, and he is acting into a world of fellow human beings and of meaning, and this is shut out, so they have no reasons to act and behave. And what remains instead of the reasons are causes. Is there a difference between a reason for acting or a cause that propels me to act? There is a difference. If you cut onions, you start to cry. Your tears have a cause, but your tears have no reason. If you’re crying because your loved one has died, you would have a reason to cry. With onions it is just a cause for your tears. In other words, now that man has been made into an object there are no reasons out in the world, but only causes that call one to behave one way or the other. The causes have to be hypothesized in terms of drives, instincts, conditioning, and learning processes, so this is no longer a human being that you are doing psychology about. I hope I can make myself understood this way.
If we wish to re-humanize psychotherapy, we have to follow man into the human dimension, to become cognizant of his meaning orientation rather than his drive and instincts. Is this to say that we just dismiss science and scientific methodology? Not at all. We just have to overcome the one-sidedness.
Out of research has come the notion that meaning is available to each and every person, irrespective of his or her IQ, character structure, educationbal background, environment, etc. Even in the ghetto, meaning is available in principle, irrespective of whether one is religious or not. And if someone is religious, irrespective of the denomination to which he or she belongs, one can find meaning and principle under their religion.
More than that, we have wandered aimlessly when dealing with taboos. I came across a novel where I found the following sentence: “There is a subject nowadays which is taboo, in a way that sexuality was once taboo, which is to talk about life as if it had any meaning.” If you ask me how meaning can be found unconditionally, how it is possible that meaning can be found literally at one’s last breath, this is due to the fact that there are three avenues leading up to a meaningful life.
First, by doing the deeds created in your work, life can be made beautiful, not only in work but also in experiencing the beauty in your work and the world in general– the good in the world. Next, in experiencing not something, but someone— encountering another human being in his or her very uniqueness, which is the definition of love. Loving means experiencing another human being and becoming aware of the uniqueness of that other person.
So, we see work and love make life meaningful, but beyond that, the third avenue is that potential meaning can be found if we are caught as the helpless victims of a hopeless situation, facing an unchangeable fate. If we are caught or confronted with the fact that we are incurably ill, then there is the possibility that we bear witness to the uniquely human capacity to turn a personal predicament into a human achievement, to turn a tragedy into a triumph. And this is possible to the last breath, because even death offers an opportunity to bear witness to what a human being is capable of. It is not by coincidence that death is the final stage of growing. Even death allows for rising above one’s situation, thereby growing beyond one’s self. If we watch simple people or noble people, we may see how capable they are of turning tragedy into person triumphs, how they are capable of squeezing out meaning from the most miserable or most trivial situations.
Several years ago a garbage collector received the Order of Merit from the German government. This man did his job to everyone’s satisfaction, but the special effort that gave him the reward was this: He looked through the garbage for discarded toys, spent his evening hours to repair them, and gave them to poor children as presents. As a fix-it man, he added to his clean-up job a magnificent meaning.
Another man, a doctor, examined a Jewish woman who wore a bracelet. The doctor admired the bracelet, and she said the parts of the bracelet belonged to the nine children who had been killed in the Nazi gas chambers. Shocked, the doctor asked her how she could live with such a bracelet. Quietly, the Jewish woman replied, “You see, I am now in charge of an orphanage in Israel.” People are capable of squeezing out meanings of a most tragic situation. Situations that may not be able to be changed, but you can change yourself to rise above the situation and to grow beyond yourself.
There was a question that is asked: “So, do you believe that suffering is necessary in order to arrive at meaning?” My contention is that meaning is possible– in spite of suffering!
After watching the Holocaust, a Polish man involved in carrying out mass executions was asked for his reaction. He was the military organizer of the Warsaw upheaval. He said that taking a gun and shooting someone was no great thing. But if the SS leads you to a mass grave to execute you on the spot, or if the SS drives you to a gas chamber, and you cannot do anything about it except for keeping your head high and going your way with dignity, this is what I call a human achievement. The highest dignity goes to those who cannot do anything about their hopeless situation, but keep their heads high.
Essentially, life remains meaningful unconditionally. In other words, meaning is inexhaustible. But what is inexhaustible is energy. We live in an age of energy crises and shortages. We’re living in a post-petroleum society, as it were. Now, you see, I believe that the energy crisis is not only a threat, but offers a chance that the accent and impulses of people may shift from the means to live to a meaning to live for. This emphasis may be shifted from material goods to existential needs. Let me say that I regard the movement toward logotherapy really to be one of the human rights movements, because the focus is on the intrinsically and fundamental human rights to a life as meaningful as possible, and I think psychotherapy and counseling should do justice to this special human rights.
Now I will take questions.
QUESTION: Dr. Frankl, I’ve studied your theory of paradoxical intention and it seems that you are talking about lives reaching the point of spontaneity. Am I not mistaken that in your theory of paradoxical intention, that when you alleviate the pressure of fear or failure of a person going to sleep or sweating or stuttering, that you are really bringing that person to a point of spontaneity, and that in your logotherapy you are trying to give that person life and meaning so that he can become more spontaneous. Is that basically what you are saying?
ANSWER: Yes. What you’re saying is very interesting and a remarkable contribution to the interpretation of what really goes on in meaning-oriented logotherapy, and in that aspect of logotherapy, which deals on a more down-to-earth clinical level with phobias, obsessive compulsive neurosis, etc. My own interpretation is a bit different, but I am not the best and greatest master in practicing paradoxical intention. Other people do it much better.
QUESTION: The reason I ask you this is that I teach behavioral science to corporations, and I use your theory of paradoxical intention to eliminate the stress that executives and marketing people have been getting to take the pressure off of fear and failure, quota systems, competitive systems, and to relate to your thirteen and fourteen year old suicidal people. I think they’re crying out for relief from the competitive system—the fear of failure—that they can’t compete, and so, consequently, they turn to drugs and suicide and what have you, and I use your theory in my work to help executives.
ANSWER: Paradoxical intention and logotherapy are moving in two direction. Paradoxical intention often remains in the psychological dimension. Many behaviors are successfully using and propagating paradoxical intention without caring for logotherapy, without caring for that dimension in which the search for meaning exists. And I would say that there are many statistics to the effect that 90% of students attempting suicide did so because they couldn’t see meaning in their lives. I personally don’t think that suicide is due to the lack of meaning. It might be due to various reasons. When suicide attempts are not undertaken because of lack of meaning, it might well indicate that there were visions of a meaning to life of some sort, and this could have helped the respective individual to overcome the inclination to suicide. So, in such cases where people are depressed, one should not try to apply paradoxical intention to circumvent the fear of failure, but in the first place one might have to show and persuade the individual that there is also meaning to his life, and if he becomes cognizant of this, meaning he will be capable of tolerating some tensions and frustrations and not be so afraid of failure, because he would say in even cases of failure there is a lot of meaning and potential.
QUESTION: Aren’t you really saying that the person must be satisfied with himself before he can really obtain the potential of his achievements, because of the fact that he is a unique individual? Uniqueness in today’s schools is squashed. The talented, personable child is sitting in the principal’s office most of the time. Conformity is the rule. I think in order to change this we must change the values of what a child thinks success and failure are, because this is what he determines his behavior patterns by. Do you agree with this?
ANSWER: This, in a sense, I would subscribe to. But, you see, it is not is a matter of hierarchy of values, because what logotherapy is ultimately pleading for is the recognition that even the failure—or in spite of failure—meaning can be found. So people should not idealize, should not make success into an ultimate goal. They should not make success the peak of the hierarchy. This is the main misunderstanding—especially in America. People are pursuing happiness and success, but both should not be the peak of the hierarchy. Meaning, fulfillment and loving encounter are much more important, and on the contrary, striving for both success and happiness are elusive and self-defeating. If you will forgive my becoming a bit personal, I wrote a book within nine days in 1945 without my name printed on it. I wanted the book to be published anonymously, with the absolute determination and conviction that that way would not attribute anything to my reputation as a psychiatrist, but for the sake of telling people it is possible—even in the situation of Auswitz—not to doubt that life has meaning up to the last moment, and to persuade the people of that. In that book, and all our books together, this one book that I wrote within nine days with conviction was published, to become a great success. However, the less you care for success, the sooner success will come to you naturally, automatically. The less you care for your potency, in sexual pleasure and orgasm, the more you will have potency and you will have your orgasm. The more you are concerned with your potency, the more you are doomed to impotency. Love is the direction of our day-to-day practice, and you will be dismissed as a status seeker if you strive only for success. But if you let success and happiness come to you, then you’ll be much better off.
QUESTION: Would we be better off then if we didn’t teach our children success and failure as we know it today, and more that we should teach them spontaneity of their uniqueness and individuality, and let happiness be a bi-product of their spontaneity?
ANSWER: Success and happiness must remain a bi-product rather than being pursued. Let me add a warning: by spontaneity you are moving in the direction of identity and self-actualization, and if anyone should misinterpret your words let me say also that identity and self-actualization can be brought about by not caring for them. The more you love someone else the more you become happy and the more you’re actualizing yourself, and you’re finally arriving at your identity, but what is valid in no place more than in this context are the wonderful words of a German philosopher saying, “What a man is, is that he becomes the cause which he has adopted to his own.
QUESTION: For every situation you speak of there being only one solution that is right, and we may not find that meaning, but that does not alleviate our responsibility to try to find the “one” meaning. This idea of one meaning doesn’t seem to fit into my notion or understanding of existentialism, whereby there is a situation where there is no solution and you give meaning to it yourself. If that is true then how can you find what would be the “one” meaning for each situation?
ANSWER : Potential meaning is dormant in children in a way comparable to a Gestalt figure. In a Gestalt figure you suddenly become aware of a figure against a background, but in a meaning-finding process you suddenly become aware of a possibility against the background of reality—namely the possibility to change reality. Now, if you’re confronted with this situation, there are alternatives, and if you go through all those alternatives you will find there is one solution to the problem. This cannot be done on rational terms. You have to rely on intuition and that organ, the brain, which is wired into the human being in ways that are usually referred to as our conscience. Conscience usually says to you—without having to think—what to do. There is just not subjective meaning here. There is a subjective meaningfulness available by drug usage, where suddenly everything becomes “meaningful.” But this is not true meaning. True meanings are objective, in as much as they have to be found and experienced, rather than being freely, arbitrarily attributed to the world or situations outside the person.
QUESTION: In reading your books over the years, and being very in touch with the issue of meaning, it confuses me that your theory seems to be so ethically neutral. You just touched on true meaning. Were not the guards in the camps where you were a prisioner, from their point of view, leading a meaningful life? I’d like to ask you what is the difference in a meaningful life and a good life. When I think of a meaningful life I think of Albert Switzer or Mother Teresa. I immediately assume that meaning is good, but if you’re suggesting that each of us needs to discover a meaning for ourselves without a moral context or some moral overview in which to value whether what I’m doing is meaningful and is good or wrong, then why not supply my own private meaning, with my existential vacuum in danger of being filled possibly by a very lousy ethical attitude. Wasn’t Hitler’s demonic genius fulfilling the young Germans to a very meaningful life, as they understood it?
ANSWER: Each person in each situation offers different meaning. I’ve already intimated that it is our conscience that helps intuitively to get hold of or to grasp the meaning of the moment, in contrast to ultimate meaning or super-meaning. The conscience, in contrast to what is called a superego, might well be the result of a conditioning process. True conscience is a specifically human phenomenon, but, alas, it is also too bound up to human frailty, limitations, incompleteness, and insufficiency. In other words, our conscience may err, and up to the last moment, up to our lying or our deathbeds, we’ll never know absolutely whether our conscience is right or not. This I regard as the principle assignment of education, not only to transmit knowledge and tradition, but also to refine our conscience so that we become able, under certain conditions, to find out our true meanings, even in tragic situations. And if you ask me an interesting sociological phenomenon, that no one has asked in Germany, but which I have been asked in America, “What would you have told Adolph Hitler if he came to your office and asked about the meaning of his life, and what should he do to obey his conscience?” Obviously, in this case of Hitler, I would have handed out the admonition that he obey his conscience, but to also carefully listen to it, because it is inconceivable to me that if Hitler had really listened to his conscience, he would never have become the monster that he was. And his conscience, in the final analysis, would have told him to try another way to re-establish that reputation of national Germany—not through a World War, genocide, etc. He would have arrived at another means. And that is the answer if you ask me such a difficult question and wish me immediately to come up with an over-simplified answer. This is also my answer to the problem of terrorism. The terrorists are living in an existential vacuum, and they try to find a mission in their lives. But if they will listen to their consciences they will become aware that there are two types of politics, two types of politicians. One adheres to the principle that the goal justifies the means, while the other remains aware that there are means that desecrate even the most noble aim.
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CONCLUSION OF LECTURE
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The following lecture was presented by Viktor Frankl, MD, on November 14, 1980, in Atlanta, Georgia. He spoke to a group of mental health-care professionals from a variety of mental health institutions and private practices. I was privileged to attend. I taped his presentation, with his permission, and later had my secretary, Elma Hill, transcribe it. I then edited it for readability.
Dr. Frankl was among the most important people of the 20th Century. He was a victim of the Nazis in the concentration camps. He was Jewish, and along with the others, suffered horrors with which the world has not yet completely reconciled. Like the book of Job in the Old Testament, which dealt with the meaning of suffering, Frankl and other Holocaust Jews suffered horribly. However, because Frankl had the specialized training in psychiatry and medicine—and he survived the Nazi horrors—he was able to see aspects of suffering that seemed to elude the writer of Job. In any event he was able to put a more modern, scientific slant on it. His reflections on his personal suffering led him to write the book, Man’s Search For Meaning. He later developed a type of therapy, which he called logotherapy, and spent the rest of his life treating patients, writing, and lecturing. I highly recommend all of his writings for those interested, with Man’s Search For Meaning being sufficient for the general reader interested in the concept of: Why do good people have to suffer, and what can we do about it?
LECTURE
Speaking of counseling centers, I am reminded of the fact that late in the 1920’s I founded, organized, and directed the Youth Counseling Centers in Vienna, after a pattern in several other cities, all capitols of Europe. These centers had already been organized, and I then reported statistically on what had happened throughout these centers in the ensuing years in psychoanalytic journals. And it turned out that most of the people who had consulted these centers had come mostly because of sexual problems.
Then, about fifty years ago, a teacher in Vienna presented me with another study which showed a drastic change. He had invited his students to ask him questions about what was on their minds. There were questions about sex and drugs— and questions such as, “Is there life on other planets?” However, the most frequently asked questions regarded suicide among students thirteen to fourteen years of age! I suppose that now you’ll have an understanding of my contention that the scenery has markedly changed since the times of Sigmund Freud.
No longer is sex the main problem today—but existential questions are paramount! Questions, which according to the philosopher Camus, are the real philosophical concerns: whether life is worthwhile—or is suicide the one thing to commit? No longer, as in the times of psychiatrist Alfred Adler, are inferiority feelings driving our patients to psychologists and psychiatrists, but it is feelings of futility, a feeling of meaninglessness, combined with emptiness—what I have come to call the “existential vacuum.”
I coined this term “existential vacuum” as early as 1955, and since that time it has become widespread and a worldwide phenomenon. And it is worldwide, which can be seen from the fact that it is in no way restricted to our western world or culture, but it makes itself noticed in every communist country and in the third world. All this is evidenced in the scientific literature, by publications throughout communist countries and the third world. A dissertation by Dianna Young of the University of California at Berkley, shows that it is particularly the young generation that is afflicted so much by this present state of affairs, and this evidence is supported and confirmed by something that psychologist Harold Marshall, a counselor in Belleview, Washington, found out: mainly, that those in their thirties who come in for help have a sense of purposelessness, and this deteriorates into depression.
Now, speaking of depression, what comes to mind is what I usually call the “mass-erupted triad,’ mainly depression, aggression, and addiction. Let me report to you what happened a couple of years ago when a lecture of mine was scheduled in Athens, Georgia, at the University of Georgia, upon the invitation of the student body. They wrote to me that I should come, and insisted that I had to lecture under the title, Is The New Generation Mad? I was very resistant, but I couldn’t help it; I had to lecture on this subject.
Arriving in Atlanta there was a thunderstorm and the plane from Atlanta to Athens was cancelled, so I had to take a taxi at the last moment. The driver asked me several times, “What are you doing in Athens in such bad weather?” I said I had to give a lecture.
“A lecture? Aha, upon what subject are you going to speak?”
I replied, “The title of my lecture is “Is The New generation Mad?” I told him not to laugh. “I’ll make you the final composer. I’ll take over the taxi driving and you take over my lecture.”
“Oh, I couldn’t do that,” he replied.
“Why not?” I asked. “You are much closer to the situation of the young generation than I am—and I have just arrived from Vienna!”
“Oh, I couldn’t do that.”
“Now, why don’t you tell me then, what do you believe? Is the new generation mad?”
You know what he said, literally! “Of course they’re mad. They kill themselves, they kill each other, and they take dope!”
Depression, aggression, and addiction!
How should we cope today with this mass feeling of emptiness and meaninglessness? It is very hard to do because our industrial society is eager to satisfy virtually any and every need. The consumer society of today creates, rather than just satisfies needs. And one need is forgotten—even overlooked! The most important human need, the most specific human need. This is frustrating. It is the need to see and fulfill in one’s life a meaning, a function, a mission, an assignment. This is the will to meaning, as I call it, and it is being frustrated by society and psychological science.
Due to certain reasons, which I am going to discuss later on, science and its technology supplies us with the means to live, but it cannot offer us a meaning to live for. Let me quote something a Nobel Prize physicist once allowed: “The world of natural science is lacking in whatever relates to the meaning and purpose of hope. And a similar statement has been made by Einstein.”
Now, the fact has to be acknowledged and faced that science cannot offer you any meaning and purpose. But even worse, the way in which science is transmitted in spirit to our youngsters on most of our campuses, the way young people are being indoctrinated, is such that their natural and original enthusiasm, or idealism, is undermined and eroded because of what is called reductionism. You see, often people are deploring the fact that, increasingly, scientists are specializing, losing sight of the larger picture. This is nothing to be deplored, as I see it, but what is to be deplored is just the contrary—that so many scientists who are specialists are generalizing! They are coming up with over- generalized statements about things they know little about.
Let me give you an example. My natural science teacher in high school was marching up and down the rows of students, speaking in that detached manner of his, which was so typical of the scientists of his day, poker-faced, teaching us that life, in the ultimate analysis, is nothing but a combustion process—or oxidation! I immediately jumped on my feet and threw this question to his face, “If that is so, what meaning then does our life have?” He couldn’t answer that question because he was a reductionist—or should I say an oxidationist!
One book review on Goethe goes as follows: “In the 1530 pages of this book the author portrays to us a genius, Goethe, with earmarks of mania, depression, paranoia, epileptic disorder, homosexuality, incest, voyeurism, fetishism, impotence, narcissism, obsession, compulsive neurosis, hysteria, megalomania, etc.” The author seems to focus almost exclusively upon the instinctive dynamic forces that underlie artistic problems. We are led to believe that Goethe’s work is but the result of pre-genital extensions, that he does not really aim for an idea of beauty, but for the overcoming of the embarrassing problem of premature ejaculation! This is a flagrant instance of reductionism, reducing everything down to a lower dimension.
In another book you come across the following definition of man: “Man is nothing but a biochemically complex mechanism, powered by a combustion system, with the storage facilities for retaining and coding information.” That’s all there is to a human being, apparently.
(At this point Frankel went to a blackboard and drew a picture of cube, casting a shadow, which was a two dimensional square. Then he drew a picture of a three dimensional cylinder, which could cast two shadows: a rectangle or a circle, depending on the direction of the light source.)
Now, do not misunderstand what I am intending to say; after all I am a professor of neurology. I stand for the legitimacy to interpret the central nervous system of man in terms of action, functions, or, in computer terms. But at the same time, I insist that a computer of the human being is also more than a computer. You see, in a way, the computer is included in the human brain. But if you take a three dimensional cube and shine a light on it, it will cast only a two dimensional shadow of a square, but we know that the cube is more than its shadow. In a way the cube also is the square, because it contains the two dimensional square, but at the same time you will note the cube is more than the square. From this projection—which is the essence of reductionism–what results is a contradiction.
Now I hope you are able to follow me with my figures I have drawn. Now you see a rectangle and a circle. In this context they are contradictions, but my contention is that the contradictions seem not to contradict the oneness of a phenomenon that is so contradictorily depicted. As you can see, the three dimensional cylinder can cast two different types of shadows: a circle and a rectangle, which are different projections (shadows) of the one cylinder, depending on the direction of the light source. However, the circle and the rectangle are absolutely different. Now, you can well see that these two contradictions all are projections (shadows) of the one and same cylinder. Here we are taking a three dimensional object and reducing it down to two two-dimensional representations.
The same now holds for the human being. If you project a human being out of his full dimensionality into a dimension lower than his own, the result is either a biological or a psychological projection. In other words, the oneness of the human being necessarily disappears, because the oneness is only perceptible and noticeable in the next higher image, in the three dimensional space where the cylinder is residing. But as to man, the full dimension of the human phenomenon has been shut out of the realm where the dimension of his search for meaning is residing. That is why you have to open up this dimension. You have to enter this human dimension. You have to follow man into his human dimension, if for no other reason than to understand his motivation, because unless you understand one’s motivation you are incapable of overcoming his frustration. So, you have to enter the human dimension to become cognizant of the way to meaning, and to become able to cope with the ills and ailments of our time. If one’s will to meaning is being satisfied then that human being becomes happy—only not by striving for happiness, but by pursuing meaning, because happiness only helps you as a side effect. Now, since a human being, whose will- to-meaning is being satisfied, also becomes happy, at the same time it is most interesting that he also becomes capable of suffering, of enduring tensions and frustrations, and eventually he is prepared to give his life.
Consider the various political resistance movements throughout the world and throughout history. If one’s will to meaning is being frustrated and remains unsatisfied, then one is inclined to take one’s life—and will do it in the midst of, and in spite of, affluence and welfare. What I want to convey to you is that people might have the means to live, but unless they also have a means to live for, they are threatened by depression and suicide.
Now, let us ask for a moment how it is that a psychology that is fascinated by the pattern of natural science, that such a psychology is ignoring these concepts such as meaning and purpose. I’ll try to show why this is happening.
The observation of any process immediately influences a process itself. Now, what about psychological processes? You see, the observing eye of the psychologist is fascinated by the natural science model. He observes the human being, and the human being is the subject–but the observation changes the person into a mere object. Now, it is my personal theory that it is the essence of the subject that it has an object of its own. What do I mean by that? I just mean that the existential thinker sees the intentionality of man as an activity which focuses on something, or someone beyond himself. He sees the essence of the human being basically not concerned with anything within himself, but, on the contrary, he’s reaching beyond himself to meanings to fulfill, to other human beings to love. Now this intentionality, or this directiveness toward objects of its own, is benign, shut out, and excluded and cut off from the subject by its being made into an object. And what it finally does is that in the world in which a human being exists, and this is called being in the world, and this being with other people, rather than being concerned with homeostasis, satisfaction of drives, needs and, conditioning, etc., is being shut out.
Nevertheless, this would constitute the reasons of my act; I’m acting to a world rather than reacting to stimuli, rather than reacting to instincts and drives. The psychodynamic model depicts man abreacting to tensions. The behaviorist model depicts man as reacting to stimuli. But actually man is neither abreacting nor reacting, but is acting, and he is acting into a world of fellow human beings and of meaning, and this is shut out, so they have no reasons to act and behave. And what remains instead of the reasons are causes. Is there a difference between a reason for acting or a cause that propels me to act? There is a difference. If you cut onions, you start to cry. Your tears have a cause, but your tears have no reason. If you’re crying because your loved one has died, you would have a reason to cry. With onions it is just a cause for your tears. In other words, now that man has been made into an object there are no reasons out in the world, but only causes that call one to behave one way or the other. The causes have to be hypothesized in terms of drives, instincts, conditioning, and learning processes, so this is no longer a human being that you are doing psychology about. I hope I can make myself understood this way.
If we wish to re-humanize psychotherapy, we have to follow man into the human dimension, to become cognizant of his meaning orientation rather than his drive and instincts. Is this to say that we just dismiss science and scientific methodology? Not at all. We just have to overcome the one-sidedness.
Out of research has come the notion that meaning is available to each and every person, irrespective of his or her IQ, character structure, educationbal background, environment, etc. Even in the ghetto, meaning is available in principle, irrespective of whether one is religious or not. And if someone is religious, irrespective of the denomination to which he or she belongs, one can find meaning and principle under their religion.
More than that, we have wandered aimlessly when dealing with taboos. I came across a novel where I found the following sentence: “There is a subject nowadays which is taboo, in a way that sexuality was once taboo, which is to talk about life as if it had any meaning.” If you ask me how meaning can be found unconditionally, how it is possible that meaning can be found literally at one’s last breath, this is due to the fact that there are three avenues leading up to a meaningful life.
First, by doing the deeds created in your work, life can be made beautiful, not only in work but also in experiencing the beauty in your work and the world in general– the good in the world. Next, in experiencing not something, but someone— encountering another human being in his or her very uniqueness, which is the definition of love. Loving means experiencing another human being and becoming aware of the uniqueness of that other person.
So, we see work and love make life meaningful, but beyond that, the third avenue is that potential meaning can be found if we are caught as the helpless victims of a hopeless situation, facing an unchangeable fate. If we are caught or confronted with the fact that we are incurably ill, then there is the possibility that we bear witness to the uniquely human capacity to turn a personal predicament into a human achievement, to turn a tragedy into a triumph. And this is possible to the last breath, because even death offers an opportunity to bear witness to what a human being is capable of. It is not by coincidence that death is the final stage of growing. Even death allows for rising above one’s situation, thereby growing beyond one’s self. If we watch simple people or noble people, we may see how capable they are of turning tragedy into person triumphs, how they are capable of squeezing out meaning from the most miserable or most trivial situations.
Several years ago a garbage collector received the Order of Merit from the German government. This man did his job to everyone’s satisfaction, but the special effort that gave him the reward was this: He looked through the garbage for discarded toys, spent his evening hours to repair them, and gave them to poor children as presents. As a fix-it man, he added to his clean-up job a magnificent meaning.
Another man, a doctor, examined a Jewish woman who wore a bracelet. The doctor admired the bracelet, and she said the parts of the bracelet belonged to the nine children who had been killed in the Nazi gas chambers. Shocked, the doctor asked her how she could live with such a bracelet. Quietly, the Jewish woman replied, “You see, I am now in charge of an orphanage in Israel.” People are capable of squeezing out meanings of a most tragic situation. Situations that may not be able to be changed, but you can change yourself to rise above the situation and to grow beyond yourself.
There was a question that is asked: “So, do you believe that suffering is necessary in order to arrive at meaning?” My contention is that meaning is possible– in spite of suffering!
After watching the Holocaust, a Polish man involved in carrying out mass executions was asked for his reaction. He was the military organizer of the Warsaw upheaval. He said that taking a gun and shooting someone was no great thing. But if the SS leads you to a mass grave to execute you on the spot, or if the SS drives you to a gas chamber, and you cannot do anything about it except for keeping your head high and going your way with dignity, this is what I call a human achievement. The highest dignity goes to those who cannot do anything about their hopeless situation, but keep their heads high.
Essentially, life remains meaningful unconditionally. In other words, meaning is inexhaustible. But what is inexhaustible is energy. We live in an age of energy crises and shortages. We’re living in a post-petroleum society, as it were. Now, you see, I believe that the energy crisis is not only a threat, but offers a chance that the accent and impulses of people may shift from the means to live to a meaning to live for. This emphasis may be shifted from material goods to existential needs. Let me say that I regard the movement toward logotherapy really to be one of the human rights movements, because the focus is on the intrinsically and fundamental human rights to a life as meaningful as possible, and I think psychotherapy and counseling should do justice to this special human rights.
Now I will take questions.
QUESTION: Dr. Frankl, I’ve studied your theory of paradoxical intention and it seems that you are talking about lives reaching the point of spontaneity. Am I not mistaken that in your theory of paradoxical intention, that when you alleviate the pressure of fear or failure of a person going to sleep or sweating or stuttering, that you are really bringing that person to a point of spontaneity, and that in your logotherapy you are trying to give that person life and meaning so that he can become more spontaneous. Is that basically what you are saying?
ANSWER: Yes. What you’re saying is very interesting and a remarkable contribution to the interpretation of what really goes on in meaning-oriented logotherapy, and in that aspect of logotherapy, which deals on a more down-to-earth clinical level with phobias, obsessive compulsive neurosis, etc. My own interpretation is a bit different, but I am not the best and greatest master in practicing paradoxical intention. Other people do it much better.
QUESTION: The reason I ask you this is that I teach behavioral science to corporations, and I use your theory of paradoxical intention to eliminate the stress that executives and marketing people have been getting to take the pressure off of fear and failure, quota systems, competitive systems, and to relate to your thirteen and fourteen year old suicidal people. I think they’re crying out for relief from the competitive system—the fear of failure—that they can’t compete, and so, consequently, they turn to drugs and suicide and what have you, and I use your theory in my work to help executives.
ANSWER: Paradoxical intention and logotherapy are moving in two direction. Paradoxical intention often remains in the psychological dimension. Many behaviors are successfully using and propagating paradoxical intention without caring for logotherapy, without caring for that dimension in which the search for meaning exists. And I would say that there are many statistics to the effect that 90% of students attempting suicide did so because they couldn’t see meaning in their lives. I personally don’t think that suicide is due to the lack of meaning. It might be due to various reasons. When suicide attempts are not undertaken because of lack of meaning, it might well indicate that there were visions of a meaning to life of some sort, and this could have helped the respective individual to overcome the inclination to suicide. So, in such cases where people are depressed, one should not try to apply paradoxical intention to circumvent the fear of failure, but in the first place one might have to show and persuade the individual that there is also meaning to his life, and if he becomes cognizant of this, meaning he will be capable of tolerating some tensions and frustrations and not be so afraid of failure, because he would say in even cases of failure there is a lot of meaning and potential.
QUESTION: Aren’t you really saying that the person must be satisfied with himself before he can really obtain the potential of his achievements, because of the fact that he is a unique individual? Uniqueness in today’s schools is squashed. The talented, personable child is sitting in the principal’s office most of the time. Conformity is the rule. I think in order to change this we must change the values of what a child thinks success and failure are, because this is what he determines his behavior patterns by. Do you agree with this?
ANSWER: This, in a sense, I would subscribe to. But, you see, it is not is a matter of hierarchy of values, because what logotherapy is ultimately pleading for is the recognition that even the failure—or in spite of failure—meaning can be found. So people should not idealize, should not make success into an ultimate goal. They should not make success the peak of the hierarchy. This is the main misunderstanding—especially in America. People are pursuing happiness and success, but both should not be the peak of the hierarchy. Meaning, fulfillment and loving encounter are much more important, and on the contrary, striving for both success and happiness are elusive and self-defeating. If you will forgive my becoming a bit personal, I wrote a book within nine days in 1945 without my name printed on it. I wanted the book to be published anonymously, with the absolute determination and conviction that that way would not attribute anything to my reputation as a psychiatrist, but for the sake of telling people it is possible—even in the situation of Auswitz—not to doubt that life has meaning up to the last moment, and to persuade the people of that. In that book, and all our books together, this one book that I wrote within nine days with conviction was published, to become a great success. However, the less you care for success, the sooner success will come to you naturally, automatically. The less you care for your potency, in sexual pleasure and orgasm, the more you will have potency and you will have your orgasm. The more you are concerned with your potency, the more you are doomed to impotency. Love is the direction of our day-to-day practice, and you will be dismissed as a status seeker if you strive only for success. But if you let success and happiness come to you, then you’ll be much better off.
QUESTION: Would we be better off then if we didn’t teach our children success and failure as we know it today, and more that we should teach them spontaneity of their uniqueness and individuality, and let happiness be a bi-product of their spontaneity?
ANSWER: Success and happiness must remain a bi-product rather than being pursued. Let me add a warning: by spontaneity you are moving in the direction of identity and self-actualization, and if anyone should misinterpret your words let me say also that identity and self-actualization can be brought about by not caring for them. The more you love someone else the more you become happy and the more you’re actualizing yourself, and you’re finally arriving at your identity, but what is valid in no place more than in this context are the wonderful words of a German philosopher saying, “What a man is, is that he becomes the cause which he has adopted to his own.
QUESTION: For every situation you speak of there being only one solution that is right, and we may not find that meaning, but that does not alleviate our responsibility to try to find the “one” meaning. This idea of one meaning doesn’t seem to fit into my notion or understanding of existentialism, whereby there is a situation where there is no solution and you give meaning to it yourself. If that is true then how can you find what would be the “one” meaning for each situation?
ANSWER : Potential meaning is dormant in children in a way comparable to a Gestalt figure. In a Gestalt figure you suddenly become aware of a figure against a background, but in a meaning-finding process you suddenly become aware of a possibility against the background of reality—namely the possibility to change reality. Now, if you’re confronted with this situation, there are alternatives, and if you go through all those alternatives you will find there is one solution to the problem. This cannot be done on rational terms. You have to rely on intuition and that organ, the brain, which is wired into the human being in ways that are usually referred to as our conscience. Conscience usually says to you—without having to think—what to do. There is just not subjective meaning here. There is a subjective meaningfulness available by drug usage, where suddenly everything becomes “meaningful.” But this is not true meaning. True meanings are objective, in as much as they have to be found and experienced, rather than being freely, arbitrarily attributed to the world or situations outside the person.
QUESTION: In reading your books over the years, and being very in touch with the issue of meaning, it confuses me that your theory seems to be so ethically neutral. You just touched on true meaning. Were not the guards in the camps where you were a prisioner, from their point of view, leading a meaningful life? I’d like to ask you what is the difference in a meaningful life and a good life. When I think of a meaningful life I think of Albert Switzer or Mother Teresa. I immediately assume that meaning is good, but if you’re suggesting that each of us needs to discover a meaning for ourselves without a moral context or some moral overview in which to value whether what I’m doing is meaningful and is good or wrong, then why not supply my own private meaning, with my existential vacuum in danger of being filled possibly by a very lousy ethical attitude. Wasn’t Hitler’s demonic genius fulfilling the young Germans to a very meaningful life, as they understood it?
ANSWER: Each person in each situation offers different meaning. I’ve already intimated that it is our conscience that helps intuitively to get hold of or to grasp the meaning of the moment, in contrast to ultimate meaning or super-meaning. The conscience, in contrast to what is called a superego, might well be the result of a conditioning process. True conscience is a specifically human phenomenon, but, alas, it is also too bound up to human frailty, limitations, incompleteness, and insufficiency. In other words, our conscience may err, and up to the last moment, up to our lying or our deathbeds, we’ll never know absolutely whether our conscience is right or not. This I regard as the principle assignment of education, not only to transmit knowledge and tradition, but also to refine our conscience so that we become able, under certain conditions, to find out our true meanings, even in tragic situations. And if you ask me an interesting sociological phenomenon, that no one has asked in Germany, but which I have been asked in America, “What would you have told Adolph Hitler if he came to your office and asked about the meaning of his life, and what should he do to obey his conscience?” Obviously, in this case of Hitler, I would have handed out the admonition that he obey his conscience, but to also carefully listen to it, because it is inconceivable to me that if Hitler had really listened to his conscience, he would never have become the monster that he was. And his conscience, in the final analysis, would have told him to try another way to re-establish that reputation of national Germany—not through a World War, genocide, etc. He would have arrived at another means. And that is the answer if you ask me such a difficult question and wish me immediately to come up with an over-simplified answer. This is also my answer to the problem of terrorism. The terrorists are living in an existential vacuum, and they try to find a mission in their lives. But if they will listen to their consciences they will become aware that there are two types of politics, two types of politicians. One adheres to the principle that the goal justifies the means, while the other remains aware that there are means that desecrate even the most noble aim.
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CONCLUSION OF LECTURE
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