Victor Frankl and Meaning

What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him

Victor Frankl |pursuit of Happiness https://www.pursuit-of-happiness.org/history-of-happiness/viktor-frankl/

Different from Gestalt Therapy , Buddhist practice . Victor Frankl stated that the struggle for meaning and goals were of higher priority than then the immediate response , emotional or action . Victor Frankl was a Nazi Holocaust survivor who treated other survivors as a neurologist and psychologist.

Quotes by Victor Frankl

• Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.
• An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.
• If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering
• Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.
• Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning. The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her own life.
• Success, like happiness, is the unexpected side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.
• Being tolerant does not mean that I share another one’s belief. But it does mean that I acknowledge another one’s right to believe, and obey, his own conscience.
• When a man cannot find meaning, he numbs himself with pleasure.
• When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer… his unique opportunity lies in the way he bears his burden.
• Even a genius cannot completely resist his Zeitgeist, the spirit of his time

MY REACTION TO QUOTES

Emotionally , Frankl places more value on suffering then pleasure , views emotional reactions as fleeting to situations . Therefore suffering is more important in “meaning” . For Krankl , motivation , responsibility ( explained otherwhere , and individual choice make up the greater part of meaning.

Contrast Victor Frankl with “ Cash Value of Meaning and Truth ” based on William James.

consider Value and Meaning building . https://echopen.wordpress.com/2017/03/02/value-meaning-building/

Logotherapy — the practice of Victor Frankl

Frankls’s logotherapy can be described in short here :
https://www.verywellmind.com/an-overview-of-victor-frankl-s-logotherapy-4159308
central properties:
individual : every person has a healthy “core “
social : a primal goal to enlighten others of internal resources
Being : Life offers purpose and meaning but does not promise fulfillment or happiness
Finding meaning : by doing , working , creating , producing, gathering , maintaining ,
by experiencing and encountering,
by dealing with suffering.
reality : that ” meaning” is “real ” by phenomenological action .
” meaning ” is more realized and less conceptual . (this strategy is called existential )

Client-therapist strategies include:
Dereflection – focus activities and goals outward and less on self absorption
Paradoxical intention – client practicing an anxious behavior for therapist-client analysis . ( this follows the humanist and existential therapist concept that people “cure” with grater self awareness , typical of gestalt therapy . )
Socratic dialogue – talk therapy. Frankl is an enfluence on more modern Cognitive Behavior Therapy . ( which usefulness includes conformance in technique for cost to client and training of professionals.)

Victor Frankl Authored books on therapy , life and holocaust survival.