Earlier
Efforts
of Western Sciences
c.)
Viktor Frankl
“Being human is being responsible…”
Victor
Frankl (1905-1997)
The
existential psychology of Victor Frankl
While
in the work of the most outstanding and distinguished psychologists
the connection between personal convictions and professional work,
remains a conscious secret, kept hidden from patients and the wider
public, this is quite different in the case of Victor Frankl.
Frankl was deeply influenced by his personal experiences and fate
in Europe in the middle of the 20th century. He was not a mere survivor
of European history. He based all his work on his experiences ;
he developed the so-called logo-therapy, and he worked accordingly
throughout all his active years.
Frankl was living and working in Vienna during the thirties, where
he treated desperate patients, who often committed suicide because
of increasing Nazism. Later, after he decided not to emigrate to
a safer part of the world and to stay in Austria, he was imprisoned
for several years in Auschwitz. He survived, but there he lost his
father, his mother, his wife and other family members.
The very base of logo-therapy is the purpose of life, “which
admits of but one possibility of high moral behaviour: namely, in
man’s attitude to his existence, and existence restricted
by external forces.... Without suffering and death human life cannot
be complete.” (1963, p. 106)
The very idea, that individual suffering is helpful on the path
of human development, is also one of the basic teachings of Buddha,
and is found in most – Eastern and Western - mystical traditions
as well.
The integrated thinking of Frankl:
Although
Frankl was a practicing psychologist all his life, at the same time
he was also a philosopher. In 1948 he wrote his dissertation on
philosophy. In this work, titled “The Unconscious God”,
he examined the relationship between religion and psychology.
For all of his life he maintained the conviction that these should
not be split disciplines.
The need of meaning:
Frankl
was convinced, that in modern societies, where (social) traditions
are not guiding us sufficiently enough everyone has the freedom
and responsibility to make their own choices in life and to find
their own meaning.
While animals are guided by their instincts, and traditional societies
use their traditions for the same purpose, in modern societies this
is no longer the case. This fact was not seen by Frankl merely as
a sign of disintegration and of being manipulated, but also as a
chance for the individual.
He stated that the search for the meaning of life is the most definitive
human strife.
If we fail to find that meaning we find ourselves in an existential
vacuum. Being in an existential vacuum, (at a social and
at an individual level as well) has fatal, and disease- making consequences.
The very nature of the vacuum is that it has to be filled up.
In the modern society (and nowadays even much more than in the time
of Frankl) there are many organized ways of filling the existential
vacuum, which, according to Frankl manifests itself in various forms
of boredom. Boredom causes several neuroses and
psychopathology.
By finding meaning it is possible to counteract psychological diseases
(caused by the existential vacuum, and by boredom). Finding meaning
is only possible by incorporating experiential, creative
and attitudinal values.
“...Once the angel in us is repressed, he turns into a demon.”
Attitudinal values can only be developed by personal suffering.
At the bottom of the existential values is transcendence. Only our
acknowledgment of God’s transcendence can bring us to suprameaning
(and personal well-being). And turning away from God is the ultimate
source of pathological human conditions. Frankl states that when
“the angel in us is repressed, he turns into a demon”.
(1975, p. 70)
“Human existence -- at least as long as it has not been neurotically
distorted -- is always directed to something, or someone, other
than itself -- be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being
to encounter lovingly.” (1975, p. 78) Albert Schweitzer: “The
only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have
sought and found how to serve.” (Quoted in 1975, p. 85)
“… perhaps the most radical thing that I said in that
book that deviated from traditional psychiatry is that I located
the source of psychiatric ills in the conscious mind, rather than
the unconscious.”
This sentence was not written by Frankl, but by an American psychiatrist,
M.Scott Peck (1936-2005). Some are strongly convinced, that Peck
was strongly influenced by Frankl, but Peck never acknowledged this
possible influence.
Anyway he was another psychiatrist of the 20th century, who emphasized
the need of suffering for human health. He stated that only suffering
helps to resolve the conflicts and puzzles of human life. At the
very moment when people decide and begin to avoid the necessary
suffering, they create more, and unnecessary suffering. Unnecessary
suffering is neurotic of kind. To get healed, is (nothing more,
and nothing less than) to eliminate neurotic suffering, to work
through the necessary suffering.
His most well-known book, “The Road Less Travelled”
was turned down by the first publisher, as being not scientific
enough. Nevertheless, after a second publication it began to find
its way, finally selling more than six million copies and was translated
into many languages.
Personal acknowledgment of faith:
Like
other outstanding psychologists of the 20th century, at a certain
level even Frankl maintained the current distinction of personal
and professional life. Faith belong to the realm of personal life
and the activity of the psychologist belonged to the professional
life. Although even the psychologist was (also) driven by faith,
according to the mainstream scientific norms and public opinion,
the motivation and the work, resulted from a certain motivation
could, and should be viewed separately.
Nonetheless, Frankl also cleared up that apparent distinction at
the end of his life.
The following are a few sentences from an interview, given by him
in 1995, two years before his death.
“I do not allow myself to confess personally whether I’m
religious or not. I’m writing as a psychologist, I’m
writing as a psychiatrist, I’m writing as a man of the medical
faculty. . . . And that made the message more powerful because if
you were identifiably religious, immediately people would say, ’Oh
well, he’s that religious psychologist. Take the book away!’”
“You see,” he added, “I don’t shy away,
I don’t feel debased or humiliated if someone suspects that
I’m a religious person for myself. . . . If you call ’religious’
a man who believes in what I call a Supermeaning, a meaning so comprehensive
that you can no longer grasp it, get hold of it in rational intellectual
terminology, then one should feel free to call me religious, really.
And actually, I have come to define religion as an expression, a
manifestation, of not only man’s will to meaning, but of man’s
longing for an ultimate meaning, that is to say a meaning that is
so comprehensive that it is no longer comprehensible. . . But it
becomes a matter of believing rather than thinking, of faith rather
than intellect. The positing of a supermeaning that evades mere
rational grasp is one of the main tenets of logotherapy, after all.
And a religious person may identify Supermeaning as something paralleling
a Superbeing, and this Superbeing we would call God.” (Matthew
Scully: Victor Frankl, an interview. Published in First Things,
1995)
Fulfilling needs – 23 letters a day:
The
main work of Frankl the book “Man Search for meaning”
has been translated into more than 22 languages, and has sold more
than 9 million copies. “What more empirical evidence do you
need?” – asked Frankl in the same interview. And also,
till the very end of his life Frankl received daily letters from
people, who expressed their gratitude. “Yes, you see, twenty-three
letters every day-still. And most of them are from Americans. And
do you know what they say? Most just write to say, ’Thank
you, Dr. Frankl, for changing my life.’
~~~
a)
Abraham Maslow
b) Erich Fromm
c) Viktor Frankl
d) C.G. Jung
e) Werner Heisenberg
f) Kurt Godel
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