Word: frankl
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Existential Vacuum. Since this search is at the intellectual rather than the instinctual level, Dr. Frankl makes great play with words beginning with noo, from the Greek noös (mind), as in noö-dynamics and noögenic neuroses.* He coined logotherapy from logos, usually translated as word, speech or reason, which he defines as "meaning." As Dr. Frankl views the human condition to day, it is distinguished by "the existential vacuum," or "a total lack, or loss, of an ultimate meaning to one's existence that would make life worthwhile...
...Frankl freely concedes that logotherapy is an existential approach. Existentialism has built up a strong undercurrent in both European and U.S. analysis and psychotherapy in the past dozen years. But Frankl notes that there are almost as many kinds of existentialism as there are existentialists, and insists that his is different. He has spelled it out in books such as Man's Search for Meaning and Psychotherapy and Existentialism. The Existential Vacuum: A Challenge to Psychiatry is on press...
Without a sense of meaning, says Dr. Frankl, even the pursuit of happiness must lead to a dead end. A man who sets out deliberately to seek pleasure through sexual gratification will, he believes, defeat himself. So will the man who lusts for power; even its achievement will avail him nothing unless it involves the satisfaction of some inner goal...
Greater than the Sum. In defining such goals, Frankl runs into difficulty. In English, he says, he is forced back upon the word spiritual, but he insists that this does not require a religious connotation. No psychiatrist, he points out, can prescribe religion for an irreligious patient. At the same time, just as emphatically, he warns psychiatrists against suppressing or ignoring whatever religious feelings, overt and latent, a patient may have...
...answering the question "What is meant by meaning?", Dr. Frankl first makes a distinction between meaning and values. To him, values are meanings shared by many people throughout history or throughout a society. The "meaning" in which Frankl is interested is an individual's own, and is unique to his situation at any given moment. It is, he insists, something that each man must find for himself, through his conscience. When he does so, he is likely to find that it has a Gestalt quality -the whole of an experience is, in some indefinable way, greater than...