According to logotherapy, discovering one’s purpose in life helps an

individual
fill that existential void. Frankl, a man who faced his problems and turned his
objectives into actions, could look back on his life in peace as he grew old.
He
did not have to envy those still enjoying their youth, because he had amassed
a
broad set of experiences that showed he had lived for something.
Better living through logotherapy: A few key ideas
We don’t create the meaning of our life, as Sartre claimed—we discover it.
We each have a unique reason for being, which can be adjusted or
transformed many times over the years.
Just as worry often brings about precisely the thing that was feared,
excessive attention to a desire (or “hyper-intention”) can keep that desire
from being fulfilled.
Humor can help break negative cycles and reduce anxiety.
We all have the capacity to do noble or terrible things. The side of the
equation we end up on depends on our decisions, not on the condition in
which we find ourselves.
In the pages that follow, we will look at four cases from Frankl’s own
practice
in order to better understand the search for meaning and purpose.
Case study: Viktor Frankl
In German concentration camps, as in those that would later be built in Japan
and
Korea, psychiatrists confirmed that the prisoners with the greatest chance of
survival were those who had things they wanted to accomplish outside the
camp,
those who felt a strong need to get out of there alive. This was true of Frankl,
who, after being released and successfully developing the school of
logotherapy,
realized he had been the first patient of his own practice.
Frankl had a goal to achieve, and it made him persevere. He arrived at
Auschwitz carrying a manuscript that contained all the theories and research
he
had compiled over the course of his career, ready for publication. When it
was
confiscated, he felt compelled to write it all over again, and that need drove
him
and gave his life meaning amid the constant horror and doubt of the
concentration camp—so much so that over the years, and especially when he
fell
ill with typhus, he would jot down fragments and key words from the lost
work
on any scrap of paper he found.
Case study: The American diplomat
An important North American diplomat went to Frankl to pick up where he
left
off with a course of treatment he had started five years earlier in the United
States. When Frankl asked him why he’d started therapy in the first place, the
diplomat answered that he hated his job and his country’s international
policies,
which he had to follow and enforce. His American psychoanalyst, whom he’d
been seeing for years, insisted he make peace with his father so that his
government and his job, both representations of the paternal figure, would
seem
less disagreeable. Frankl, however, showed him in just a few sessions that his
frustration was due to the fact that he wanted to pursue a different career, and
the
diplomat concluded his treatment with that idea in mind.
Five years later, the former diplomat informed Frankl that he had been
working during that time in a different profession, and that he was happy.
In Frankl’s view, the man not only didn’t need all those years of
psychoanalysis, he also couldn’t even really be considered a “patient” in need
of
therapy. He was simply someone in search of a new life’s purpose; as soon as
he
found it, his life took on deeper meaning.
Case study: The suicidal mother
The mother of a boy who had died at age eleven was admitted to Frankl’s
clinic
after she tried to kill herself and her other son. It was this other son, paralyzed
since birth, who kept her from carrying out her plan: He did believe his life
had a
purpose, and if his mother killed them both, it would keep him from
achieving
his goals.
The woman shared her story in a group session. To help her, Frankl asked
another woman to imagine a hypothetical situation in which she lay on her
deathbed, old and wealthy but childless. The woman insisted that, in that
case, she
would have felt her life had been a failure.
When the suicidal mother was asked to perform the same exercise, imagining
herself on her deathbed, she looked back and realized that she had done
everything in her power for her children—for both of them. She had given
her
paralyzed son a good life, and he had turned into a kind, reasonably happy
person.
To this she added, crying, “As for myself, I can look back peacefully on my
life;
for I can say my life was full of meaning, and I have tried hard to live it fully;
I
have done my best—I have done my best for my son. My life was no
failure!”