We are better protected from disease and live more comfortably than previous generations. Perhaps because of this, the value of life as such, we feel less keenly, says existential psychotherapist Alfried Lenglet. Sometimes you need to think very clearly and ask the right questions to give meaning to your own life.
Psychologies: Existential analysis explores the very essence of the human person, the truly human. Why do you insist that the lack of meaning is one of the main problems of our contemporaries?
Alfred Langley: Viktor Frankl, the eminent psychologist, creator of logotherapy and my teacher, was the first to pose the problem of meaning in the 1920s. Austria was then experiencing a period of severe unemployment, people were starving. Frankl was at that time a young psychiatrist and noticed that many unemployed people suffered precisely from the loss of meaning. They considered their life meaningless, because, due to the loss of their jobs, they could not be useful to their families and even became a burden for loved ones.
It was then that Viktor Frankl realized that the meaning and value of human life in the minds of people are too rigidly connected with usefulness: having lost the opportunity to be useful, we fall into the meaninglessness of existence. This can be called a utilitarian perception: only that which is useful and brings success has meaning.
I’m afraid nothing has really changed in the last 90 years. There was a second circumstance that Frankl faced: people became less religious, the number of those who did not belong to any confession increased, hence the lack of reference points.
People began to understand less why they should live their lives in principle. Man was no longer aimed at transcendence, at going beyond his own being through service to God. On the contrary, he was ruthlessly left to his own devices and forced to look for new guidelines. And this aspect, it seems to me, is also relevant today. The decline in the role of religion in many countries leads to the loss of ideas about the meaning of being.
But today we have a lot of completely new opportunities. Doesn’t this affect the saturation and meaningfulness of our lives?
You are right, it does. We really have much more opportunities to shape our own lives. The free market, for example, gives us opportunities that even our parents could not dream of, let alone grandfathers. Life offers an amazing array of activities and ways to enjoy yourself.
But to believe that consumption can replace meaning is a big mistake. Rather, it is an attempt to satisfy a hunger for the meaning of ersatz wholesome food. In a situation where the number of opportunities and temptations is constantly growing, the problem of meaning is only exacerbated, although it is not sufficiently understood, and one needs to be a very strong and very clearly thinking person in order to maintain authentic life attitudes.
In this regard, we have a much greater burden than our ancestors?
Yes, and there is another important circumstance. We, modern people, live our lives less intensively than before, when people were faced with a large number of threats. For example, a crop failure certainly meant famine, the elements could leave you forever without a roof over your head, you could die from a cold. Today, most of these dangers simply do not exist. Previously, everyone was in contact with death: for example, small children died in almost every family. Today this is not so, and the experience of confronting death, the experience of understanding it has become much poorer.
Finally, we began to work less physically. There is equipment, cars that do not allow us to overwork. And this cannot but affect the life of our feelings. Our existence seems to be enclosed in a vacuum package, but from it this vacuum seeps into ourselves.
We do not experience real hunger, we rarely experience a sense of real danger.
Two paths lead to existential meaning: to experience something wonderful or to create something useful.
We feel less and less intensely what happiness is just to live, we understand the true value of life as such less and less. And it is more difficult for us to discern its meaning. Especially those who live in developed countries. A survey conducted in Austria in 2000 showed that more than half of the respondents at least once experienced a sense of loss of meaning. And only 11% answered that these problems had never been related to them.
It is a pity that such studies were not conducted in Russia. After all, we love to search for the meaning of life.
I think the terms need to be clarified. In logotherapy and existential analysis we distinguish between two concepts of meaning. The first is the practical meaning that lies in a particular situation. This is what we call existential. And the second is the global, ontological meaning that everything that exists has.
Existential meaning depends on the person himself and can change with the situation. It can be found if you make an existential turn: instead of constantly asking “what should I do?”, “What should I do?”, “What will it give me?”, Try to expand your attitude to the situation.
Put aside what I want and try to understand what this situation wants from me. What does life expect from me? By doing so, we immediately turn from a person asking questions into a person giving answers.
In every situation, we can do something that will be filled with meaning — and we will fill the situation with it.
Existential meaning is precisely to understand the question of each particular situation and to give the best possible answer to this question. That is, the answer that is currently possible for me and which I personally consider to be the best. This answer, of course, is not in words, but in action, deed. A person is able to create his own meaningful life, stringing moment by moment, like pearls in a necklace.
Are you saying that every situation necessarily carries some meaning and our task is to find it?
No. I can’t say that everything makes sense. But in each situation, we can do something that will be filled with meaning — and we will fill the situation with it. Viktor Frankl pointed out several paths that lead to existential meaning.
The first is to experience something wonderful: listen to great music, spend time in the company of loved ones, watch the sunset.
The other way is to create something of value: do your job well or bake a delicious cake. But there are situations when neither one nor the other is possible: for example, if a person is seriously ill.
Frankl writes a lot about the importance of finding meaning in hopeless or very difficult life situations. Then it is very important to find the right inner attitude towards the problem, towards one’s own suffering. An installation that will allow a person to carry his love of life high.
But what about global meaning? What can we do to clear it up for ourselves?
This is a huge philosophical and religious question, which is fundamentally insoluble from a human standpoint. Here we are talking about the meaning of life. What is a man, why is he born? And — perhaps the most acute question — why does suffering exist? Why does it fall to the lot of a particular person at a particular moment — and why to him?
Psychology cannot participate in resolving the issue of the global meaning of existence
Here we run into the limits of knowledge.
Psychology can no longer participate in the solution of this issue. And we have faith and hope.
However, even in these cases, an existential twist is possible. It is necessary to stop asking about the global meaning of one’s own life and try to answer this challenge, to understand what can be done even in the most difficult and difficult situation that would bring a positive result. If a person behaves in this way, if he is looking for an answer, then one meaning has already been created: this person becomes stronger as a person.