116 Man's Search for Meaning
Logotherapy in a Nutshell 117
THE MEANING OF LOVE
Love is the only way to grasp another
human being in the innermost core of his
personality. No one can become fully aware
of the very essence of another human being
unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled
to see the essential traits and features in the
beloved person; and even more, he sees that
which is potential in him, which is not yet
actualized but yet ought to be actualized.
Furthermore, by his love, the loving person
enables the beloved person to actualize these
potentialities. By making him aware of what
he can be and of what he should become, he
makes these potentialities come true.
In logotherapy, love is not interpreted as a
mere epiphe-nomenon
3
of sexual drives and
instincts in the sense of a so-called
sublimation. Love is as primary a
phenomenon as sex. Normally, sex is a mode
of expression for love. Sex is justified, even
sanctified, as soon as, but only as long as, it is
a vehicle of love. Thus love is not understood
as a mere side-effect of sex; rather, sex is a
way of expressing the experience of that
ultimate togetherness which is called love.
The third way of finding a meaning in life
is by suffering.
THE MEANING OF SUFFERING
We must never forget that we may also
find meaning in life even when confronted
with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate
that cannot be changed. For what then matters
is to bear witness to the uniquely human
potential at its best, which is to transform a
personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one's
predicament into a human achievement.
When we are no longer able to change a
situation— just think of an incurable disease
such as inoperable cancer —we are challenged
to change ourselves.
3 A phenomenon that occurs as the result of a
primary phenomenon.
Let me cite a clear-cut example: Once, an
elderly general practitioner consulted me
because of his severe depression. He could
not overcome the loss of his wife who had
died two years before and whom he had
loved above all else. Now, how could I help
him? What should I tell him? Well, I
refrained from telling him anything but
instead confronted him with the question,
"What would have happened, Doctor, if you
had died first, and your wife would have had
to survive you?" "Oh," he said, "for her
this would have been terrible; how she would
have suffered!" Whereupon I replied, "You
see, Doctor, such a suffering has been spared
her, and it was you who have spared her this
suffering—to be sure, at the price that now
you have to survive and mourn her." He
said no word but shook my hand and calmly
left my office. In some way, suffering ceases to
be suffering at the moment it finds a
meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.
Of course, this was no therapy in the proper
sense since, first, his despair was no disease;
and second, I could not change his fate; I
could not revive his wife. But in that
moment I did succeed in changing his attitude
toward his unalterable fate inasmuch as from
that time on he could at least see a meaning in
his suffering. It is one of the basic tenets of
logotherapy that man's main concern is not
to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather
to see a meaning in his life. That is why man
is even ready to suffer, on the condition, to be
sure, that his suffering has a meaning.
But let me make it perfectly clear that in no
way is suffering necessary to find meaning. I
only insist that meaning is possible even in
spite of suffering—provided, certainly, that the
suffering is unavoidable. If it were avoidable,
however, the meaningful thing to do would be
to remove its cause, be it psychological,
biological or political. To suffer unnecessarily
is masochistic rather than heroic.
Edith Weisskopf-Joelson, before her
death professor of
118 Man's Search for
Meaning
Logotherapy in a Nutshell
119
psychology at the University of Georgia,
contended, in her article on logotherapy, that
"our current mental-hygiene philosophy
stresses the idea that people ought to be
happy, that unhappiness is a symptom of
maladjustment. Such a value system might be
responsible for the fact that the burden of
unavoidable unhappiness is increased by
unhappiness about being unhappy."
4
And in
another paper she expressed the hope that
logotherapy "may help counteract certain
unhealthy trends in the present-day culture of
the United States, where the incurable
sufferer is given very little opportunity to be
proud of his suffering and to consider it
ennobling rather than degrading" so that "he
is not only unhappy, but also ashamed of
being unhappy."
8
There are situations in which one is cut off
from the opportunity to do one's work or to
enjoy one's life; but what never can be ruled
out is the unavoidability of suffering. In
accepting this challenge to suffer bravely, life
has a meaning up to the last moment, and it
retains this meaning literally to the end. In
other words, life's meaning is an
unconditional one, for it even includes the
potential meaning of unavoidable suffering.
Let me recall that which was perhaps the
deepest experience I had in the concentration
camp. The odds of surviving the camp were
no more than one in twenty-eight, as can
easily be verified by exact statistics. It did
not even seem possible, let alone probable,
that the manuscript of my first book, which I
had hidden in my coat when I arrived at
Auschwitz, would ever be rescued. Thus, I had
to undergo and to overcome the loss of my
mental child. And now it seemed as if nothing
and no one would survive me;
13"Some Comments on a Viennese School of
Psychiatry," The Journal
of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 51 (1955), pp.
701-3.
14"Logotherapy and Existential Analysis," Ada
Psychotherapeutica,
6 (1958), pp.193-204.
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