Man's Search for Meaning
Rather than being a symptom of neurosis, suffering may well be a human achievement, especially if suffering grows out of existential frustration.
To be sure, man's search for meaning may arouse inner tension rather than inner equilibrium.
Thus it can be seen that mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should become.
What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.
Man has suffered another loss in his more recent development inasmuch as the traditions which buttressed his behavior are now rapidly diminishing. No instinct tells him what he has to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people wish him to do (totalitarianism).
What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment.
There simply is no such thing as the best or even a good move apart from a particular situation in a game and the particular personality of one's opponent.
The emphasis on responsibleness is reflected in the categorical imperative of logotherapy, which is: “Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!” It seems to me that there is nothing which would stimulate a man's sense of responsibleness more than this maxim, which invites him to imagine first that the present is past, and second, that the past may yet be changed and amended. Such a precept confronts him with life's finiteness as well as the finality of what he makes out of both his life and himself.
The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love—the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.
Freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness.
To be sure, man's search for meaning may arouse inner tension rather than inner equilibrium.
Thus it can be seen that mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should become.
What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.
Man has suffered another loss in his more recent development inasmuch as the traditions which buttressed his behavior are now rapidly diminishing. No instinct tells him what he has to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people wish him to do (totalitarianism).
What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment.
There simply is no such thing as the best or even a good move apart from a particular situation in a game and the particular personality of one's opponent.
The emphasis on responsibleness is reflected in the categorical imperative of logotherapy, which is: “Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!” It seems to me that there is nothing which would stimulate a man's sense of responsibleness more than this maxim, which invites him to imagine first that the present is past, and second, that the past may yet be changed and amended. Such a precept confronts him with life's finiteness as well as the finality of what he makes out of both his life and himself.
The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love—the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.
Freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness.