Nietzsche’s aphorism “If we have our own ‘why’ of life, we will get along with almost any ‘how'” became the basis of Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy. In a world that seems increasingly irrational, perhaps reviving this system of thought can help us find meaning.
Logotherapy, or the “Third School of Viennese Psychotherapy,” did not spread like the other two: Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis and Alfred Adler’s individual psychology. This was probably because the first two were more suited to the capitalist context of the production system from which they emerged.
For Freud, man’s primary goal is the will to pleasure. From early development, when our unconscious desires conflict with reality or the rules of society, we suppress ourselves into unconsciousness. Later in life, these repressed ideas re-emerge as internal conflicts between the Id (natural desires), Ego (our personality), and Superego (societal expectations)—making this internal tension the central drama of human life.
For Adler, the core human drive is the desire for power—specifically, the drive to move from a sense of weakness or inferiority to one of containment and elimination. We are social beings who desire to exist; when we feel inadequate, we develop an inferiority complex. We try to solve this in a healthy way through social interaction, or emotionally by striving to outdo others to hide our vulnerability.
For Frankl, man’s primary purpose is the will to meaning. We have an inner need to make sense of our existence—not just through logical cause-and-effect, but through finding personal purpose in everyday life. The absence of meaning creates a void that exists (indifference and emptiness). Although suffering itself is an inevitable part of life, rooting that suffering in a meaningful “Why” makes it bearable and turns pain into meaning.
Although each of these schools has its own application, the first two are firmly rooted in the concept of humanity. For Freud, every present problem can be found in the repression of the past. For Adler, it is the person who adapts to himself. However, for Frankl, meaning is not something that is found within himself, but is found when he meets “the other.”
The explanation, according to Frankl’s thought, can be pursued in three ways. The first is creative values: creating a work, doing an action, or accomplishing a task. The second is about experiential values: experiencing something or meeting something with love. The third is the stance we take on inevitable suffering or unchanging destiny. Meaning, in this sense, is not something we simply create for ourselves, but something we construct in relationship with “the other.”
This requires a proactive, creative approach to the world. We don’t just solve our problems by sitting on the couch or negotiating our situations to find balance; we solve them by engaging with ourselves and our surroundings. We change ourselves, and with that change, we change our circumstances.
This may at first sound like a form of “toxic positivity,” but it is quite the opposite. Logotherapy was created specifically to address the “catastrophic triad”: pain/suffering, guilt (awareness of failure), and death (transient life). It uses “sad hope”—the ability to say “Yes” to the pain of the triad by turning suffering into one’s success, guilt into an opportunity to change for the better, and the passing of life into a motivation to act rightly in the present.
It is this particular quality of logotherapy that can help us so much in our current situations. For many, if not most—except for the dwindling elite—life becomes difficult and meaningless. This difficulty and ambiguity creates frustration, which in turn creates conflict.
Frustration becomes a structural feature of our social system. There is frustration at the geopolitical level, there is frustration at the political level, and there is frustration at the societal and individual levels. At the geopolitical level, frustration is seen in the impossibility of states, or large states, to establish their own goals amid competition for resources. At the political level, the state cannot fulfill its promises to the citizens. At the societal and individual levels, life chances are bound to get worse, not better.
The inability to overcome frustration in a creative way that can produce meaning on all three levels creates conflict. This becomes a feedback mechanism where conflict creates more frustration, which creates more conflict.
There are many possible examples of this. Trump’s war on Iran is one of them on a geopolitical level. At the geopolitical level, aggressive foreign military policies serve as prime examples. Amidst the frustration of a hegemonic collapse that seems inevitable, war may be launched to assert dominance and control over resources. However, the war itself becomes a source of more frustration because it cannot achieve its goals, which in turn causes more conflict.
At this level, logotherapeutic principles can be applied by a nation that accepts inevitable loss and finds meaning in responding to it intelligently. In this school of thought, that would mean redirecting the power and resources of the state to an effort greater than the state itself: improving the lives of its citizens by reorganizing society and achieving some form of social transcendence. However, those in power often choose to change everything but themselves—the status quo.
This is Adler’s “will to power” in action, which creates an emotional state by aiming to dominate others. Adler’s correct answer would be to try to find a balance. However, we may have passed that stage; what we need now is a creative response that gives new meaning to our public institutions. But, according to Frankl, that requires “self-transformation.”
Politicians in charge of the state, at different levels of independence, find that politics is frustrated because they cannot fulfill their campaign rhetoric, as their agenda and budget are increasingly dictated by external demands. They also find that they have little room to steer a progressive system that, in many cases, lacks real power politics.
German politics serves as an example. The government’s direction is increasingly determined by macroeconomic indicators and the needs of the financial market. Politicians have little room to react to national needs, such as dealing with industrial layoffs or the migration crisis. This creates frustration, which leads to social conflict and increased polarization—which feeds back into more frustration and more conflict. Separation will require creative action that will reintroduce meaning to politics, understood as governing the common interests of citizens.
In the end, almost any citizen of the Western world feels frustrated because their future prospects—and those of their children—seem worse than their fathers. In a society where one of the main, if not the most important, measures of success are physical, that is a real source of grief and frustration. This creates conflict with the political class and among the citizens themselves, with increasing divisions depending on who they decide should be blamed (immigrants, Muslims, communists, fascists, etc.).
This is perhaps the field where logotherapy is most effective, as it is precisely what it was designed to address. It requires a creative act of man to come out of himself, engage with the frustration of his circumstances, and transform it into a new creation.
I admit that I have oversimplified for the sake of argument and that the scope of analysis and application described here is almost entirely Western. I also understand that logotherapy itself is by no means a single saving grace. But I hope that, in a world that has become more visual with each psychoanalysis, bringing it to the table gives a refreshing look, and, perhaps, may cause some creative action.
