Meaning of life is a philosophical problem

Man lives in three dimensions, physical, psychical and spiritual (noetic).

It is the spiritual that is defining for man, the other dimensions are determined and shared with animals, man is uniquely the creature he is due to the spiritual

Psychoanalysis basis on the pleasure principle, Individual psychology on the status drive

Psychoanalysis: will to pleasure

Individual psychology: will to power

Logotherapy: will to meaning

Meaning which can enable enduring hardships, is unique and specific to each person, as each person is unique.

Should I expect something from life, or should life expect something from me? What is outside us that asks something from us

Goals can only be effective goals if they have meaning for us.

Meaning is synonymous with values.

Psychotherapy treats difficulties in the psyche.

Logotherapy treats difficulties in the noesis.

Spiritual despair is an existential neurosis.

Meaning

Creative

Experiential

Attitudinal (whatever happens in life, my attitude, my way of being gives meaning, the values I engage with)

Life puts problems to us; our meaning is how we answer them.

The religious believe in a taskmaster: God

The irreligious believe in Being\Fate\Chance.

Logotherapy aims to make each client responsible for their own concrete existence.

Common problems:

1. Planless and act less (reactive) existence

2. Fatalism: no matter what I do it won’t matter

3. Collective thinking: client loses his own attitude and substitutes for the Other

4. Fanaticism: Client ignores the attitudes of other people

To be fully engaged with your conscience and to act on it will help the above problems.

All four problems are underpinned by a person’s fear of responsibility and their escape from freedom.

Spirituality can be affected by things but not caused by them, so somatic\psychic.

Freedom

From instincts

From personality

From the environment (things that happen)

We have freedom as to how we respond to them, accept, reject or modify. Twins show how this happens.

People are responsible in the first instance to their conscience. Conscience being our sense of this is the right thing to do, or this makes sense, this is the right thing to believe.

1. From psychotherapy to logotherapy

Psychoanalysis: reduce repression to make the unconscious conscious.

Individual psychology=arrangement<>repression=neurotic clears themselves of guilt. Instead of casting something to the unconscious, they make themselves not responsible for something. Aim to make the neurotic responsible for their symptoms. I am making myself anxious

Neurosis as a limit of consciousness or responsibility.

Being conscious and being responsible are the base of human existence, but on top of it is the spirit, and meaning.

Libido as attraction, pan sexual, libido as motor energy.

But the will to power, will to meaning?

A concept that means everything then becomes meaningless, it is stretched too far.

Both psychoanalysis and individual psychology have a point, they are both right, but not in their scope, what’s needed on top is logotherapy.

There are more than sexual desires, there are psychic desires

“Neurotic” symptoms are not just a means to an end, but can be a direct expression of psychic strivings, e.g. culture and art.

Goethe: ‘If we take people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat them as if they were what they ought to be, we help them to become what they are capable of becoming.’

Psychoanalysis as a compromise between the unconscious and reality, via reducing repression and increasing consciousness.

The goal of individual psychology goes deeper. Beyond mere adjustment, it demands of the patient a courageous reshaping of reality; to the id’s ‘must’ it opposes the ego’s ‘will’.

Between reshaping the external world, and reshaping the internal world, there is doing meaningful things.

Disease of the body

Disease of the mind: trauma, OCD, social anxiety

Disease of the spirit: lacking meaning in life

You might explain the lack of meaning because of events that have happened, but there is the question still of how you address them, you might be hungry , but where do you get food, and how?

Psychotherapy can’t correct world views (?CBT/Existential?). Philosophical problems, e.g. worldviews, require philosophical responses

You shouldn’t denigrate a creation even it was produced out of psychic distress, e.g. art, worldviews etc. They stand on their own as having value, irrespective of intention (Heidegger as a nazi?). Difference between expression of a person, who might aim to represent a thing (naïve realism).

Health and sickness have no relation to truth\validity

Psychologism, explaining all acts with psychic motives can devalue the act, art as sublimation for instance.

Art: Something created from within, to enable self and others to inhabit and enjoy, experience.

Responsibility leads to blame\praise.

Human as the sui generis, that decides (jaspers) on their being. With freedom to respond to their gives, they can shape their being in a unique way.

To be is to be different from something, so it can stand out, and be recognised.

2. FROM PSYCHOANALYSIS TO EXISTENTIAL ANALYSIS

Chapter 2. 1 On the meaning of life

How shall I live? I can live by what my society\family etc tells me to, but then it really isn’t my life, my unique life

Animals can have purpose e.g. ants and anthill, but only humans have meaning, i.e. freely created, different from others, unique

Some neurotics desire to live by themselves on an island in the sun, away from the struggles of existence

Sunday neurosis: work hard all week, feel spiritually empty, get drunk!!!

Meaning of life, most often questioned in the teenage years, but also when a big event happens, e.g. bereavement. If you depend for meaning too much on one thing, if that is threatened or lost, it’s going to be tricky.

An affirmative attitude to life is really important alongside the biological aspect of man.

Purpose is transcendent from the thing that has it, a balls purpose is for the human to play a game. Grass has many purposes which are given to it by humans.

So, we can give purpose\meaning to things in our lives, but the purpose of our whole life must be outside it, which could mean society, culture, history, religion.

A cat can’t understand the purpose that their owners have for them. Likewise, a human can’t understand the purpose of their life.

If you believe in a super meaning, nothing is in vain, as it is all part of the plan .

A realised possibility is eternalised in the past.

Does Frankl related meaning and purpose, are they synonymous?

People who have a hedonic meaning of life leads to ethical nihilism

Theres no difference between giving money to a tramp or spending it on a bottle of wine .

If pleasure is the reason for action, then Napoleon sought displeasure when he lost his battle, surely not, he was aiming for pleasure, but it went wrong. There is something in this argument as you have a desire to do something, and the outcome is pleasure, but it’s the desire that’s the main thing not its outcome which is derivative maybe?

So, this would remove morality as a concept, I did it as it was the right thing to do.

Russian psychologist shows we have more unpleasant sensations in a day than pleasant.

Freud beyond the pleasure principle, return to a state of peace of the inorganic (Thanatos).

Entropy as reduction of tension, of difference, of the end of life which needs energy which presupposes difference.

Reduction of tension as the opposite of individuation, which is the construction of difference.

Psychology and physics clash!

Lebensworld precedes theory, a sunset is more real, than scientific predictions (err but what about climate change and those predictions, I suppose he is talking about longer range predictions, e.g. the sun burns out and dies)

Joy is always directed to an object; joy can make life meaningful only if it has meaning.

Non-intentional emotions are feelings that occur without deliberate effort or conscious control, often in response to stimuli or internal states. The pleasure in intoxication, is just a feeling without an object, so nonintentional.

intentional emotions: joy, love, . Pleasure with an object, e.g. stroking a cat.

The door to happiness opens outwards, and the more you push it the more it stays closed: Kierkegaard

Aesthetic and moral perception, require certain states to be perceived, e.g., my wife’s looks dependent on my sexual tension, in that perception this shows the transcendence of their qualities, i.e. I need my wife, she exists outside of my perception and desire.

Objective values become concrete duties, are cast in the form of the demands of each day and in personal tasks. They only become visible as concrete duties, when viewed as a whole, the whole of the day\life ?

Every person is unique, each situation in life occurs only once.

There is a singularity of the absolute rightness of the task for each person, and this is dictated by, I guess their conscience. But the individual has to step out of their day-to-day responsibilities, to get a sense of the whole, to see what to do (?)

If a situation demands a certain task, and you can’t achieve that, then you need flexibility to achieve other values.

It doesn’t matter what your givens are, your circumstances, king or a pauper, what does matter is how you fill the space you have been given.

Values that are realised in creative action are called creative values.

Values that are realised in experience are called experiential values.

How do you work out what you are given and what you can change. Is my memory bad and to be accepted or do I try to make it better and improve it.?

The higher moment of human existence can be achieved by the intensity with which a moment is engaged with. I guess it doesn’t need to be an ecstatic moment of pure beauty, but it could be deeply mundane. The greatness of a life can be measured by the greatness of a moment.

Attitudinal values: the values we show, in our attitude to our fate\destiny, to what is unalterable. There seems like an assumption of our fate\destiny being our suffering.

Frankly seems to have implicit that our life is given to us by God, and that it is unique. Within this uniqueness everything is preordained and has a right answer to be given to all of life’s situations. We should live to our values by creating in the world, and experience in the world and if bad things happen by our attitude to this suffering. We have a responsibility to live to our values, a responsibility to life or God depending on if you believe.

In moral terms lack of pleasure is never an argument for the ending of life, as meaning can always be produced even if there is no pleasure.

Euthanasia is tricky as who knows if the condition is permanent?

People can judge euthanasia as appropriate if someone doesn’t add value and doesn’t have an independent consciousness. But this would also be the description of some elders

A freedom to accept responsibility, a freedom to not a freedom from.

We have certain givens, but we have a freedom to respond to those in any way we want.

Suicide as no answer to the problem of life, it’s akin to sweeping away the chess pieces to the floor when confronted with a problem

Having a task for life, a purpose helps people endure any difficulty.

For a person to have a mission, that no one else can do enables them to endure hardships.

Life becomes more meaningful when they face suffering (how, please tell me). As you prove yourself through conquering hardships.

You can experience meaning, you can create meaning, or you can have meaning through your attitude to inescapable suffering.

You cannot avoid suffering, it will happen, you might change to some extent when and what. So, through looking both ways crossing a road, you can avoid having an early death through RTA. You can’t guarantee it, but you can minimize it. But even whilst you are not in an RTA you will still suffer somehow.

How do you show a client that their life is specific, unique, and has a mission\task to it, to which they are responsible? Unique I can get behind, but a task requires someone who has given that person a task, i.e. God.

The task for a person, varies from person to person and varies from time to time. In each situation, what is being asked of me.

In a situation, there are situational values as opposed to eternal values.

There are possibilities in every situation that can be actualised. If you do, you eternally store them in the past.

Is existentialism a theory of the individual, does it clash with social thinking, group thinking etc?

Uniqueness: no one else has my life

Singular goal: no one else can fulfil my goals

Binding group and uniqueness, I can be uniquely created out of a synthesis of common components, and then I experience from my perspective.

When you don’t know what your life task is then you need to find it, you find your tasks through action, not through thinking.

Someone who fears the future, as he has a strong judgement on their inabilities. Does have a strong moral compass, that currently they are deriding themselves with but also have as a potential guide for their life.

Peaks

A few mountain peaks of an individual life can justify the whole of individual life and collective life, i.e. society.

Life experienced as an assignment find life more meaningful. Some people also engage with the task master; they are the religious ones.

Know yourself by acting and meet the demands of each day

Almost making a masterpiece of your moment\day. What is being asked of you, and how will you respond?

The answer to the meaning of life, only makes sense specifically. To this person, in this situation. There is the meaning of life there, and they are guided to it by their conscience. What is the best thing for me to do, in face of the questions I have been posed by life. You should aim to be your best, given your constraints. Objective best makes no sense as it doesn’t relate to you in your circumstances.

Life asks the question of man, how shall you face, my demands of you, you are hungry, lonely bored, your desires ask questions of you, how will you respond. In what way will you satisfy your desires. The demands other people put on you.

Humans are conscious, and they are responsible to their lives by their conscience.

Uniqueness and singularity are the primordial components of meaning. You are unique, and only you can respond to your life tasks.

Death enables meaning as it increases the urgency to act within our limited time.

We are offered situational opportunities, that we can take up, realise, and concretise in the past, or we can let them get.

Due to temporality life is irreversible, and we are responsible for the life we have created

Live as if you are living the second time, and you acted wrongly the first time

Or live like you are shooting a movie and you can never change this moment.

Humans work the matter that destiny has given him, with creation, experiencing and attitude.

We judge a life by the richness of its contents, by its peaks not its duration.

Things make more sense with endings, e.g. movies, it becomes a thing as it has a start and an end, with no end, you don’t have a thing. Like time isn’t a thing, it’s a condition, like space doesn’t have an end so it isn’t a thing it’s a condition (?). If you don’t have an end, you don’t have a new beginning, in our lives we make way for youth.

In a story, there is something important about the beginning, the unfolding and then the end, as otherwise we would just want the conclusion, the summary, but there is something important in the dramatic unfolding, the expecting, the twists maybe.

Meaning is made in the uniqueness and singularity of my life, it had meaning as given this context, I responded in this way and that had meaning. I don’t need to reproduce to have meaning which merely pushes the question away.

The imperfection of every man makes them unique, as perfect man would be interchangeable.

Whole and part

An individual mosaic piece is incomplete, and not beautiful but as part of the whole it gains beauty.

The more differentiated the more unique, the less replaceable. On one hand if someone is normal, like others they are not differentiated, and they lose their individuality. Ideality\perfection would seem to do the same thing, if someone could gain it, they would be reproducible (?)

The meaning of an individual human is found within the meaning of the whole . This is tricky, meaning is derived from the whole and its interactions. But you could only get the meaning of the whole by transcending it, which again comes to God, the only person that can stand outside of humanity.

Mass doesn’t tolerate individuality

Community gives meaning to the individual and needs the individual to come into being. But this is a definition then community is group of individuals.

Mass is a group of similar people.

If each piece of a floor is replaceable, no part has any more quality than the other, all you have is quantity, magnitude, this is what mass is. However, when each piece is needed to construct the whole as in mosaic each piece is essential, and has a qualitative importance, on being it.

Magnitude has utilitarian value.

When people are replaceable the utility that you can derive from them is what is important.

When people are not and form part of a whole, then they are uniquely valued, as no one else can do what they do (?).

Quantity is valueless as its replaceable, quantity has value as its unique. Why does meaning equate with uniqueness?

Frankl sees every human as unique and having a purpose and that their meaning comes out the uniqueness of their life, in some way that the whole of their life is the context to define specific meaning.

But meaning comes out of the whole of society\culture and I suppose specific life.

To be a human is to have a different perspective, and different experiences. All our generally held but no one had this combination. We choose life, we have freedom, therefore are unique. As we are social and reflective we are responsible to ourselves and others for our choices. Our choices which construct our life, our future. Our choices which affect other people.

By escape into the mass, humans lose their most intrinsic quality, responsibility

Obsessional neurotic the other hand, when he shoulders the tasks set to him by society he gains something responsibility (meaning and society?)

Mass you can throw off responsibility

Community=a collection of responsible individuals.

Collectivism=a mass of a type of people

Neoliberalism= a mass of a type of people (consumers\suppliers\workers\owners)

In place of responsibility is conformity to the norms.

Evaluation by type simplifies for the individual as they are no longer responsible.

But humans are different, they are subjects, they define how they want to live. They have responsibility to that.

A human is born with certain givens

Givens=Gender, family\country of origin, type of body, time, i.e. 20^th century, genetical make up, culture, society

Does this constitute a destiny, a direction?

Frankl almost seems to say that every life has a right path, its destiny.

Destiny=Humans potentials +life opportunities+conscience (all of this is created out of the givens of each person)

So, you don’t know up front what your destiny is

When situations arise, those that you can alter for the better you should. Those that you can’t you should have an enriching attitude, I will make something out of this via my response. I wonder also if things you don’t like you should first accept, then second if you can change, if not then approach it with an enriching attitude. ,

Freedom always basis itself on restriction. To give me substance I have restriction, I am a person with limitations, but I can act freely on the basis of these limitations, of course I can’t do anything, I can’t fly.

I am free how I respond to my restrictions. If nothing restricted me, there would be nothing to push against, and choose my response everyone could do anything, we would all be interchangeable.

Humans as the species that freed themselves from constraints and so can define their lives. I have to eat, so I will work out how I will do that, I will be free. I have to breathe, so I will work out how to do that, sub aqua, planes with oxygen. I have to die, but I will try to manage that.

I have freedom as I can overcome, respond to my restrictions. I can walk or I can sit. If there weren’t restrictions from physics, gravity etc this wouldn’t make sense, I can be wherever whenever I want there are no restrictions, I couldn’t choose as I could do everything.

This paradox points up the dialectical quality of man, with his eternal incompleteness and his freedom of choice – his reality is a potentiality. What he is, he is not yet, but ought to be and should become.

We are free, anything else is bad faith, we choose how we respond to situations. This is the essential aspect of being human (our essence!!)

Destiny, not within humans’ ability to change nor responsibility. That which happens, Covid, rain, heart attack.

The past makes up humans’ destiny as it is unalterable, and yet it doesn’t determine the present, as you are free to how you engage with the past. What you understand from it, and how you respond to it.

Acting is to make a choice, is to realise out of all the possibilities this one, and then to preserve it in the past.

The past: whilst you can reinterpret it depending on present attitudes, there is still an aspect which seems irrevocable, transcendent almost. For instance, that there was a man called Winston Churchill, and he was the prime minister of England. What this means is open to interpretation but there seems a solid fact there.

Destiny:

1. Disposition: A human’s psychic and somatic givens, their body and brain

2. The situation the human lives in, 20^th century England

3. Disposition + situation=position/attitude

Attitude though is one of free will, you choose how given your disposition, the meaning you make of your situation.

Are we biologically determined?

No as humans with similar biology, have different lives.

Psychologically determined?

You can take attitudinal values to low mood; you can with auditory hallucinations think well at least I’m not deaf.

Socially determined?

Society has aspects of destiny, you are born and experience AI, computers, war, etc

It’s always back to the serenity prayer, if you can change it do, if you can’t change it accept it, and you will save the wasted energy from the struggle.

Life as a set of tasks posed to you.

There are individual values, and social values, there is in a human a relationship both to self and to society

Symptoms as not psychologically or physically determined but a mode of existence, a choice for certain reasons. Soma and psyche are partial explanations of symptom but so is the spirit, the freedom of will.

Life without a future, focusses heavily on the past. If you can’t see an end to the present, then you can’t see a future, as you are stuck here and now.

Healthy living needs to have a goal, a future, something that is being aimed at.

The Frankly Copernican revolution is to change the idea from “what can I expect from life” to how shall I respond to the problems life poses me, how shall I answer the questions life asks of me.

What will life give me, to how will I answer the questions of life.

There is a singularity and irreplaceability in everyone’s life, life asks you in your situation a question that only you can answer.

Passing of time

Pessimist, sees time ebbing away

Optimist, every day is neatly filed away with the wonderful things that were done, or experienced, that are there in the museum of the past forever.

Responsibility

I choose to do this (and not the 100s of other things, and this decision will last for eternity, this produces anxiety

But

I choose and I can affect the world, in a small way as everything is connected to my choice, and that is glorious

Religion

God gives man his life as a task to be lived

Experienced values=grace=a gift from God

Christianity: foreground of attitudinal values= the cross

Freedom is not something we have; it is something we are.

Chapter 2 On the meaning of suffering

Humans being conscious and responsible. Responsible for actualising situational and eternal values. Your conscience is the driving force to realising your values, such you feel good when you accord to your conscience.

Until someone learns the uniqueness of their situation, they cannot learn their life’s task as something binding on them.

Three categories of meaning

1. Experiential meaning

2. Creative meaning

3. Attitudinal meaning to things we can’t change

Event happens in your life; can you enjoy it? Experiential meaning, can you change it, creative meaning, do you have to accept it, attitudinal meaning.

There is value and dignity outside the continuum of success to failure.

Sacrifice when you do it, not with an expectation of reward but even in the face of failure can have value. E.g. dive into water and drown trying to save someone.

Out of suffering you can grow, the strength to endure suffering, the knowledge of what things you value, the compassion with others who suffer, how you grow as a person and change what’s valuable to you, how you approach things.

When you suffer you have a distance between your suffering and what you would like, the cessation of suffering, so it points you to what’s important to you. So, when you despair of your life, implicitly you judge what it should be: dignified, good etc. So, you have knowledge of these values, you aren’t a nihilist.

Worth of Grief :Holds onto a person’s life

Worth of repentance allows the culprit to rise again, freed of guilt

Boredom: exists to promote something meaningful, but the trap can be just to do anything to escape it

Suffering is to guard man from apathy

Repentance has the power to undo; grief has the power to perpetuate.

Someone who uses narcotisation (substance, distraction etc) to manage an unpleasant event, only deals with the unpleasant after effect, the event still remains there. Its hoping getting rid of the feeling gets rid of the thing, If I don’t fear the hungry lion it goes? Neither does looking at something create it, not looking away annihilate it.

Narcotization turns away from the objective world to the subjective, physical anaesthesia can cause death, subjective anaesthesia, can cause a spiritual death.

If you suppress unpleasant emotions enough, you suppress the inner life.

Pleasant emotions guide towards, aversive emotions guide away, both move from apathy. The away of aversive emotions can often be to replacement.

Destiny shaped where possible, endured where not: serenity prayer again!

Attitudinal values, fighting death, the unwinnable contest and fighting all the same, to delay? To be worthy as I died. The fighting alone is what counts, the courage the strength

Chapter 3 On the meaning of work

We shouldn’t ask what the meaning of life is for, but rather how should we respond to the questions life asks of us, it is a continual questioning, a series of tasks, and we are responsible for the overall creation, our life. We need to do the right thing, by our conscience in the moment and in the collection of moments that stack up to our life. That is the meaning of life, what we create in response to the questions\tasks life asks of us.

A person needs to be aware of their uniqueness, and the singularity of their situation, this vitalises them, gives them energy in difficult situations. Only I can face this difficulty, it is my difficulty and no one else’s.

Creative values, normally equate with a person’s work

Work offers the opportunity to make a person indispensable and irreplaceable.

What job you do doesn’t matter, but how you do it does, how you uniquely do it, with your unique qualities. How you engage with the job, with the people connected to your job. It is the unique human doing the job that matters, not the job. Meaning of work, when I bring my being to it, when it is not just a role, but rather my interpretation. It gives a human connection; it gives a connection to me.

Employers can want to reduce work to humans being part of a machine, being a cog, bringing nothing unique to it.

People can make the means of life, e.g. money, then end. Their livelihood overshadows life.

Things get scapegoated for your difficulties in your life, if only x, then I would be happy. So, the search for a meaningful life gets stop as you haven’t got x. All problems get blamed on x, and you don’t need to take responsibility for your life, and deal with its tasks\problems.

Lend your interest to life which will enable meaning to come from it.

Thinking life can only have meaning if, will enable you to not take responsibility for your life, not look at life’s tasks, not find out other ways in which life can have meaning.

Work is the means to the end of meaningful living.

People can escape life by throwing themselves into work and the emptiness of their life comes to the fore on Sundays. They can’t lose themselves in meaningless activity and they feel empty .

People run at their lives, act with high speed, for if they are quick enough, they will not notice how empty their lives are. They are trying to run away from themselves.

They look for intense or immersive experiences so that they can hide from the aimlessness of their lives. Are you a passive onlooker, or an active participant. The former would seem to be trying to immerse themselves in the experience of others, watching football, escaping from your life.

In mass psychology people seek individuality but only in superficial things, what colour their clothes are.

A mania in beating others, being the best amongst other is an absorbing neurotic escape of mass psychology. Being better than yourself, is worthy, as you are approaching the event in your unique singularity.

A thrilling book can’t wait to find out how it ends, it’s an escape from displeasure, into the pleasure of its removal, but then what.

In life as you face a struggle in so far as you can do something important or meaningful, not so you can just get pleasure in getting rid of the struggle.

Hunger for sensation is an addiction and the more you get the more you want, the more intense you seek. But it is just a feeling and has low meaning. All sensation seekers do is escape the emptiness of their lives.

People who enjoy the death and disaster of others, look at car accidents, murder mystery, are trying to escape death and misfortune. It is only something that happens to other people.

Life gives us endless challenges; it is narcotisation to watch other people perform feats for us.

We can never rest still with achievement as life continues to throw challenges at us, from hunger, interests, etc.

Chapter 4 On the meaning of love

The meaningfulness of life is based on the uniqueness and singularity of a person.

Creative values are those that are actualised and bear on the community.

Community in its turn, bears, existential meaning on personal uniqueness and singularity.

Love is the living experience of another in their uniqueness and singularity.

IN love, the beloved is engaged with in their uniqueness, and they engage with the other in their uniqueness. This seems to be the high points of love, this might be the arena in which the relationship plays out, the mood if you like, but the reality of a loving relationship, is the mundane, the house mate, the co-parents, the hoteliers etc.

The lover seeks the development of their beloves uniqueness and singularity.

The body and the psyche are the clothes that the spirit wears.

The lover loves what the beloved is, not what the beloved has.

True love means a person cannot be replaced, even by a double who looked and sounded the same.

Sexual excitement is temporary

Infatuation is temporary

Love is permanent.

But this means its irreplaceable! But you can fall in love more than once, but I suppose it is different.

Love is more than emotional condition; it is an intentional act. It intends the essence of the other.

Anti Sartre, existence precedes essence, what grounds are there to justify this, that there is a spiritual core, no more than the conscience I think Frankl would argue. How can this be when your conscience changes with time?

The truly loved can never die, as they live on in the memories of those that loved them.

During someone’s life you have far more experience of them, in imagination, memory and thought than you ever do with their bodies, death seems then an extension of this.

Body expresses the character (psyche) which in turn expresses the spirit.

Sex can be the expression of spiritual unity.

Love is only one way to get meaning out of life.

Someone who fails to gain fulfilment in a certain area, e.g. love, can end up over or undervaluing that area.

Overvaluing leads to a straining, undervaluing leads to a numbing denial.

Overstraining for happiness, leads to pushing the door, which actually opens outwards.

To value one aspect of someone, e.g. beauty is to devalue other parts, e.g. mind

If you prefer a type, then you avoid the responsibility of engaging with that specific person, you are dealing with an object.

If you are attracted by attribute then you engage in an object, and your relationship is ownership rather than relationship.

Infidelity follows from impersonality, as you can get better. But this is not about people, it’s about properties.

People can make themselves attractive by being a good example of a type, attractive wear this, have this type of body, successful, have this money, or be popular, but it is representative of a type, not a person, not a subject.

Tricky game, being attractive as being a certain type of person, object, being desired because of that, but then it’s you the subject that wants to be desired not your mask/objectification.

Dignity: the uniqueness and singularity of man.

Does make me think Frankl is an essentialist, if a person is their existence, their becoming and continually recreating themselves in situations, then how can they be unique and singular. They have a unique perspective, but it eternally recreated, so to love the essence of another is tricky as who do you love.

Could there also be something about knowing another person’s general process, they approach things in certain ways, our processes meet in certain ways. This doesn’t say you know what they are or do. This is nonsense, if you know what their process is you know what their essence is, friendly for example. But this then in turn essentialises them.

I don’t like Frankl’s essentialism, but he has got a point in terms of object and subject. We want as a subject to be loved, but we love in terms of objectification, where a person must have xyz, beauty, intelligence etc. On objectified love, that is replaceable, and transient, as it isn’t about the person, the subject. But on an existential basis how can you ever know the subject that is continually creating themselves.

The fear test, are you holding onto a relationship as you are afraid of being alone, are you leaving a relationship as you are afraid of responsibility\commitment.

The idea would be then to face your fear, to overcome it.

Love as wanting the highest value of your partner. A successful love affair as where you both want the highest value of each other, and you both agree with what that is. You see you partners potential. Love as perceiving the uniqueness, and the potential.

Doesn’t Frankl contradict himself when he both talks about essential nature and values potential, I suppose you can get the shadow of things, a list of things definite but unrealised, but surely there would be more unrealised things that do not get realised, there must be as otherwise there would not be free will. As your potentials would determine you.

Unhappy love affairs give a deeper sense of life

When someone stops being open to love, as they have had unpleasant experiences, then they are avoiding potential happiness to protect themselves against the unhappiness of the past. They are barricading themselves in the past.

Frankl’s law 9 unhappy love affairs to 1 happy one.

Jealousy as an emotion of possessing your partner, not relating to them.

People can be jealous of previous partners, but what better to be the last partner!

People with a tougher start achieve more for less. Because we don’t start equally its hard\impossible to compare.

Jealousy as pointless as either they are or not faithful, if they are faithful, then no point, if they aren’t then its already happening. I guess jealousy aims to prevent it happening but ironically leads to it.

The jealous person, doubt their ability to hold onto their partner, and in doubting weakens the relationship of love, and makes it more likely because he doubts his partners fidelity. Fidelity posed as a demand, will be taken as a challenge and the partner may protest. Trust in another makes for confidence, likewise, trust in oneself.

Sex as an end in itself of pleasure, and treating the partner as an object to that end

Sex as an expression of a loving union with a partner the crowning expression of connection with her being.

Things go wrong when the consciousness tries to regulate things that normally go one without thought: sex, sleep, speaking, be happy, a sense of certainty, decision

Sexuality invades the adolescent, and it is shocking. It is not personal and doesn’t have a direction, it hasn’t been integrated. Then it becomes directed, and goal orientated, aimless, but goal orientated, to women for instance. This is when sex moves from soma, to psyche and the finally to nous and it aims at the beloved.

Young people have the striving for comradeship, companionship, understanding

Erotic tendency moves from the psychological to the spiritual.

Sexual setbacks

1. Sexual and erotic are merging, but then there is a set back with the beloved, and then the person thinking he will never find union, goes on a sexual binge to forget his erotic unhappiness (The resentment type: as per Frankl)

2. Sexual and the erotic haven’t merged, and its considered impossible and not worth trying. Here there is resignation (The resignment type: Frankl) to just sex as there is no love and it certainly doesn’t join with love. This is the Don Juan type, who on one hand an erotic hero, on the other inwardly empty.

3. Inactive Type: doesn’t even achieve sex. His expression of isolation is masturbation. This can induce a guilt feeling for a passive response to an active desire. Masturbation is self-direction for a drive which wants other direction.

Resentment type achieves erotic union but loses it, resignment type doesn’t believe love is possible so just has sex, the inactive type doesn’t even achieve sex.

Frustration: alone with your drives, without the ability to engage with another to satisfy them. Bored? Horny? Lonely? As frustrations across various areas, play, company and sex.

Sexual frustration in young people is a sign that sexuality hasn’t been merged with eroticism so isn’t directioned (?)

Treating sexual frustration in the young!

Get them to meet a partner, when you’re in love, random sexuality desires drop away

To find love, you have to have the courage to seek love, fall out of love, be rejected, be on your own and if you can go through all this, you may find love but there is no guarantee.

Working with young people you need 3 parts of trust

1. Young person trusts the educator

2. YP trust in self

3. Educator trust of YP

B. Special Existential Analysis

4-fold aspect of neurosis

1. Physical origin

2. Outcome of something psychic

3. Means to an end socially

4. A mode of existence

a. Something chosen, a way of being

Neurotic symptom primarily a direct expression and secondarily a means to an end.

Difference between onset and purpose, starts for one reason, the purpose of it is why it continues. Understanding meaning, your purpose therefore can help wean off the symptoms purpose and reduce its maintenance factors.

More important to have an idea of a freedom to, what you are trying to achieve, what is important to you, rather than escaping your freedom from, all of your determiners.

On the psychology on Anxiety neurosis

Preoccupation with the future (dying of cancer) is at the cost of a disinterest with the present and living.

The sting of conscience, what shall I do with my life, what I have been given in terms of talents, what opportunities are in front of me, what life has given me.

Death is feared due to a guilty conscience towards life, focus on death or sickness a turning away from life.

Focus on one particular organ, is turning away from one value potential. As I focus on my heart, I turn away from my life, I might turn away from values and potentials I have, s they may be difficult for me to face.

Specific anxiety disorders, e.g. phobia, describe their existential underpinnings in how they are talked about. Agoraphobia: a feeling of hanging in the air.

Neurotic anxiety primarily as symbolic of an existential anxiety about life. Secondarily it can be used for paying offs, tyrannizing a family member, or justifying oneself to self or others.

On the psychology of Obsessional Neurosis

Obsession with perfection\certainty: cleanliness, scrupulosity, orderliness.

The problem isn’t the symptom, the obsession but the attitude to the obsession.

The fight against the compulsion strengthens it. Pressure generates counter pressure, The more I worry about not having a heart attack, the more I think about it, the more I fear it.

The more I worry about disease and protect myself against it the greater the power of disease has (as I am already investing a large amount of effort into it)

To not fight against the obsessional ideas, means that the client must not be frightened of them. However, clients think their thoughts will lead to actions for instance, or that they will die, vomit etc.

The client needs to accept a minimum that they are orderly, or they value cleanliness, or they have the odd, strange thought. So, if you worry about your throat, then accept that and look to enjoy your life as much as you can in spite of this worry, don’t fight it, don’t indulge it

Turn towards your life task, turns away from your obsessions

Plagued by doubt?

You perceive, you know its correct and then you doubt. Standardly you would be taken by the obviousness of the sense of correct, but the neurotic doesn’t get that feeling. If a normal person has any lingering doubt, they dismiss it in favour of their sense of correct, a neurotic doesn’t. a neurotic has a low sense of obviousness, and a high intolerance for the irrational doubting residue. They want absolute certainty but do get this they focus on unstoppable doubt. Certainty is that which can’t be doubted but then doubt comes to the fore not certainty.

Again, there’s something here about trying to do something deliberately which is done unconsciously. Knowing something is right\clean etc a sense of doneness, isn’t really a rational event, I wash my hands for 2 minutes that’s enough, I research buying a phone, I’ve researched enough I make a decision. The point of making a decision is I feel like I’ve done it enough, lets act.

Obsession as a reduction of trust in the “body” and replacing it with a logical certainty.

There is an instinctive obviousness\certainty that relieves us of trivial decisions and small decisions are treated like they are momentous.

With major events, after logic is used, the final arbiter is conscience, here are the facts, what feels like the right thing to do (its complex)

The obsessional neurotic cleans with the same importance as other people do in choosing a wife.

If you pay too much attention to walking you will stumble, excessive attention gets in the way of fluid action.

We need to help the client find their way back to their instinctive sense of certainty and instinctive sense of obviousness. The client has lost their trust, or sense of these instincts, and instead replaces them with cognition. I need to know that I am absolutely certain.

The obsessional neurotic suffers from the limitations of human thought and the dubiousness of human decision.

The Obsessional neurotic is troubled by the tension between what is and what ought to be and also with the irrational residue of thought. I plan a trip to the coast, I know it’s a good plan, I believe those thoughts. But then an irrational thought comes what if there’s a train strike, which is very unlikely, usually that thought would be brushed off as you know what you think.

The Obsessional neurotic strives for 100% in all fields, to be God like. This being impossible they concentrate on one area to be 100%.

Phobia: Fear of the universe is distilled into fear of just this object.

Obsessional neurotic: An omnipotent desire to shape the world according to my will (impossible) is transferred onto just one area: perfectly clean. However, in doing this, it makes the act inhuman, mechanical, logical, antiseptically clean.

Both the Obsessional neurotic and the AN have a striving for security which is deflected.

Standardly the striving for security is the security, I look to keep myself safe, so I feel safe. However, this isn’t enough for AN and Obsessional neurotic. For these people there is an artificial state of alarm, troubling thoughts maybe, and so there is an artificial striving for security. So, there is a striving for absolute security. But the security is in effect from themselves rather than from the world. But as this is impossible then the next best thing is sought, the feeling of security. So, there is the move from objective security to subjective, if I feel safe then I am.

So, on one hand, I come home, do things to be secure and safe, and go to bed. I trust my security process.

On the other hand, I come home and check locks until I feel safe.

AN=GAD=fear of WCS

AN=100% safe, a cognition, a feeling, rather than trusting the process (argh!!)

Tragic futility=striving for something that can’t be achieved.

The Obsessional neurotic flees from the world into their obsessions, and then needs compensation for their guilty conscience, so requires absolute x in its place, absolute cleanliness, absolute security.

Trying to get security directly is impossible, as a feeling of security is a natural outcome from an act. To try to get it directly, is to try to manufacture it, and therefore would be secure.

Not sure if I agree, but there’s something in it. If I try to be absolutely certain my engine is done correctly then I would recheck bolts, but if I just to the engine, in a way that I feel with be correct, then afterwards I can feel a sense of certainty emanate from my act: I feel certain because of how I did my act, rather than I feel certain because I looked to get certainty by rechecking, which is really just trying to produce certainty as not a product of the act.

Humans cannot achieve perfect knowledge, decision or security and can’t feel perfectly secure, confident etc.

The Obsessional neurotic takes high levels of responsibility of this one part of the world but doesn’t take partial existential responsibility for the rest of the world.

The Obsessional neurotic solves his life in fantasy, he becomes really good at something, this really small part. It’s an extension of specialism,

Radical doubt \scepticism, starts from existing and as part of my existence I doubt, so you can never doubt your existence. Never doubt the self-evident.

For Socrates to say he knows nothing, that is true apart from that dictum that he does know that he knows nothing.

Obsessional neurotic

The thing they need to accept is that rationality has its limits, you have to rely on an intuitive sense of certainty and obviousness. I shut the door, I exist, that’s the right thing to do, they weren’t offended. Obsessional neurotic wants an entirely rational world, but it’s not. It’s almost like the infant grows up and discovers rationality and then says to themselves, with rationality I can make my life ok and then looks to apply it in all situations,

Obsessional neurotic: Agonising about what the right thing to do is, you can do three things, this, that, or agonise about your decision.

1. On The psychology of melancholia

The melancholic low, but the anxiety with it, the anxiety of the fear of death and the stings of conscience of the unlived life.

Melancholia, as guilt, self-reproach, self-accusations, as a feeling of insufficiency an inadequacy in the task of life, that the client via their context has set themselves. The melancholic exaggerates the gap between what they are and what they should be. This gap becomes an abyss, both constructed and populated by their conscience, this is what I should be is the inversion in the whole.

As the melancholic experience judgement day, of their inability to achieve what they ought, then the manic experiences far surpassing their obligations.

When the gap between abilities and desire reach breaking point then the melancholic loses the future and possibly all that is left is being haunted by the past, and their recriminations as to how it would end like this.

The melancholic doesn’t believe their abilities are equal to their obligations.

The manic believes their abilities far surpass their obligations. The manic believes their abilities far surpass their obligations.

The manic lives in the future assuming it is a reality

The melancholic lives in the recriminatory past, without a future, or with a fear of the future.

The melancholic becomes blind to their own values, as they are blinded by their belief in their own insufficiency.

Melancholic=I have no value\s=worthless=The world has no value=meaninglessness= it won’t change=hopeless.

In some ways the melancholics conscience, what they value as good\bad, right\wrong, is replaces with a tyrannical blame of not good enough, which in turn ceases them up.

The temporality of children, things will never end\finish.

Temporality of adults, things will change.

Temporality of mortality, this life will end. I will end. Everyone will end.

Melancholics=exaggeration of life task + minimisation of own ability + self-blame for this

The gap between what is and what ought to be is experienced as an abyss, and therefore can produce anxiety

2. On the psychology of schizophrenia

The delusion of having pictures\recordings taken of you, or someone wanting something from you, or thinking of you.

This leaves the person as an object to the other who is the subject doing something to them.

The schizophrenic experiences their own affect, cognition passively, rather than as a subject, and then externalises this to someone else is treating me as an object, whereas in fact it is them

Somnolence and schizophrenia. The mid wake and state sleep is schizophrenia, the sleeper amongst wakers=Jung.

Somnolence as the empty husks of thought. Dreaming as using primitive symbolic language. Falling asleep as the between land.

Schizophrenics hearing voices is a passivizing of their thought process and attributing it to others, it doesn’t feel like mi8ne, so I attribute it to someone else.

Catatonia as behavioural passivity.

Hallucination as experiencing something internal as something external .

Knowing something has three parts, being aware of self, being aware of knowledge and the object of knowledge.

Exaggerated self-observation produces depersonalisation.

In the act of knowing I can be aware of myself as the knower, but to do this reflectively means I treat myself as an object, the knower, although it is only through my subjective perception that it comes to this, but I can then treat myself as an object. As passive in front of my own subjective activity.

It’s like over tightening the strings of intentionality until it snaps. So, the connection between the active subject taking itself as the intentional object, and all is left is the ego as object.

If schizophrenia is a loss of consciousness, then depersonalisation is an excess of consciousness.

Dream as being the remove of reflective consciousness (higher consciousness) and the clearing of the way to hallucinations\free associations/

3 Logotherapy as a psychotherapeutic technique

Paradoxical Intent

Anticipatory anxiety produces that which the client is afraid of.

Then because the symptom appears, this reinforces the protective use of anticipatory anxiety.

I anticipate the problem, to protect\avoid it from the situation

As I do this, I think about it, have some small experience of it, as I imagine it

So, it’s already happening before the situation

In doing this I associate the thing I fear with the situation

The combination of association plus currently experiencing it, leads to its occurrence in the situation.

Fear of anxiety

1. Judgement of others

2. Bad medical outcome: heart attack

3. Bad psychical outcome: go mad

4. The feeling

Anxiety neurosis leads to an escape from fear

Obsessional neurosis leads to a fight from fear

There is a third aspect of this, where you fight for something.

1. For pleasure

a. Orgasm

b. Sexual potency

2. For sleep ?

However, the more you fight for pleasure the more it eludes you, pleasure being an outcome from meaningful activity.

Paradoxical intent

With sweating, show the other person how much you have sweated, oh my God I’m so sweaty. So, in this instance you aren’t trying to get it more, e.g. wear a sweater for instance, but rather you are saying how much and wishing for more. So, if it is safe to increase the symptoms you could, but if not just either have the desire, or be proud of your symptoms.

You need to use laughter with the paradoxical intent to laugh (at yourself\the symptom, but not to mock), as in doing this you get some distance from the symptom. In doing this you see it from a distance, and can have a relationship with it, reduce it because it is less of you. So disidentification is one part of it. I guess another part of it, might be trying to do or not do an automatic response.

So, blushing\sweating etc, are not entirely under conscious control, but rather it’s an outcome of anxiety. So, if you anticipate it happening, you imagine it, experience it, increase your anxiety, expect it to happen in this situation, prime yourself, associate the place with the feeling, then get it. So, the other way to challenge it is to try to consciously increase it, I’m going to sweat\blush as much as possible. Doing this tries to get control of it, shows you can’t, also removes the fear for a moment as you can fear and desire something. Gives you a break, a reset, a new way of being with the feared thing.

Obsessionals fights: you need them to not fear their obsessions

Neurotics escape

Demanders try to force something that is not under our control, like sleep

Fighting against something I must not become unclean creates a counterpressure. The more you fight the bigger the threat seems to be, if you are to be totally without germ, any germ could be deadly, then you are going to have to fight harder, and the germs have become stronger, as you need to exert more effort to fight them. If you joke with them, you can see you’re safe, as you feel safe enough to joke.

Reference:

‘The Treatment of the Phobic and the Obsessive-Compulsive Patient with Viktor E. Frankl’s Paradoxical Intention’ Dr Hans O. Gerz

Paradoxical Intent is used when there’s anticipatory anxiety and you are fighting or escaping your fears

Dereflection is used when you are trying to do something that comes naturally, e.g. sleep and orgasms.

Dereflection

When there is anticipatory anxiety of a feared event, then this in turn can provoke the event, hyper reflection. Trying to sleep, you have an excessive intention to sleep, and then you are hyper reflective if that intention is being successful.

Paradoxical Intent

Through humour you transcend yourself , and in doing that take a different relationship to your symptoms.

Sleep is like a dove; it stays when you don’t pay any attention to it.

Excess of attention, excess of intention. I really want; I am excessively checking.

Paradoxical Intent you ridicule your symptoms; through de-reflection you ignore them.

You don’t need to watch your swallowing, sleeping, fucking because you don’t xyz, it does. It the unconscious, the body etc

Pay less attention to the how and more to what. When speaking pay more attention to the conversation, the speaker what they’re saying, how they’re saying, and your communication. With sex pay more attention to your partner that your performance. With sleep pay more attention to .errr your feelings of tiredness? With swallowing pay more attention to the taste of the food.

Body part hyper reflection\intention, they have become your master, your bowels, throat etc.

Dereflection, move attention from the symptom to the task at hand,

1. Wrong passivity

a. Anticipatory anxiety provokes escape\avoidance and is a flee from fear. As you try to protect yourself, you increase the anxiety before the situation so take it into the situation, you also make the feared thing even worse as the more effort you put into to protecting yourself the more significance and strength that the thing you are protecting yourself from gets. The greater the association becomes between anxiety and the event, by trying to protect yourself from it.

2. Right passivity

a. Ignore your symptoms, scary thoughts, ridicule them.

3. Wrong activity

a. The individual fights his fears (OCD). I have a fear bad things will happen; I fight against it by symmetry.

b. Fighting for something which you don’t control, e.g. sex or sleep or happiness

4. Right activity

a. Using dereflection focus on what is important to you, not your symptoms.

Logotherapy in psychosis

Psychosis, connect with the healthy part that can transcend the unhealthy part and relate to it.

Depression, whilst it seems dark at the moment, it doesn’t mean the sun doesn’t exist. This is temporary.

Don’t fight depression (not being active ?), it will increase self-reproach

In neurosis a client’s sense of responsibility needs to be increased, in depression it needs to be decreased, as they have monstrous feelings of guilt.

4 From Secular confession to medical ministry

There are different entities you can be responsible to : your conscience, your society, your family, your God.

If the problems diagnosed in the DSM are universal, then maybe they aren’t pathogenic.

Difficulties can make life more meaningful, not less

Life is rich, and the loss of x, will not take that away.

Logotherapy as indicated, when people face incurable situations whether external or internal.

Existential analysis as the border between medicine and philosophy.

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MeaningCentredTherapy

Doctor and the Soul: Frankl

Introduction