Viktor Frankl's Survival: Bridging Logotherapy with Modern Science on Meaning

My most frequently recommended book, Man’s Search for Meaning, captures how Viktor navigated through horrors to find meaning in unbearable circumstances. As most of you probably know, Viktor was a prisoner in the Holocaust and his book dives into everyday life in the camps, and how finding meaning helped him transcend and go through his suffering.?

Viktor, emphasizing our will to meaning over pleasure or power, developed logotherapy during his time in the Holocaust based on this essence. However, in this article, I’m going to map out Viktor's theory of meaning to the empirical research of meaning in life.

Defining meaning in life

The scientific consensus on the definition of meaning in life is that it has three facets, with the third face having two dimensions. Coherence is defined as understanding yourself, experiences, and the world around you. Purpose is having an overarching aim, often something that is meaningful to yourself and beyond yourself. Significance is perceiving that life is worthwhile and valuable and mattering is one’s sense of making a difference in the world.?

The science of meaning in life

Studies have shown that having a presence of meaning in life is really important for our lives.?For instance, experiencing higher meaning in life is positively associated with well-being, positive affect, health, and longevity and negatively associated with cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's, anxiety, depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation. Thus, having a sense of meaning is essential both for proactively increasing well-being and being responsive in a sense as hit helps us bounce back after adversity.

Meaning making model

When people experience trauma, their meaning system gets disrupted. The meaning-making model states that people have global meaning, consisting of purpose, beliefs and feelings and situational meaning, which is the meaning we give to the experiences that occur in our lives. When minor disruptors happen, we often change our situational meaning to match our global meaning (assimilation).?

When we have a major disruptor in our lives, our global meaning often gets challenged. For instance, if you trust people and always give people the benefit of the doubt and someone lies to you, you could experience a little disruption between your global and situational meaning. However, if somebody betrays you badly, you could experience a big disruption between your global meaning and situational meaning. The more discrepancy we have, the more trauma we experience. Your task after a traumatic experience is to reduce this discrepancy, and if successful, you will be able to find meaning and navigate through your suffering.?

Mapping the facets of meaning to Man’s Search for Meaning

Viktor did several things to reduce this discrepancy and increase his likelihood of survival.

• Purpose:??

• Viktor’s primary purpose in the camp was to protect his manuscript, aiming to help others find meaning post-holocaust.?
• ?Viktor frequently emphasized the importance of purpose, quoting Nietzsche: “He who has a why can bear almost how”.?
• Coherence:

• Writing his manuscript provided Viktor with a deeper understanding of himself and his experiences.
• Research indicates that writing about traumatic experiences can enhance psychological well-being and physical health. Words like "understand," "because," and "therefore" amplify these benefits.
• Significance:

• Despite his traumatic experiences, Viktor believed in the significance of life, stating, “If there is meaning in life, there is meaning in suffering.”
• Mattering:

• Viktor's actions in the camp, from helping fellow prisoners to using his words for encouragement, showcased his belief that his life had an impact.

Mapping the sources of meaning to Man’s Search for Meaning

While the facets of meaning were pivotal for Viktor, the sources of meaning also played a significant role in his life.

• Positive affect:

• Viktor utilized humor and appreciated beauty (awe) even in dire circumstances.?
• Positive affect is a robust predictor of meaning in life.
• Positive emotions broaden our thinking and behavior and increase our psychological, social, and physical resources,?
• Given that positive emotions increase the vagal tone, an index of heart rate variability, and a health marker, I wonder if they contributed to Viktor's physical resilience despite his inadequate nutrition and sleep.
• Relationships:

• Viktor frequently thought of his wife and fostered relationships with both prisoners and guards.?
• He believed love was the world's most potent force, aligning with research that ranks relationships as a primary source of meaning
• Work:

• Viktor viewed his manuscript as a significant piece of work, aiming to add value to the world.?
• Work, in general, offers a sense of purpose and the opportunity to make a meaningful impact.

Conclusion

In all, this blog article was an attempt to map out the empirical research on meaning in life to Viktor’s experience in the Holocaust. I’ll end this article with his most impactful quote:

?“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

How does meaning in life help you go through the adversities in your life?

For more reading:

Frankl, V. E. (1985). Man's search for meaning. Simon and Schuster.

Fredrickson, B. L. (2004). The broaden–and–build theory of positive emotions. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences, 359(1449), 1367–1377. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2004.1512

Fredrickson, B. L., & Joiner, T. (2018). Reflections on Positive Emotions and Upward Spirals. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 13(2), 194–199. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691617692106

King, L. A., & Hicks, J. A. (2021). The Science of Meaning in Life. Annual Review of Psychology, 72(1), 561–584. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-072420-122921

Steger, M. F., & Park, C. L. (2012). The creation of meaning following trauma: Meaning making and trajectories of distress and recovery. In R. A. McMackin, E. Newman, J. M. Fogler, & T. M. Keane (Eds.), Trauma therapy in context: The science and craft of evidence-based practice. (pp. 171–191). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/13746-008