Man’s Search for Meaning Session 3: Frankl’s Four Prescriptions

When you make stress-free living your goal, you are likely to experience endless internal conflicts and an unwinnable war with the world.

Whether we know it or not, all human action has a purpose. Even mindlessly scrolling our phone has the purpose of distracting us from what Viktor Frankl calls “existential frustration.” Frankl refers to a felt sense of futility when your “will to meaning” feels thwarted. Frankl writes,

Existential frustration is in itself neither pathological nor pathogenic. A man’s concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease. It may well be that interpreting the first in terms of the latter motivates a doctor to bury his patient’s existential despair under a heap of tranquilizing drugs. It is his task, rather, to pilot the patient through his existential crises of growth and development.

Of course, nothing that Frankl or I write is advice to stop taking or altering medication without medical assistance.

Yet, the number of Americans, especially young people, on psychotropic drugs is terrifying. No wonder there is a crisis of meaning.

It is not possible to live without frustration, stress, or tension. When you make stress-free living your goal, you are likely to experience endless internal conflicts and an unwinnable war with the world. You risk not actualizing the potential meaning of your life.

Frankl offers prescriptions for actions you can take for more meaning and purpose to be revealed.