Is human existence meaningful? If so, what gives life meaning? Or, as some existentialists such as Jean-Paul Sartre assert, is life inherently meaningless? If so, how does one live and find fulfillment in a meaningless world? These are the key questions for existential psychotherapy.
I say key because these questions regarding meaning and meaninglessness may be one of humankind’s most basic and ubiquitous “ultimate concerns” (see Tillich 1952; and Yalom, 1980). As Viktor Frankl (1985) asserts, we are a meaning-seeking species innately and instinctively imbued and, I would add, existentially burdened, with a burning and inextinguishable “will to meaning,” an unceasing need to know about and attempt to make sense of both the inner and outer worlds which we inhabit.
This compelling craving for meaning is commonly, consciously but more often unconsciously, what propels people into seeking psychotherapy. Yes, superficially it is their suffering stemming from neurotic or psychotic symptoms, loss and grief, alienation or relationship conflicts, existential Angst or anxiety, etc. that motivates someone to seek psychological assistance; but behind one’s suffering and symptoms inevitably lurk the “big questions”: “Why is there so much evil and suffering in the world?” “Why do I suffer? “If there is a God, and he or she is good, how could God permit such pervasive suffering? “What is the significance of human suffering?” We desire desperately to make sense of the seeming senselessness of existence. To make meaning of meaninglessness.
So, just how central is our human need for meaning in life? Is suffering senseless or might it be meaningful and even necessary? Indeed, it could be said, and has been by eminent psychologists and psychiatrists like Carl Jung, Otto Rank, Viktor Frankl, and Rollo May, that the actual source of most human suffering is a deep sense of senselessness, absurdity, or meaninglessness.
For example, Frankl (1985)–who proposes that human beings possess an innate “will to meaning” which, when chronically frustrated, results in an “existential vacuum” or void of meaninglessness–albeit somewhat formulaically, attributes depression or despair to the subjective experience of senseless suffering (D=S-M). Indeed, some studies have reported a correlation between meaning and mortality across the life span, while others indicate that as many as 68% of patients entering outpatient psychotherapy stated that their need for “increased meaning in life” was an important motivation for seeking treatment.
Meaninglessness is clearly for most a major reason for entering psychotherapy. But this begs the crucial question: Can psychotherapy really make life more meaningful? Can meaninglessness be therapeutically cured or ameliorated? And if so, how is this accomplished?
Rollo May (1991) remarks that “As a practicing psychoanalyst I find that contemporary therapy is almost entirely concerned . . . with the problems of the individual’s search for myths. . . . A myth is a way of making sense in a senseless world. Myths are narrative patterns that give significance to our existence” (pp. 9-15). May goes on to say, “Whether the meaning of existence is only what we put into life by our own individual fortitude, as Sartre would hold, or whether there is meaning we need to discover, as Kierkegaard would state, the result is the same: myths are our way of finding this meaning and significance. . . .” (p. 15).
No myth, no meaning. Myths, by virtue of the meaning they contain, provide a potential antidote to the toxic condition of perceived meaninglessness. Mythology is a central focus in Jungian analysis, serving the purpose of making meaningful sense of the patient’s experience and putting it into some greater archetypal perspective as part of the human condition. As Jung understood, they reveal that our experience, especially our suffering, is not merely personal but also transpersonal or archetypal. Because myths encapsulate eternal truths about the human condition emerging from our shared collective history, they can make life richer and more meaningful and help assuage our existential sense of aloneness, alienation and isolation.
This is part 1 of a 2.
