Andrea Nicole P.

Dael GEC101 26M

1. In logo therapy, there are 3 avenues in arriving at meaning in life?

Enumerate them?
Three main avenues on which one arrives at meaning in life.
- Creating a work or by doing a deed.
- Experiencing something or encountering someone; can be
found not only in work but also in love.
- Even the helpless victim of a hopeless situation, facing a fate he
cannot change, may rise above himself, may grow beyond
himself and by doing change himself.
2. We can discover meaning in life "by experiencing something or by
encountering someone". Explain how we can do this as suggested by
Victor Frankl.
- Discover meaning in life have different ways and one way is by
experiencing something-such as goodness, truth, and beauty-
by experiencing nature and culture or, last but not least, by
experiencing another human being in his very uniqueness-by
loving him.
3. We can also discover: meaning in life in spite of unavoidable suffering.
Explain how we can find meaning in suffering by the methods given by
Frankl. Illustrate with examples.
- We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even
when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate
that cannot be changed. In accepting this challenge to suffer
bravely, life has a meaning up to the last moment, and it retains
this meaning literally to the end. Dr. Frankl's perspective is that
he's not denying the grief and rage that spring from suffering
and tragedy. He's not "making the best of things." And he's not
blithely suggesting that "everything happens for a reason". What
he is doing is encouraging us to acknowledge our grief and
rage, and also to see our suffering as an experience in which it
is possible to find meaning.
An elderly general practitioner consulted Dr. Frankl. He has
severe depression as he lost his beloved wife. What Dr. Frankl
did, he confronted him with a question of what would happen if
his wife would have survived instead of him. That moment, the
elder find meaning in his life, and that is the meaning of
sacrifice. He spared is wife from being terrible and from
suffering. It changed his attitude toward his unalterable fate in
as much as from that time he could at least see a meaning in
his suffering.
4. In logo therapy, what is meant by "super meaning"? Explain by how Frankl
helped a patient discover meaning by sighting the story as told by Frankl
about Rabbi.
- Super meaning necessarily exceeds and surpasses the finite
intellectual capacities of man. What is demanded of man is not,
as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the
meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to
grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms.
That is exactly what I did once, for instance, when a rabbi
from Eastern Europe turned to me and told me his story. He had
lost his first wife and their six children in the concentration camp
of Auschwitz where they were gassed, and now it turned out
that his second wife was sterile. I observed that procreation is
not the only meaning of life, for then life in itself would become
meaningless, and something which in itself is meaningless
cannot be rendered meaningful merely by its perpetuation.
However, the rabbi evaluated his plight as an orthodox Jew in
terms of despair that there was no son of his own who would
ever say Kaddish for him after his death. But I would not give
up. I made a last attempt to help him by inquiring whether he did
not hope to see his children again in Heaven. However, my
question was followed by an outburst of tears, and now the true
reason for his despair came to the fore: he explained that his
children, since they died as innocent martyrs, were thus found
worthy of the highest place in Heaven, but as for himself he
could not expect, as an old, sinful man, to be assigned the same
place. I did not give up but retorted, "Is it not conceivable,
Rabbi, that precisely this was the meaning of your surviving
your children: that you may be purified through these years of
suffering, so that finally you, too, though not innocent like your
children, may become worthy of joining them in Heaven? Is it
not written in the Psalms that God preserves all your tears? So
perhaps none of your sufferings were in vain." For the first time
in many years he found relief from his suffering through the new
point of view which I was able to open up to him.