Summary of “Logotherapy in a Nutshell” from Man’s Search for Meaning, p. 121
What is the will to meaning? Every school of psychology has a theory of motivation. The will to meaning is Frankl’s theory. “Will” is just another word for motivation. If Frankl were alive today he might have chosen his words differently but he uses the word “will” to contrast his concept to the psychological theories of his time, namely Freud’s “will to pleasure” and Adler’s “will to power.”
Why is motivation so central a concept in psychology? Until you’re motivated to change, nothing will change. So it’s worth knowing what moves you to get up and do something. Why should you quit smoking, practice piano or improve your marital relationship?
What motivates you to follow through on your goals? What really sparks your passion?
More than fear, social pressure, habits, instincts or anything else, the most basic and powerful motivator is meaning. Everyone is constantly looking for meaning, and because you want so badly to find it, you can get yourself to do all kinds of things that are really hard to do and things you didn’t imagine you were capable of doing.
What is this “meaning” we’ve been talking about? In a word, your meaning is your values, ideals worth striving for which make life worth living. They are so important to you that you are even willing to die for them. So you can imagine you’re going to be highly motivated to do something when the value standing behind it is that important.
But here’s the catch. You aren’t always able to identify what you’re looking for. You might just feel restless and uneasy. In addition you don’t always recognize the potential for meaning in the life situation in front of you. That’s where the work comes in, not just doing but also searching and persevering.
One more word is in order before we can define meaning. Frankl writes: “[Meaning] must and can be fulfilled by him alone; only then does it achieve a significance which will satisfy his own will to meaning.” (Man’s Search for Meaning, p. 121)
There’s a subtle concept here that’s hard to explain but easy to understand intuitively. Values are the way we fulfill meaning. Values cannot be “personal preferences” as if they were only a matter of taste (chocolate ice-cream versus vanilla) because taste is not something you live and die for. It’s also not enough to only say that values are universal ideals and morals because then we’d be missing the part about how only you can fulfill it and you’re not satisfied until you do.
Why can only you fulfill this value? Why are you dissatisfied until you do?
Your values are impulses to manifest your uniqueness in the world. Yet unlike drives where there’s a tension that’s released through manipulating an object (or treating a person as an object), values create a longing for connection to something or someone.
An impulse isn’t real unless you do something real with it. No one wants to sit on the sidelines of life. We want to participate. We want the world to be a better place because we are in it. That’s why we’re not satisfied until we do our part.
And it has to be ours. No two people are the same. Along with our unique inborn talents and personality, we have inborn longings that are different from anyone else’s. Without understanding why or how, we are a channel for those things with which we sense a vibration or resonance. We aspire to live for the sake of a higher cause and this higher cause is our particular calling.
Because we’ve been designed in this way, we have a natural tug towards filling a space in the world that no one else can fill and thereby contribute to the whole. As my logotherapy colleague Aryeh Siegel says, no one can take away anyone else’s meaning.
In short, the will-to-meaning is our inborn motivation to connect to and live for the sake of something beyond our self. That which moves and inspires us can be found through opportunities life brings us and is ever present as an inner longing. When we fulfill that longing we sense our existence in the world as meaningful.