Quotes About Existential

statement is an oversimplification; yet in logotherapy the patient is actually confronted with and reoriented toward the meaning of his life. And to make him aware of this meaning can contribute much to his ability to overcome his neurosis.

In fact, the drug scene is one aspect of a more general mass phenomenon, namely the feeling of meaninglessness resulting from a frustration of our existential needs which in turn has become a universal phenomenon in our industrial societies.

It goes without saying that meaning and purpose in life cannot be prescribed like a drug. It is not the job of a doctor to give meaning to the patient's life. But it may well be his task, through an existential analysis, to enable the patient to find meaning in life.

Frankl is credited with establishing logotherapy as a psychiatric technique that uses existential analysis to help patients resolve their emotional conflicts. He stimulated many

They lack the awareness of a meaning worth living for. They are haunted by the experience of their inner emptiness, a void within themselves; they are caught in that situation which I have called the "existential vacuum.

A man's concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease.

What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment.

Es más, con frecuencia el vacío existencial se presenta de forma enmascarada. A veces la frustración de la voluntad de sentido se compensa con la voluntad de poder en su expresión más burda: el deseo de tener dinero. En otras ocasiones el vacío de la voluntad de sentido se llena con la voluntad de placer. Y eso explica que la frustración existencial suela provocar un desenfreno libidinoso, e incluso que esas pulsiones de la libido se mezclen con las agresivas.

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.

suicide can be traced back to this existential vacuum. Such widespread phenomena as depression, aggression and addiction are not understandable unless we recognize the existential vacuum underlying them.

namely, the feeling of the total and ultimate meaninglessness of their lives. They lack the awareness of a meaning worth living for. They are haunted by the experience of their inner emptiness, a void within themselves; they are caught in that situation which I have called the "existential vacuum.

O]ur patients never really despair because of any suffering in itself! Instead, their despair stems in each instance from a doubt as to whether suffering is meaningful.

M]eaning cannot be grasped by merely intellectual means, for it supersedes essentially—or to speak more specifically—dimensionally, man's capacity as a finite being. [...] This meaning necessarily transcends man and his world and, therefore, cannot be approached by merely rational processes. [...] [W]hat we have to deal with is no intellectual or rational process, but a wholly existential act which perhaps could be described by [...] 'the basic trust in Being'.

Meaning is relative inasmuch as it is related to a specific person who is entangled in a specific situation. One could say that meaning differs in two respects: first, from man to man, and second, from day to day—indeed, from hour to hour.

W]hat counts in therapy is not techniques but rather the human relation between doctor and patient, or the personal and existential encounter. [...] A purely technological approach to psychotherapy may block its therapeutic effect. [...] [A]s soon and as long as we actually interpret our assignment merely in terms of techniques and dynamics we have missed the point—and we have missed the hearts of those to whom we wish to offer mental First Aid in their predicament.

Logotherapy focuses rather on the future, that is to say on the meanings to be fulfilled by the patient in his future.

We do not ask life what the meaning of life is. Life asks us, what is the meaning of your life. And life demands our answer.

Having shown the beneficial impact of meaning orientation, I turn to the detrimental influence of that feeling of which so many patients complain today, namely the feeling of the total and ultimate meaninglessness of their lives. They lack the awareness of a meaning worth living for. They are haunted by the experience of their inner emptiness, a void within themselves; they are caught in that situation which I have called the existential vacuum.

She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day.

But he could not taste, he could not feel. In the teashop among the tables and the chattering waiters the appalling fear came over him- he could not feel. He could reason; he could read, Dante for example, quite easily…he could add up his bill; his brain was perfect; it must be the fault of the world then- that he could not feel.

Why is life so tragic; so like a little strip of pavement over an abyss.

At this moment, I feel as if the human race had no character at all – sought for nothing, believed in nothing, & fought only from a dreary sense of duty.

I am suspended between life and death in an unfamiliar way

You know, what's so dreadful about dying is that you are completely on your own.