A Psychiatrist Who Survived The Holocaust Explains Why Meaningfulness Matters More Than Happiness
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In September 1942, Viktor Frankl, a prominent Jewish psychiatrist and
neurologist in Vienna, was arrested and transported to a Nazi
concentration camp with his wife and parents.
Three years later, when his camp was liberated, most of his family,
including his pregnant wife, had perished — but he, prisoner number
119104, had lived.
In his bestselling 1946 book,
Man's Search for Meaning,
which he wrote in nine days about his experiences in the camps, Frankl
concluded that the difference between those who had lived and those who
had died came down to one thing: Meaning, an insight he came to early in
life.
When he was a
high school student,
one of his science teachers declared to the class, "Life is nothing
more than a combustion process, a process of oxidation." Frankl jumped
out of his chair and responded, "Sir, if this is so, then what can be
the meaning of life?"
As he saw in the camps, those who found meaning even in the most
horrendous circumstances were far more resilient to suffering than those
who did not. "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing," Frankl
wrote in
Man's Search for Meaning, "the last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
Frankl worked as a therapist in the camps, and in his book, he gives
the example of two suicidal inmates he encountered there. Like many
others in the camps, these two men were hopeless and thought that there
was nothing more to expect from life, nothing to live for.
"In both cases," Frankl writes, "it was a question of getting them to
realize that life was still expecting something from them; something in
the future was expected of them." For one man, it was his young child,
who was then living in a foreign country. For the other, a scientist, it
was a series of books that he needed to finish. Frankl writes:
This
uniqueness and singleness which distinguishes each individual and gives a
meaning to his existence has a bearing on creative work as much as it
does on human love. When the impossibility of replacing a person is
realized, it allows the responsibility which a man has for his existence
and its continuance to appear in all its magnitude. A man who becomes
conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who
affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be
able to throw away his life. He knows the "why" for his existence, and
will be able to bear almost any "how."
In 1991, the Library of Congress and Book-of-the-Month Club listed
Man's Search for Meaning as
one of the 10 most influential books in
the United States. It has sold millions of copies worldwide. Now, over
twenty years later, the book's ethos — its emphasis on meaning, the
value of suffering, and responsibility to something greater than the
self — seems to be at odds with our culture, which is more interested in
the pursuit of individual happiness than in the search for meaning. "To
the European," Frankl wrote, "it is a characteristic of the American
culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to 'be
happy.' But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a
reason to 'be happy.'"
Even
though American happiness levels are at a four-year high, 4 out of 10
Americans have not discovered a satisfying life purpose.Flickr/Christian Haughen
According to Gallup,
the happiness levels of Americans are at a four-year high — as is, it
seems, the number of best-selling books with the word "happiness" in
their titles. As of January 2013, Gallup also reports that nearly 60 percent of all Americans today feel happy, without a lot of stress or worry.
On the other hand, according to the Center for Disease Control,
about 4 out of 10 Americans have not discovered a satisfying life
purpose. Forty percent either do not think their lives have a clear
sense of purpose or are neutral about whether their lives have purpose.
Nearly a quarter of Americans feel neutral or do not have a strong sense
of what makes their lives meaningful.
Research has shown that having
purpose and meaning in life increases overall well-being and life
satisfaction, improves mental and physical health, enhances resiliency,
enhances self-esteem, and decreases the chances of depression. On top of
that, the single-minded pursuit of happiness is ironically leaving
people less happy, according to recent research. "It is the very pursuit of happiness," Frankl knew, "that thwarts happiness."
***
This is why some researchers are cautioning against the pursuit of mere happiness. In a
new study, which will be published this year in a forthcoming issue of the
Journal of Positive Psychology,
psychological scientists asked nearly 400 Americans aged 18 to 78
whether they thought their lives were meaningful and/or happy.
Examining their self-reported attitudes toward meaning, happiness,
and many other variables — like stress levels, spending patterns, and
having children — over a month-long period, the researchers found that a
meaningful life and happy life overlap in certain ways, but are
ultimately very different. Leading a happy life, the psychologists
found, is associated with being a "taker" while leading a meaningful
life corresponds with being a "giver."
"Happiness without meaning characterizes a relatively shallow,
self-absorbed or even selfish life, in which things go well, needs and
desire are easily satisfied, and difficult or taxing entanglements are
avoided," the authors write.
How do the happy life and the meaningful life differ? Happiness, they
found, is about feeling good. Specifically, the researchers found that
people who are happy tend to think that life is easy, they are in good
physical health, and they are able to buy the things that they need and
want. While not having enough money decreases how happy and meaningful
you consider your life to be, it has a much greater impact on happiness.
The happy life is also defined by a lack of stress or worry.
Most importantly from a social perspective, the pursuit of happiness
is associated with selfish behavior—being, as mentioned, a "taker"
rather than a "giver."
The pursuit of happiness is associated with selfish behavior—being, as mentioned, a "taker" rather than a "giver."
The psychologists give an evolutionary explanation for this:
happiness is about drive reduction. If you have a need or a desire —
like hunger — you satisfy it, and that makes you happy. People become
happy, in other words, when they get what they want. Humans, then, are
not the only ones who can feel happy. Animals have needs and drives,
too, and when those drives are satisfied, animals also feel happy, the
researchers point out.
"Happy people get a lot of joy from receiving benefits from others
while people leading meaningful lives get a lot of joy from giving to
others," explained Kathleen Vohs, one of the authors of the study, in a
recent presentation at the University of Pennsylvania. In other words,
meaning transcends the self while happiness is all about giving the self
what it wants. People who have high meaning in their lives are more
likely to help others in need. "If anything, pure happiness is linked to
not helping others in need," the researchers, which include Stanford
University's Jennifer Aaker and Emily Garbinsky, write.
What sets human beings apart from animals is not the pursuit of
happiness, which occurs all across the natural world, but the pursuit of
meaning, which is unique to humans, according to Roy Baumeister, the
lead researcher of the study and author, with John Tierney, of the
recent book
Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. Baumeister, a social psychologists at Florida State University,
was named an ISI highly cited scientific researcher in 2003.
The study participants reported deriving meaning from giving a part
of themselves away to others and making a sacrifice on behalf of the
overall group. In the words of Martin E. P. Seligman, one of the leading
psychological scientists alive today, in the meaningful life "you use
your highest strengths and talents to belong to and serve something you
believe is larger than the self."
For instance, having more meaning in one's life was associated with
activities like buying presents for others, taking care of kids, and
arguing. People whose lives have high levels of meaning often actively
seek meaning out even when they know it will come at the expense of
happiness. Because they have invested themselves in something bigger
than themselves, they also worry more and have higher levels of stress
and anxiety in their lives than happy people.
Having children, for example, is associated with the meaningful life
and requires self-sacrifice, but it has been famously associated with
low happiness among parents, including the ones in this study. In fact,
according to Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert, research shows that
parents are less happy interacting with their children than they are exercising, eating, and watching television.
"Partly what we do as human beings is to take care of others and
contribute to others. This makes life meaningful but it does not
necessarily make us happy," Baumeister told me in an interview.
Meaning is not only about transcending the self, but also about
transcending the present moment -- which is perhaps the most important
finding of the study, according to the researchers. While happiness is
an emotion felt in the here and now, it ultimately fades away, just as
all emotions do; positive affect and feelings of pleasure are fleeting.
The amount of time people report feeling good or bad correlates with
happiness but not at all with meaning.
Meaning, on the other hand, is enduring. It connects the past to the
present to the future. "Thinking beyond the present moment, into the
past or future, was a sign of the relatively meaningful but unhappy
life," the researchers write. "Happiness is not generally found in
contemplating the past or future." That is, people who thought more
about the present were happier, but people who spent more time thinking
about the future or about past struggles and sufferings felt more
meaning in their lives, though they were less happy.
Having negative events happen to
you, the study found, decreases your happiness but increases the amount
of meaning you have in life.
Having negative events happen
to you, the study found, decreases your happiness but increases the
amount of meaning you have in life.
Another study from 2011 confirmed
this, finding that people who have meaning in their lives, in the form
of a clearly defined purpose, rate their satisfaction with life higher
even when they were feeling bad than those who did not have a clearly
defined purpose. "If there is meaning in life at all," Frankl wrote,
"then there must be meaning in suffering."
***
Which brings us back to Frankl's life and, specifically, a decisive
experience he had before he was sent to the concentration camps. It was
an incident that emphasizes the difference between the pursuit of
meaning and the pursuit of happiness in life.
In his early adulthood, before he and his family were taken away to
the camps, Frankl had established himself as one of the leading
psychiatrists in Vienna and the world. As a 16-year-old boy, for
example, he struck up a correspondence with Sigmund Freud and one day
sent Freud a two-page paper he had written. Freud, impressed by Frankl's
talent, sent the paper to the
International Journal of Psychoanalysis for publication. "I hope you don't object," Freud wrote the teenager.
While he was in medical school, Frankl distinguished himself even further. Not only did he
establish suicide-prevention centers for teenagers — a
precursor to his work in the camps — but he was also developing his
signature contribution to the field of clinical psychology: logotherapy,
which is meant to help people overcome depression and achieve
well-being by finding their unique meaning in life.
By 1941, his theories had received international attention and he was
working as the chief of neurology at Vienna's Rothschild Hospital,
where he risked his life and career by making false diagnoses of
mentally ill patients so that they would not, per Nazi orders, be
euthanized.
That was the same year when he had a decision to make, a decision
that would change his life. With his career on the rise and the threat
of the Nazis looming over him, Frankl had applied for a visa to America,
which he was granted in 1941. By then, the Nazis had already started
rounding up the Jews and taking them away to concentration camps,
focusing on the elderly first.
Frankl knew that it would only be time before the Nazis came to take
his parents away. He also knew that once they did, he had a
responsibility to be there with his parents to help them through the
trauma of adjusting to camp life. On the other hand, as a newly married
man with his visa in hand, he was tempted to leave for America and flee
to safety, where he could distinguish himself even further in his field.
As Anna S. Redsand
recounts in
her biography of Frankl, he was at a loss for what to do, so he set out
for St. Stephan's Cathedral in Vienna to clear his head. Listening to
the organ music, he repeatedly asked himself, "Should I leave my parents
behind?... Should I say goodbye and leave them to their fate?" Where
did his responsibility lie? He was looking for a "hint from heaven."
When he returned home, he found it. A piece of marble was lying on
the table. His father explained that it was from the rubble of one of
the nearby synagogues that the Nazis had destroyed. The marble contained
the fragment of one of the Ten Commandments — the one about honoring
your father and your mother. With that, Frankl decided to stay in Vienna
and forgo whatever opportunities for safety and career advancement
awaited him in the United States. He decided to put aside his individual
pursuits to serve his family and, later, other inmates in the camps.
The wisdom that Frankl derived from his experiences there, in the
middle of unimaginable human suffering, is just as relevant now as it
was then: "Being human always points, and is directed, to something or
someone, other than oneself — be it a meaning to fulfill or another
human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself — by giving
himself to a cause to serve or another person to love — the more human
he is."
Baumeister and his colleagues would agree that the pursuit of meaning
is what makes human beings uniquely human. By putting aside our selfish
interests to serve someone or something larger than ourselves — by
devoting our lives to "giving" rather than "taking" — we are not only
expressing our fundamental humanity, but are also acknowledging that
that there is more to the good life than the pursuit of simple
happiness.
