The Will to Meaning: Foundations and Applications of Logotherapy

For Frankl, the WILL TO MEANING is the basic striving of man to find and fulfill meaning and purpose in life. (Frankl uses man to mean human beings.) Man is reaching out for the world - a world, which is replete with other beings to encounter and meanings to fulfill. Such a view is profoundly opposed to those motivational theories based on the homeostasis principle. Those theories depict man as if he were a closed system. According to them, man is basically concerned with maintaining or restoring equilibrium, and to this end with the reduction of tensions. Homeostasis principles also assume that man is driven by the goal of gratification of drives and satisfaction of needs. Frankl believes there is more to man's quest than those put forth by homeostasis principles, so quotes Charlotte Buhler, who conceives of man as living with intentionality, which means living with purpose. The purpose is to give meaning to life ... the individual ... wants to create values ... the human being has a primary or native orientation in the directions of creating and of values