The Pursuit of Meaning by Joseph B Fabry

The Pursuit of Meaning by Joseph B Fabry

Contains the essence of the logotherapeutic writings of Viktor Frankl, who noted that many readers report that they understand some parts of logotherapy for the first time after reading this book. Fabry wrote in the introduction: Many older therapies place responsibility for our difficulties on our early upbringing. Logotherapy is education to responsibility. Outside influences are important but not all-determining. Within limitations we have a say about who we are and who we want to become. We need never let ourselves be reduced to helpless victims. Consequently, logotherapy-unlike therapies that aim at equilibrium by adjusting patients to society-does not see a tensionless life as a therapeutic goal. Tension is part of living as a human being in a human society. To remain healthy, the unhealthy tensions of body and psyche are to be avoided. But the healthy tension of the spirit strengthens our spiritual muscles. The healthiest tension is between what we are and what we have the vision of growing toward, or, to use Frankl's favorite phrase, the tension between being and meaning (Psychotherapy and Existentialism, p. 10). The struggle for meaning is not easy. Life does not owe us pleasure; it does offer us meaning. Mental health does not come to those who demand happiness but to those who find meanings; to them happiness comes as a side product. It must ensue noted Frankl. It cannot be pursued (Unconscious God, p. 85). Logotherapy maintains and restores mental health by providing a sound view of the human being and the world as we know it. It draws on the huge reservoir of health stored in our specifically human dimension-our creativity, our capacity to love, our reaching out to others, our desire to be useful, our ability to orient to goals, and our will to meaning. Logophilosophy emphasizes what is right with us, what we like about ourselves, our accomplishments, and our peak experiences. It also considers the qualities we dislike so we may change them, our failures so we can learn from them, our abysses so we may lift ourselves up, knowing that peaks exist and can be reached.

The Author: Joseph Fabry was one of the few who was able to escape the -next-to-final solution- by receiving his American visa in time (an odyssey described in his book One and One Make Three published under his pen name Peter Fabrizius). In the United States he became a script writer at the Office of War Information, later Voice of America, and for 25 years was editor at the University of California at Berkeley. He became interested in Dr. Viktor Frankl's meaning- and value-oriented logotherapy and founded the Institute of Logotherapy and is editor of its journal, The International Forum for Logotherapy, and has authored three books on that subject. He has written about the meaning of the holocaust and often is invited to lecture and be on panels dealing with the subject.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780982427897
ISBN 10	0982427891
Title	The Pursuit of Meaning
Author	Joseph B Fabry
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Purpose Research
Year published	2013-06-01
Number of pages	184
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.