Drive to Understand, The Need for Meaning: Understanding the Dimensions of the "Meanings of Life!" - Insights from 'Great Thinkers' including Frankl (Will to Meaning), Geertz, Baumeister, Dr. Paul Wong, Steger, Reker, Jung + the Synthesis-Consensus of Frankl, Jung, James: spiritual experiences create menaing and can create a "sense of reality"
Creators: name: E Peck Jr, Charles
Publisher: name: unknown
Year: 2025
Subjects: subject: Truth
subject: Meaning (Philosophy)
subject: Existential psychology
subject: Meaning (Psychology)
subject: Culture
subject: Logotherapy
subject: Psychology
subject: FOS: Psychology
subject: Jungian psychology
subject: Manners and customs
subject: Meaning (Philosophy)--Religious aspects--Buddhism
subject: Meaning (Psychology)--Study and teaching (Secondary)
subject: Meaning (Philosophy)--Religious aspects--History
subject: Christian art and symbolism--Themes, motives
subject: Christian art and symbolism--History and criticism
subject: Hindu symbolism--History
subject: C.G. Jung Foundation for Analytical Psychology
subject: Archetype (Psychology)
subject: Archetype (Psychology) in art
subject: Archetype (Psychology)--Social aspects
subject: Archetypes in literature
subject: Archetype (Psychology) in mass media

description: Dr. Stephen Farra said "Charles, Fine paper - accurate, well written," Why is meaning important? Because, without meaning - well....life then becomes meaningless! The number of suicides in the US in 2022 reaches record level: CDC An estimated 49,449 people died by suicide in 2022, When I spoke to a Towson University undergraduate student and she said she had never heard of a need for meaning. Tull's history of psychology had no references to meaning, When I asked a biology PhD what the meaning of life is - she replied - "There is no meaning to life since science has shown there is no purpose to the universe. That was Tolstoy's mistake - Tolstoy somehow came to the conclusion that his personal life was somehow intricately connected with the ultimate purpose of the universe. Baumeister observes that "There is no ultimate Meaning of life" - The meaning of life is a holistic synthesis of a number of diverse meanings of a person's life - family,. friends, school, religion, spirituality, laws, ethnic groups, culture, and the thousands of other factors in a person's life. - Far beyond materialist quantification and the only reference to synthesis processes was by Kant who observed synthesis processes would require imagination. Kant also argued imagination was pivotal in beauty - which he believed to be the foundation for morals. As Sherif and Frankl point out schools of thought are separate and disconnected. In contrast to mainstream psychology, existential psychology - based to a degree of Frankl's will to meaning.- has extensive research into meaning. Dr Paul Wong edited the anthologies - two editions of The Human Quest for Meaning: A Handbook of Psychological Research and Clinical Applications (1998) and The Human Quest for Meaning: Theories, Research, and Applications (2012), overflowing with studies and analyses of meaning. The very profound and powerful personal experiences as a concentration camp victim dramatically affected Frankl's views of humanity and the human being. In his book, Man's Search For Meaning, Frankl notes that when life became meaningless for people, they ceased struggling to live. He observed that the prisoners' religious beliefs were intense and very sincere. A woman who knew she would die in the next few days said to him, "I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard. In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously." (p.69) Further, he states, "In spite of all the enforced physical and mental primitiveness of the life in a concentration camp, it was possible for spiritual life to deepen. Sensitive people who were used to a rich intellectual life may have suffered much pain (they were often of a delicate constitution), but the damage to their inner selves was less. They were able to retreat from their terrible surroundings to a life of inner riches and spiritual freedom. Only in this way can one explain the apparent paradox that some prisoners of a less hardy make-up often seemed to survive camp life better than those of robust nature." (p. 37 search) The meaning that people derived from their spirituality was a pivotal reason why some survived and others didn't. Tolstoy notes, "One can suffer only in the body, the spirit knows no suffering." (Gust p.151) The human need to make sense of the world underpins numerous psychological and social psychological theories. Scientists estimate that there could be as many as 100 billion neurons in the human brain - and over 100 trillion synapses. The amount of information and data that the human mind simultaneously processes at any one time by various and diverse systems is absolutely phenomenal - unimaginable. Every theory, in one way or another, postulates innate processes that impose order on what would otherwise be chaos. Without processes to put things in order and assign meaning to information, people would be like William James' baby who sees the world "as one great blooming, buzzing confusion." Just think of all the bits of information processed by the visual system alone. Besides the important function of processing visual input simply in order to see, there are secondary processes that automatically review and analyze all the visual information received. For instance, the brain has specific areas and systems that process information about facial features. Facial features are automatically analyzed for significance and meaning. The brain automatically scans faces for signs of others' intentions, looking for anger, happiness, sadness, and so on. That information is largely processed nonconsciously – as most information is. We only become conscious of particular facial features when they become salient, such as when you are confronted with an angry face. The human brain is the most complex and sophisticated object in the universe, and is endowed with a number of systems that process information and analyze data for significance and meaning. The human mind is endlessly sorting data and information for relevance, meaning, and value in its eternal struggle to impose order on the world. Two prominent social psychologists, Michael Hogg and Dominic Abrams, observe that without mental processes that organize stimuli and put the mind in order, "We would be overwhelmed and paralyzed by overstimulation." They go on to say, "In keeping with many of the dominant perspectives in social psychology—for example, cognitive consistency (Abelson et al. 1968), attribution (Harvey and Smith 1977), and social cognition (Fiske and Taylor 1984)—the social identity perspective assumes that the human organism seeks to impose order upon the potential chaos." (my italics -p.17 soc id) They also point out that social cognition theory has demonstrated the validity of some of the assumptions of the 'new look' cognitive psychology. The central concept of 'New look' cognitive psychology is that people form hypotheses about the world and how it works, which is how people can function effectively in the world. People understand the world by forming theories of how people and things operate in the world. Of course, theories and hypotheses are – in and of themselves - simply structures and organizations of meanings and values. In some sense or another, order and meaning are always foundational principles for psychological theories. And that principle also applies to spiritual experiences as well which in some cases has to make sense of what might appear on the face of it to be utter chaos and raving madness.