The Art of Manliness - Man's Search for Meaning, With Viktor Frankl's Grandson

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast i first read

00:00:12.180 man's search for meaning by the neurologist psychologist and philosopher victor frankel

00:00:16.440 while i was in high school i've reread it several times since it's one of the books that's had the

00:00:20.980 biggest impact on my life so it was a real treat to speak with alexander fesley frankel's grandson

00:00:26.100 about his grandfather's ideas and legacy today on the show i talked to alexander who is a

00:00:30.700 documentarian and like his grandfather a psychotherapist about frankel's life his

00:00:35.200 developmental logotherapy a type of meaning center therapy and how that approach to the psyche was

00:00:39.900 tested during frankel's time in the concentration camps we discussed why frankel said that everyone

00:00:44.520 has their own auschwitz how a lack of existential meaning can create depression the three ways to

00:00:49.880 actualize meaning in your life whether meaning is something that is objective or subjective

00:00:54.180 the freedom we have to choose our attitude in all circumstances including suffering and more

00:00:59.240 after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is slash frankel

00:01:03.180 all right alex vesley welcome to the show thank you for having me so you are the grandson

00:01:23.300 of victor frankel who created logotherapy it's a type of existential therapy that we're going to

00:01:28.540 talk about today and i'm sure many of our listeners are familiar with frankel in his book

00:01:33.360 man's search for meaning i remember when i read that book back in high school it had a big impact on me

00:01:38.940 but for those who aren't familiar with victor frankel can you give us a thumbnail biographical sketch of

00:01:44.280 your grandfather how much time do i have he lived to be 92 years old so pretty long life and a very

00:01:53.060 interesting life but just to give you the gist he was when you ask him what do you do he would say

00:01:59.180 i'm a doctor so that was his definition of himself he didn't even call himself a psychotherapist

00:02:04.320 because he grew up in a time when psychotherapy was not yet its own thing so he was one of the

00:02:13.240 pioneers of modern psychotherapy and as many might know from the name freud a lot of psychotherapy

00:02:21.020 started in vienna austria and that's where he was born and raised as well and he was actually for a

00:02:27.840 while a student of freud and then of one of freud's disciples alfred adler and ultimately they had a

00:02:34.760 falling out and he decided this is not for me i don't think that this is really how things work and

00:02:41.720 how human beings function and what motivates them and what makes them you know live healthy lives and

00:02:49.040 want to live healthy lives and so as a doctor he looked at his patients and he observed what were the

00:02:55.580 differences between patients that maybe had difficult fate to deal with and yet they were doing

00:03:01.560 mentally and emotionally fine and others who had comparably relatively easy lives but they were

00:03:08.260 overwhelmed and not healthy and needed psychotherapist so what was the difference and he came to the

00:03:14.700 conclusion that it was an element that it seems everybody else had overlooked everybody else in

00:03:20.100 psychotherapy that is and that is the topic of meaning he didn't find that in any of his

00:03:25.500 teachers teachings and so he started his own therapy was his own form of psychotherapy and he called it

00:03:33.800 logotherapy which is a bit confusing because you have to look it up in the dictionary it's an old

00:03:39.060 greek word logos which also means word but in this case the meaning of that he chose his meaning so

00:03:46.080 it's a meaning-centered therapy and it was the first meaning-centered therapy and that's how he started

00:03:52.980 and then most people are familiar with his book man's search for meaning which is one of many books that

00:03:59.560 he wrote so he's kind of always connected with that but even he himself thought that wasn't such an

00:04:05.120 important book originally didn't even put his name on it but it was a personal account of his own

00:04:11.160 hell that he had to go through which was the holocaust because he was jewish and that was not a good

00:04:17.820 thing to be at the time in austria in the 1930s and 40s and luckily he survived he survived several

00:04:25.820 concentration camps by sheer luck first and foremost but he could also observe in that situation in the

00:04:34.380 camps the validity of his theories and see is there something to it and when when people are really in

00:04:42.540 despair and the distress is meaning important does that make a difference and he found that yes this

00:04:49.760 is that actually the decisive or one of the most decisive factors other than luck you know and hell

00:04:54.740 i mean you could stand in the in the wrong place and be killed for that right or have physical weakness

00:05:02.200 or catch a disease and you were dead so but if you put all these factors in the equation the one thing

00:05:09.680 that also played the central role and and actually had an effect on the emotional and even on the

00:05:16.160 physical well-being to some extent was the awareness of some meaning that might be in the future some

00:05:23.180 meaningful task or meaning can come in the form of a beloved person family a partner and for that or for

00:05:32.040 who uh it's worth surviving and going through another day and not giving up so he published the book that he had to throw

00:05:41.680 away when he entered auschwitz was not mentioned man's search for meaning of course but the book was called

00:05:47.240 doctrine the soul in which he put all his insights into how meaning relates to well-being and um that was lost and one of the

00:05:56.580 things that kept him going was the his goal to rewrite that and to publish it and to make it available

00:06:03.540 his insights and luckily he lived to do that and so that's why we're talking about about him today and

00:06:10.540 we can talk about him today because he survived most of his family did not so he lived to be 92 as i mentioned

00:06:18.140 so a long productive life yeah i think that's an important point to make a lot of people have the

00:06:22.720 mistaken assumption that he developed logotherapy while in the concentration camp yeah but in fact

00:06:27.900 he developed it before and then he was able to basically test it test his theories in the concentration camp

00:06:34.860 yeah a trial and then after trial by fire so to speak oh for sure and then after the concentration camps

00:06:41.660 he published the doctor in the soul and then also just had a very illustrious career he became a public intellectual

00:06:47.460 a lot of he was on television show radio shows people were really at the time in the 50s and 60s

00:06:53.020 interested in his ideas well i would say not just the 60s and 50s and 60s that continued on and i think

00:07:00.920 maybe that speaks to the validity of his insights that they never went away they were never mainstream

00:07:06.200 like even when he was invited to speak you know austrian television or american television there was a lot of

00:07:12.560 interest and he was a good speaker so he had rhetorical skills too and i think a lot of people

00:07:17.860 came because they said oh this is the guy you know who who survived auschwitz and what can we learn from

00:07:23.460 him which is valid but it also kind of took away from all the work that's so much more and that can be

00:07:30.120 mined and has been mined but never hit the mainstream but interestingly it also never went away he always joked

00:07:36.700 you know i was never in fashion so logotherapy was never in fashion so it's not going to be out of

00:07:42.260 fashion anytime soon and that's really true people keep finding in those those who find it who want

00:07:48.060 to find it they can find it and those who are not interested in it they they don't need to it's not

00:07:53.920 you know a big big business model what was frankel like as a grandfather funny funny witty i think that

00:08:02.580 would surprise people yeah before our conversation we talked about you did a documentary about your

00:08:07.680 grandfather and i watched it and that was the first time i actually saw video footage of your

00:08:13.640 grandfather my only connection to him was through his books and i had imagined him because he'd gone

00:08:19.940 through the holocaust and because he was writing about meaning and existential vacuums that he was going

00:08:26.060 to be this very serious somber kind of guy but the thing that surprised me was how full of life and

00:08:32.980 vibrant and funny he was he was he was he had these deep thoughts but he was also well grounded in in the

00:08:42.760 moment and in you know enjoying life and being able to see life from a different perspective and i think

00:08:50.460 that's that's something you see in other people as well who have been close to death and for some reason

00:08:56.780 came back either by disease or by you know in his case by chance and they see life they appreciate

00:09:03.880 it more because they know it's so precious and they know it's short and they know time is limited and

00:09:08.000 you never know we're all candidates uh potential death row candidates right we don't know what will

00:09:14.940 happen tomorrow and so you can grow bitter over that and lament the fact that everything is fragile

00:09:21.600 everything can be taken away but he didn't you know on the contrary he said this this makes it all

00:09:27.540 the more precious all the more worth living and making sure that you're not missing out on all the

00:09:35.480 things that are important and that can be you know writing he knew he had work to do he wanted to help

00:09:40.700 people that was his priority really but when it was time to make experiences or to be with a family

00:09:48.700 he would make time for that and that would be the priority so the full spectrum and i think

00:09:54.420 maybe that's what gave him credibility because you know he would say he once i don't know if you know

00:10:03.020 that story he was invited in the u.s early that was i think it was his first visit to the u.s and he

00:10:09.140 was speaking there doing a workshop and the host afterwards approached him and told him dr frankel did you

00:10:16.060 did you notice that people were a little bit um standoffish a little cold and he said yeah i did

00:10:21.720 and he said well did you wonder why and he said well you know the all my colleagues here they're

00:10:27.140 psychoanalysts and what i'm talking about is not exactly psychoanalysis it's pretty much in many ways

00:10:33.580 uh the opposite and so i can understand that they're not too happy and the host said no that's that's not

00:10:39.880 it so what is it and he said you dr frankel have come back from a severe suffering you've come back

00:10:49.300 from that and it's jealousy because you did that and you were able to do that so you know if there

00:10:56.880 was some inconsistency in the logic he would not let anything like this just be said and move on so he

00:11:04.720 thought about that and he came up with that phrase that only he could say which was everyone has their

00:11:11.560 own auschwitz and what he meant by that was suffering is universal the experience of suffering

00:11:16.940 is universal and i happen to experience it in one way but in no way is that comparable or does it

00:11:24.400 diminish the worst suffering the worst experience of suffering that any other person has to endure

00:11:30.560 or endures chooses to endure you know if you're talking to someone who's severely schizophrenic for

00:11:35.700 example that's a nightmare people are going through hell every day and it wouldn't be fair you can't

00:11:41.420 say you know well listen what i went through right so you can well do that within your own experiences

00:11:47.440 and that's what he did he would say well you know if i had a bad day i would think back and say

00:11:52.040 you know victor pull yourself together what would you have given you know for some i don't know some

00:11:58.040 dispute with a publisher 20 30 40 years ago when you were in the camps when it was about survival

00:12:03.700 and that is something you can do but you cannot compare to other people's suffering and that's

00:12:10.820 something i understand understood and people understood and maybe that's one of the reasons

00:12:15.060 why man's search for meaning has this attraction that people often tell me they read it and they

00:12:21.240 reread it because they find something in it that gives them hope and inspiration and i think

00:12:27.480 that's that relatability of he was talking about suffering he wasn't talking about his suffering

00:12:32.220 he was talking about the universal experience of suffering and how that is part of human life

00:12:38.080 of every human life life doesn't come without a certain amount of suffering and even if comparably

00:12:44.740 you would say that's that's an easy life or that's a little problem it is not for the person who's

00:12:49.520 confronted with that when did you first read your grandfather's works you know his books yourself

00:12:55.440 late i was 19 and um i was on my way to toronto canada for a logotherapy conference and he couldn't

00:13:04.220 go anymore by himself because he had a heart issue that he had ever since he exited the camp and he

00:13:11.320 actually never told us but the doctor said you shouldn't fly anymore and so he said i'm not going

00:13:16.740 to fly but can you go and can your sister go and read kind of a welcome message from me and we said

00:13:22.860 sure it was great i was 19 going flying to toronto and i thought you know i really should know at least

00:13:30.420 the book that everybody has read when i get there because yeah i don't want to be embarrassed people

00:13:36.340 tell me oh you know this part or that part of the book so i read it on the plane i read it in english

00:13:41.300 and though my english was good enough and you said before that you thought he would be such a somber

00:13:47.860 and serious man and i had that thought too when i first read man search for meaning i said how is

00:13:53.040 that my grandfather i would think that that's a person who's really um somber and battling with uh

00:13:59.660 you know an inner darkness and then i understood that the humor was actually what saved him and that

00:14:06.320 can be used as something and actually logotherapy does tap into humor as a way to distance oneself from

00:14:13.260 one's own situation and one's problem at least a little bit and that can have a healing effect i

00:14:19.680 think because he was so interested and focused on what's happening around him and what is necessary

00:14:26.520 what needs to be done that he was able to survive and he even mentions that if you had this inner

00:14:33.240 richness it was easier to cope with the immense pressure so logotherapy we're going to get into the

00:14:39.380 details of it here in a bit but broad view it's just about finding meaning in your life i think

00:14:45.420 it'd be helpful to do some historical context i thought this was really interesting in the doctrine

00:14:49.880 the soul where frankel talks about the environment in which he created not not in created but maybe

00:14:58.240 discovered or brought to light logotherapy he developed it in the shadow of some of the giants of

00:15:06.700 early 20th 20th century psychology you mentioned a few of them freud young adler there was skinner

00:15:13.440 you mentioned that he was a protege of adler at one time and he talks about one of the problems with

00:15:20.980 these therapeutic approaches in the early 20th century was that they often devolved into something

00:15:27.360 that he called psychologism yes yes what did he mean by psychologism psychologism is a form as he would

00:15:35.400 put it a form of reductionism and that means something that shouldn't be reduced or deducted

00:15:41.400 from something else is being reduced to and he said you always notice it when you hear the phrase

00:15:48.160 nothing but so for example freud would say there is no such thing as true love the love between two

00:15:55.760 human beings but this is nothing but sex and you know the sex drive or instinct uh libido libido

00:16:03.120 exactly exactly maybe you know you choose a certain partner because maybe you have some childhood

00:16:08.600 memories and that kind of left an imprint on you so you got your type or whatever but there's no such

00:16:14.080 thing as love this is nothing but so nothing but something else or if you think of behaviorism right

00:16:19.760 everything we do is nothing but behavior that somehow we learned that it's good if we do it or

00:16:25.660 you know by maybe our parents gave us some candy or said you know good boy if we did something and bad

00:16:31.580 behavior was punished and so we're just basically animals and all our behaviors there's nothing original

00:16:37.100 about it but it's all kind of been put into our heads it's a program it's nothing but a program

00:16:43.280 and he would stand up against it he would said you know this is part of the truth he didn't say it was

00:16:48.100 nonsense obviously we have drives and instincts and psychodynamic processes within us but we are

00:16:56.080 more than our psychodynamic processes and drives and instincts we have them but for example we can

00:17:02.300 also we have the the the freedom to say yes or no to them so i can as a human being always decide what

00:17:10.280 am i going to do with it what am i going to do with my quirks or my needs and animals have a harder

00:17:16.700 time doing that as far as we know when they have a drive when they need to eat or something you know

00:17:21.480 they'll kill the prey and eat it there's no choice here but a human being can say i'm hungry and there's

00:17:27.880 some food but for some reason i decide you know my body is hungry and my instinct tells me you should

00:17:33.800 eat otherwise you're going to feel bad or even die but i can say no to my drives to my instincts to my

00:17:41.560 behavior that has been trained or imprinted or whatever and so we have that freedom so freedom

00:17:48.220 of will was a central pillar of logotherapy ever since 1926 now and that was not something that

00:17:56.300 others would accept so he was going against the established thinking and model of what it means to

00:18:03.600 be human and there still is a bit of psychologism today there's people who would say oh your temperament

00:18:09.520 is just genetics and there's nothing you can do about it sorry or your environment the reason why

00:18:15.000 you might be committing crimes is because well you grow grew up in poverty or abuse exactly and your

00:18:21.580 grandfather would say well you know those things might be a factor in how we yes make our decisions

00:18:27.000 how we behave they are conditions but we are free but yeah in the end we have our agency that's what

00:18:32.760 makes us human we can rise above that and he saw that firsthand in the concentration camps he did

00:18:38.120 he did that was one of the major differences freud who fortunately never had to experience a

00:18:43.620 concentration camp from the inside he theorized that when you take away from people the basic needs

00:18:50.080 when you deny them the basic needs security food whatever they will all act the same they will all fall

00:18:57.340 back to their instinctual behavior like animals and they will basically kill each other for a loaf of

00:19:04.120 bread and already before the war my grandfather said no i don't think that's true on the contrary i think

00:19:11.820 in those situations when the basic needs are not met it brings to the forefront even more the true

00:19:18.280 character that someone has or i should say decides to be because there are also people who you know have

00:19:25.880 have bad character traits and maybe have even had miserable lives and did a lot of damage but they

00:19:32.720 behave differently all of a sudden in the camps we always have the freedom to change as well

00:19:36.980 otherwise you know he wouldn't have wanted to be a psychotherapist but he predicted something else and

00:19:42.920 it's exactly what what happened and as he put it he said in the camps under that immense pressure

00:19:48.480 life and death situations what emerged was on the one hand the swine and on the other hand the saint

00:19:56.260 so the very worst people allowing their just as freud predicted just you know their instincts to take

00:20:04.020 over and say me me i need to survive and i'll do anything in order to survive which you know no

00:20:08.860 judgment and that's understandable but there were also those people who helped others till the end

00:20:13.940 or you know the of course the story of maximilian kolbe for instance who took somebody else's place

00:20:19.800 who said he has a family and he said i don't so take me and nazis did so who sacrificed his life

00:20:28.120 for somebody else yeah so that's the whole spectrum of what it means to be human what do you think your

00:20:33.860 grandfather would think of today's mental wellness culture would you say that's just psychologism for

00:20:40.800 the social media age well pretty much there i mean there's in in some respects it's getting a little

00:20:46.880 better i mean there's talk about meaning now which you know at the time he was the only one really

00:20:51.300 nobody talked about meaning and they would say okay if you talk about meaning you know the meaning of life

00:20:55.740 you're welcome to speak at the department of religion but this has nothing to do with psychotherapy

00:21:00.460 but ultimately the problem with it is still that one of the other central ideas that he had or

00:21:06.940 observations that he made better is the self-transcendent nature of us humans and what that means is

00:21:15.220 originally primarily when we're not indoctrinated or somehow battling with our own neuroses and quirks if

00:21:23.980 you like primarily we are as human beings always oriented beyond ourselves onto the world that can be

00:21:32.180 meaningful tasks to do fix something that's broken do something that's necessary or other people

00:21:39.360 you know that's love you know to encounter another person there has to be no other purpose there

00:21:44.000 and to be there and to experience it or be there for that person so meaning comes in that form too

00:21:49.520 so it's different from this idea that most other psychotherapies i mean i really don't know any other

00:21:55.760 who would not say that it's ultimately about the ego right that basically the you're taking you're

00:22:04.220 always taking a detour you're helping somebody else you're just trying to calm down your social

00:22:09.340 conscience you know your bad conscience or something so again some inner process or even

00:22:14.020 the people who talk about meaning even people who call themselves logotherapists who say oh it's you

00:22:18.760 know meaning will make you feel better you're going to be better off if you you know do something

00:22:23.840 meaningful but but i mean that's true in in a way but it's not the reason why you should do something

00:22:30.360 meaningful the reason why we do meaningful things ideally is in order for them to get done

00:22:35.580 because they're important if i do something out of love if i save another person i do it for that

00:22:41.400 person period i don't do it yet again to kind of instill some state within myself that would actually

00:22:48.840 be and that would be pretty would you like to be rescued by someone who says oh i just did it for

00:22:55.340 myself you know so i feel better you know it's where we care about other people and sure you know

00:23:01.500 there are selfish motives and you know we just had christmas or maybe maybe a lot of people gave

00:23:08.080 some money to some charity not for the noblest of reasons right but just for that very reason to say

00:23:15.040 okay i did that well then it's still better they did it than if they didn't do it and it's still

00:23:19.560 meaningful to support a good cause so you can take that at face value but my grandfather would say

00:23:26.320 that's not the essential the most interesting aspect of humanity it actually is not all the the

00:23:32.860 selfish ego balancing acts that we do and and hid it to and you know everybody does except for maybe a

00:23:41.080 saint but whenever we transcend ourselves and truly do something for the cause for it to be done for that

00:23:50.100 person to be helped then this is what's truly human and what's kind of the the best in our nature

00:23:57.480 our ability to do that and why not focus on that or at least put it into the equation which so many

00:24:03.820 therapies do not they will say oh it's nothing but it's nothing but you just wanted to do something

00:24:08.920 good so you feel better about yourself and that's not true and he said you know better to take something

00:24:13.860 at face value which is maybe not uh completely 100 pure altruism rather than taking a deed that has

00:24:24.380 been done for truly a good motive and explain it away and say this was nothing but we're gonna take a

00:24:32.700 quick break for your words from our sponsors and now back to the show one of the biggest problems your

00:24:39.880 grandfather believed modern man had to face was a sense of meaninglessness and he called it the

00:24:47.260 existential vacuum yep what were the characteristics of a person stuck in an existential vacuum well now

00:24:55.340 we're we're going deep into the practice of logotherapy so it can come in different forms and and ways

00:25:02.560 and behaviors usually people find meaning and they're oriented towards meaning by their very nature

00:25:09.100 so oftentimes it's when there's a lack of meaning it's sort of like oxygen we don't think about it

00:25:15.760 well it's there but you take it away and there's nothing other than we think about it's like where's

00:25:21.220 where's the air and it's the same with meaning and so oftentimes we're confronted with people

00:25:25.440 who struggle with the question of meaning when things get tough and when there is this existential

00:25:33.260 vacuum it was the first therapist or doctor who said just the absence of a meaningful perspective

00:25:40.120 in life of knowing that for some things you are good you see the turnaround it's not what's good for

00:25:46.740 me but what am i good for what or who if that is lacking if there is a vacuum that can over time in fact

00:25:55.160 lead to depression to a full-blown depression which in no way looks different than any other depression

00:26:02.000 including uh genetic genetically caused and today we know that there's this mystery of some

00:26:10.200 depressions not going away by whatever treatment is being applied now why is that well because it's

00:26:16.520 not happening on the level of the psychophysical it's not a question of change your lifestyle or take

00:26:22.320 you know more time sleep a little more it's not uh genetic where you say you know which you can see

00:26:28.980 well usually when you make a diagnosis and people say i had an uncle who killed himself and there's

00:26:34.100 no apparent reason why someone is feeling depressed it's a good guess that that person has a there's a

00:26:39.300 hereditary factor but there are also people who are fine in all these i say departments right

00:26:45.960 everything's going well and yet they feel miserable and their lives feel empty and there is literally no

00:26:52.800 reason for them to get up in the morning and we all need that that's what really his work was and what

00:26:59.040 the work of a local therapist is to help people find again something that is meaningful to fill that

00:27:07.100 void because a void in life is never never a good thing so it can be depression it can be small it can be

00:27:12.900 the typical sunday neurosis right or people who don't know what to do with themselves when all the stores are

00:27:19.940 closed or something happens when they're taken out of their usual routine and they hate that

00:27:24.440 because this is a good you know routine is a good way to evade the question of is what i'm doing

00:27:29.620 actually meaningful or not because we can keep ourselves busy all kinds of excessive behavior

00:27:35.380 and even to some extent drug abuse there's nothing else going on in my life then the question of you

00:27:44.180 know taking in some substance that will make me feel good it's not a question of why it's a question of

00:27:48.580 why not nothing stands against that even if i risk my life or i risk my health well why not what stands

00:27:56.800 against that and if you have a strong why people have a clear why they are not so much in danger of

00:28:04.940 filling their lives with a behavior that is you know meaningless because of course to to take a

00:28:13.320 substance that's going to ruin your health is going to take you away from meaningful possibilities and

00:28:19.620 but it can also be excessive behavior excessive shopping excessive thrill seeking right fomo there

00:28:27.560 was a comedian once in the 50s who came up with this joke of a motorcycle you know writer who says

00:28:33.540 i don't know where i'm going but i'll be there faster and this he took this up as kind of the motto

00:28:39.240 of this i don't see much meaning in my life there's nothing of substance nothing of value so in order to fill

00:28:45.820 this inner void this vacuum i want to put in as many things as possible experience a lot to kind of numb

00:28:53.760 that knowing that there's really nothing of value so that's one of the ways it can express itself

00:29:00.960 but oftentimes you know you have to find that out and people don't necessarily go into psychotherapy

00:29:06.300 and say i'm suffering from an existential vacuum in fact most people don't yeah and i think one

00:29:11.480 thing he talks about too is boredom can be a common symptom of being stuck in this existential vacuum

00:29:16.920 like you mentioned the sunday neurosis where you've had the busy week and then finally it's sunday night

00:29:22.360 you really have nothing going on and you're lying in bed or just sitting on your couch thinking

00:29:27.560 i've got nothing going on in my life and people have that itch to fill it with something that void

00:29:33.680 and as you said there's different ways people can do that drugs it could be shopping it could be

00:29:38.380 trying to find ways to make more money it could be scratching the sexual instinct yep oh the other

00:29:44.600 thing too you said the danger of the existential vacuum is that it can make people susceptible to

00:29:49.640 conformism or totalitarianism as well yeah if i don't know where i'm going what i stand for

00:29:57.180 and what are the values and the meaningful tasks that i want to actualize if this orientation is

00:30:04.820 lacking right then maybe i'm susceptible and become susceptible to well then i'll just do

00:30:10.020 what everybody else does and that's conformism or i'll just do what everybody else wants me to do and

00:30:15.440 that's totalitarianism did you have any theories as to why people living in the west in the 20th

00:30:22.200 and still happening in the 21st century are more prone to this existential vacuum yeah it's the

00:30:29.400 price of freedom and it's also the price uh well it can be the price for living in relatively safe and

00:30:36.420 with a good standard of life and he predicted that again in 1930s where the standard of life where he

00:30:42.420 was living at least was not very good for most people you have to crash um so people were suffering

00:30:48.380 but they were saying oh as soon as we've solved that problem as soon as the economy is back and up

00:30:53.120 and running again and you know people can afford to eat and the people can afford maybe go on a

00:30:58.720 vacation from time to time then they're going to be happy and he predicted well no this is not

00:31:05.020 necessarily so uh in fact the existential crisis might even be reinforced once all these things that

00:31:12.260 we supposedly need to live from are are there that still does not answer the question of what do we

00:31:19.240 live for and that's an important one and in some ways even more important than what we live from

00:31:25.140 what do we live for and that's a choice yeah one thing he said about the existential vacuum or the

00:31:31.420 existential void is the price of freedom that we have he said this he says humans living in the modern

00:31:37.060 world we no longer have instinct to tell us what we have to do right we're not like animals that just

00:31:42.820 say we have instinct like you gotta eat you gotta have sex um we can rise above that but he says the

00:31:48.020 other problem is there's no more tradition that tells us what we ought to do so people don't go to

00:31:52.960 church anymore they don't believe in bigger philosophies or whatever and as a result they have nothing

00:31:59.280 guiding their life and so they're more prone to fall into an existential vacuum and he witnessed that

00:32:05.020 firsthand because if you think of the history and the times that he grew up in with all the you know

00:32:11.860 the monarchy it just uh faded away um and was a time where the trust in those institutions that were

00:32:19.960 kind of handing down meaning for for generations they were falling away and uh you know as young people

00:32:25.160 like him were saying well i don't have to live by that who says that this is the way that i should live and

00:32:30.680 he also said you know this is nothing bad you know it can turn bad if you don't find anything

00:32:37.600 but in itself freedom is wonderful it's great and he would say it's not just a hallmark but it's a

00:32:44.900 prerogative of youth to ask these questions and to not accept meaning being handed down by

00:32:50.500 traditions or the family or but to go out and say i'm gonna find my own answers i'm gonna take that

00:32:56.340 challenge and he would applaud that and oftentimes you know he he would help people by telling them

00:33:01.580 there's nothing wrong with you you're actually very brave asking that question you're not just

00:33:05.680 not sick you know again as freud as if somebody asks the question does my life have a meaning or

00:33:10.040 not they're sick they need therapy they need psychoanalysis and he said no that's actually a

00:33:14.320 very honest sign of maturity and it puts you in the same group with the biggest philosophers

00:33:19.000 who ever walked the earth to ask that question there's some bravery about it and to say i'm gonna find

00:33:23.980 my own answers it's only when that process is taking so longer and longer and there's nothing

00:33:29.420 and comes to view and that can happen sometimes that people get this what he called existential

00:33:34.740 frustration and then it can turn into you know people giving up on searching saying there is no

00:33:41.200 meaning i'm done with searching and then you have uh you know those kind of neurotic reactions to this

00:33:47.420 inner void to this existential vacuum but that doesn't mean it's it's it can't be fixed but then you

00:33:53.260 need to talk about these things and you can't just have a psychotherapist who says well take those

00:33:57.540 pills and you know you'll feel better you're working on a different level again you're taking an

00:34:02.880 existential crisis something that's at the center of the human experience and reducing it to say oh

00:34:09.000 it's uncomfortable so let's turn off the the the discomfort it's sort of like saying you're in a

00:34:14.580 house it's burning and your fire alarm is going up let's just kill the fire alarm it's really loud

00:34:18.200 you know it's really annoying but that won't prevent the house from burning down and no existential

00:34:23.500 crisis no there's no solution as to how am i going to live my life if if i'm just taking you know

00:34:29.980 popping in pills to to not feel uh any discomfort so again the form of reductionism that we still today

00:34:37.560 so often meet and who how many psychiatrists take the time to actually have that conversation and

00:34:42.900 find out is that a person who actually needs antidepressants because there's really the

00:34:49.060 problem is an imbalance and there's nothing wrong with their life and they have a lot of meaning then

00:34:53.240 that exists and then antidepressants are blessing but if you're dealing with somebody who's an

00:34:58.240 existential crisis you've got to find out you've got to work on a different level you need to find

00:35:02.440 answers there otherwise you're not helping the person actually you're making things worse because

00:35:06.120 you're kind of you know taking away their ability to you know it's a healthy discomfort because it

00:35:13.620 keeps you going it's a motivator to act and to say i'm i got to do something about my life

00:35:19.200 yeah that depression or boredom can be a smoke alarm exactly there's nothing boredom has its meaning

00:35:25.340 because it's telling you hey you're missing out on some meaningful opportunities in your life that

00:35:31.500 are waiting for you to be turned from possibilities into realities and you're not doing that so it's

00:35:37.700 an alarm yeah let's talk more about how we can find meaning i think first we've been saying meaning

00:35:42.640 a lot like we got to find you live a meaningful life do meaningful things what did your grandfather

00:35:47.080 mean exactly by meaning because i know you know he wrote this originally in german and there's

00:35:51.900 translations done i think you talked about this in a previous interview sometimes the translation

00:35:57.580 from german to english it doesn't quite capture exactly the german word that he used initially so

00:36:03.780 when we say meaning what do what are we talking about well at some point he would say meaning and

00:36:08.980 purpose because those have a bit of different connotations in english yeah but you're right there's

00:36:14.140 no ideal word and so he said i'm using the word meaning and i'm giving a lot of examples so that

00:36:18.520 anybody who reads about logotherapy might be able to understand what i mean when i say meaning but

00:36:23.920 yeah it's best to work with examples so he said there there are three ways you can actualize

00:36:29.500 meaning in your life number one is kind of the obvious whenever you ask somebody what makes your life

00:36:35.360 worth living they would say well i do this and that with my life right this is my work this is the work

00:36:40.860 that i do or you talk to an artist they'll say well you know my next painting that that adds meaning to

00:36:47.060 my life so he called those the creative values the things that we put into this world the way we

00:36:53.520 influence and change and hopefully change for the better the world through our actions through our

00:36:59.140 deeds and then there's another aspect that's also still you know people would guess it and that will

00:37:06.280 be experiential values so not just the things we put into this world but the things we take out of

00:37:13.240 this world and into us into our senses the experiences of you know you name it of something that's beautiful

00:37:20.600 of something that's true if you're a scientist and experiencing finding truths it could be nature

00:37:26.660 yeah exactly nature or art music he always mentioned the example if you ask somebody who's in the concert

00:37:33.720 listening to their favorite music you ask them is life meaningful they'll say of course it is yeah it's

00:37:38.380 beautiful again you're here so that's that's meaningful too if we were having this conversation and there

00:37:44.460 would be i don't know an aurora borealis that's in the news these days outside the window and we wouldn't even look

00:37:50.260 you know this happens what every once in a lifetime or so we would miss out on something meaningful and

00:37:57.560 that is to experience so life is about that too but then he added a third factor and that's when life

00:38:03.660 does not offer those possibilities to do much or to experience much and usually that comes into play or that

00:38:11.660 becomes noticeable when things are going bad when things are not going well say you're dealing with a

00:38:19.160 incurable disease or you're you've lost uh somebody who's near and dear to you all the all the things

00:38:25.420 that happen sooner or later in in life i mean incurable disease hopefully not but i mean it happens every day

00:38:30.720 so and then he said there's still a way to actualize meaning to find meaning and to actualize it

00:38:37.000 and when it comes to say suffering it's the way in which we confront the suffering the way in which we

00:38:44.720 we still have that freedom and freedom of choice we still have possibilities there of how to deal

00:38:51.140 with a predicament or a difficult situation we can deal with it in a meaningless way or even say okay

00:38:57.220 you know one example that shows you that absurdity of the meaningless in this would be you say if i get a

00:39:03.740 bad diagnosis that's lethal i'll kill myself as if that would make any sense so if you think of the

00:39:12.980 ways you can deal there there are always ways that are more meaningful now to deal with something

00:39:17.160 and even if it's limitations i i just incidentally i met uh some caught up with some friends the other

00:39:24.820 day and they're older now and i heard the wife of my friend has been in bed for three years can't move

00:39:32.200 they don't know what it is but she's losing the ability to move her body and i thought you know

00:39:37.080 that's terrible in what state is she going to be like and i can you know visited her they put up her bed

00:39:42.820 in her in the living room and they've surrounded her with beautiful pictures uh she says she loves

00:39:50.740 colors and she was the same person i knew she was making us feel good you know people around her

00:40:00.140 feel good and say you know don't worry i i've had a good life and i'm enjoying the things now i i didn't

00:40:08.060 have time for back then so just that attitude and my grandfather said this is the most difficult this

00:40:14.800 is the highest way the highest value or way you can realize meaning is in a difficult situation

00:40:22.120 choose a way to shoulder that that is inspiring that is in some way also uh you know creating something

00:40:29.900 putting something meaningful in this world because it shows you okay you know maybe one day i will have

00:40:35.220 a bad suffering some incurable disease and i experienced that i said oh well you can also

00:40:40.680 shoulder it bravely like this like she did or you can just lament and i said why don't you you know

00:40:47.060 why you're not sad and she said well that wouldn't make any difference so i decided not to be you know

00:40:51.680 it sounds so logical but there are those examples people who show us what is possible what is humanly

00:40:57.860 possible and so that would be another way the way we how we deal with bad situations and of course goes

00:41:05.120 without saying also deal with good situations i mean you can have a lot of opportunities and be healthy

00:41:09.900 and be young and be good looking and be miserable and not see that the possibilities that you have or

00:41:17.060 you can be grateful and say well i'm glad that i have these possibilities that i'm healthy that i can do

00:41:22.100 something with my life and i'm grateful for that and that again is a choice so the way it's always a

00:41:27.600 mix what we do what we experience and the attitude that we actualize it's that last point about the

00:41:33.760 attitude we take to suffering we can't avoid one of your grandfather's most famous quotes is the one

00:41:40.860 that says everything can be taken from a man but one thing the last of the human freedoms to choose

00:41:46.540 one's attitude in any given set of circumstances to choose one's own way exactly exactly so the end

00:41:53.480 it's the suffering it's it's an opportunity to exercise your most human capacity which is agency

00:41:59.200 deciding what you're going to do with your life exactly and he made it he put up a mathematical

00:42:03.940 formula he said d equals s minus m okay so d equals s minus m what does that mean despair equals

00:42:14.080 suffering minus without meaning suffering does not automatically lead a person to be in a state

00:42:23.660 of despair the deciding factor when push comes to shove is meaning and when you see some perspective

00:42:31.860 of meaning something that the way you can shape he would say you shape your suffering in that you

00:42:37.920 squeeze a little bit of meaning out of it in that lies the possibility and there's no need to be in

00:42:46.040 despair and we learn that and that's something again that he didn't prescribe anything or demanded of

00:42:51.260 of people not at all but he would cite and quote these examples and talk about these and show people you know

00:42:59.260 this is possible too you know maybe you that can be an inspiring idea for for your situation it would be

00:43:06.680 very clear to their life never runs out of meaningful possibilities never until your last breath even

00:43:14.160 when you're in bed and dying there's still things that can be done there's still time for forgiveness for

00:43:20.520 example right and even if you can't change nothing else quoted it you can still change yourself and

00:43:26.220 that's enough possibility we all have what attitude do we adopt towards our past and our the way we lived

00:43:33.700 our lives and in that you can also grow and transform yourself on an existential level which is why he

00:43:40.560 was often speaking in jails and prisons when your grandfather talked about meaning was it something

00:43:46.400 subjective that you created for yourself like a nietzschean ubermensch or was it something else

00:43:52.100 it's a very good question i'm glad you asked it because it's a very decisive no if you think it

00:43:57.980 logically to the end there's good reasons why that would be dangerous because it would basically you

00:44:04.840 you could justify any kind of behavior by saying well for me it's meaningful right if your point of

00:44:11.660 reference is saying if it's meaningful to you then it makes it meaningful then you end up in a moral

00:44:18.580 dilemma very quickly as you'd say you know for hitler it was meaningful to commit genocide so you know

00:44:23.340 what's wrong with that if that was meaningful for him so no he would say meaning is is there it's objectively

00:44:31.320 in every situation and to make that a little under more understandable he would quote as an incident

00:44:37.380 where somebody came up to him in a before a lecture and he said dr frankel i don't have time to listen

00:44:42.440 so can you just quickly tell me what's the meaning of life and you know he first he got a good laugh out of that

00:44:48.760 but then he used that i said this would be like asking the best chess player in the world what's

00:44:55.060 the best move and the answer to that would of course be you know it depends on the situation it depends on

00:45:01.800 the game it depends on where the figures are but even more than that it depends on the players who are

00:45:06.980 they what strategies do they use even how are they feeling this day are they on top of their game or not

00:45:13.320 so but if you put all these factors into a equation or a supercomputer you know that supercomputer can

00:45:19.480 say okay in this particular individual situation this or that with a 99 percent certainty is the best

00:45:26.960 move if you want to win the game so that's the most meaningful move to make so it's it's always

00:45:31.940 at situationen it's latin at situationen at persona which means meaning relates to the person to the

00:45:39.260 individual and to the specific situation and then when you take as many variables into account as

00:45:46.200 you can you can say this or that is the best move but it's never that you decide it is the best move

00:45:51.800 if i wanted to win a chess game i said well this feels meaningful to me so i'll decide that this is

00:45:56.880 the most meaningful move then you're very likely going to win so it has to be found meaning cannot be

00:46:03.320 given it cannot be prescribed it can at best be described he would say uh but everyone has to

00:46:11.160 find it on their own everyone's on their own terms and i think there's a kind of a beauty to that too

00:46:18.420 because it really puts the the logo therapist and the and the client on the same level because this

00:46:24.680 is something we all do consciously or not is to decide in every moment what's what's the most

00:46:29.920 meaningful move what's the most meaningful possibility in my life right here right now

00:46:34.480 regarding you know me as an individual who i am do i have some knowledge that i can explain yeah okay

00:46:41.660 well then it's meaningful to do that is there somebody drowning in the river and i can't swim what's

00:46:46.540 not meaningful to jump into the river you know people two people are going to drown but maybe i can

00:46:50.780 make a phone call so what's the most meaningful move it depends on the person on the individual but it is

00:46:58.100 at the same time trans subjective he would say so it's out there it's an objective quality

00:47:03.500 that's in the situation inherent in every situation and he would compare it to kind of the gestalt

00:47:09.500 ideas of max wertheimer and other thinkers who who spoke of the demand quality of situation

00:47:18.460 what is the situation demanding of me right now how am i going to respond it's not so much us who ask

00:47:26.140 you know this is what i want from life and if i don't get it you know i'll throw a fit but what

00:47:31.840 is life demanding of me how am i going to respond i'm purposely saying respond and not react because

00:47:37.920 if it was react again there would be no freedom but how do i respond i can choose my response and even

00:47:43.300 if say somebody does in things to me that are meaningless or unjust i don't need to react to that but i can

00:47:50.200 choose a meaningful response which is going beyond my own needs and which if it's meaningful everybody

00:47:58.260 benefits even the the other person involved yeah that's something your your grandfather talks about

00:48:04.280 a lot repeats in a lot of his books is when people are feeling that existential angst vacuum void

00:48:11.220 instead of asking well what's the meaning of life he said that's the wrong question to ask you need to

00:48:16.340 ask yourself what's life asking of me right now your grandfather developed a few techniques

00:48:22.260 in logotherapy to help people put logotherapy into practice one of them is encapsulated in a quote that

00:48:29.700 i'm going to be honest with you when i first read it 25 years ago i had a hard time understanding it

00:48:35.020 i still have a hard time understanding it there are times when i read it and i think oh i get it

00:48:39.100 and then i read it again like oh i don't actually i don't get that so here's the quote and i'm hoping you

00:48:44.500 can help me finally understand what he meant by it quote is live as if you're living already for the

00:48:51.260 second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you're about to act now yeah what does

00:48:59.040 that mean that's an interesting one well i think the answer is really much simpler than you think it

00:49:06.100 is basically what he was talking about is as i just mentioned every situation in life is unique

00:49:13.900 right this this moment that we're experiencing right now is never going to happen again we're two

00:49:20.420 individuals who knows tomorrow we might not uh you know one of us might not be around anymore

00:49:26.260 things things happen life doesn't always give us the same opportunities the next day than it does

00:49:33.100 today in this moment so everything is transient everything is all these possibilities that we

00:49:38.980 are faced with they're fleeting and they can be gone the next moment the next instant and so the choices

00:49:47.420 we make whether to pick something that's at least relatively meaningful or aiming for the best or not even

00:49:55.900 trying is an important one that's not just something that we should you know put aside it's important

00:50:02.560 because it's ultimately this is what makes our life right our decisions what we decided to put into

00:50:08.920 this world and so i think he was pointing out that importance of every moment being unique and maybe

00:50:17.220 you know sometimes we we kind of go on autopilot and just uh react in in the very sense of of the word

00:50:24.640 and don't notice that actually meaning is already somewhere else that it's it's jumped to a different

00:50:29.920 place and not the routine not the thing we usually do and we have to be mindful of that and be open

00:50:36.380 and look at the whole situation and say okay well you know just because i've done always done something

00:50:41.160 like this or you know maybe just because it feels like this now maybe i'll give it a second thought

00:50:47.240 maybe what i'm about to do is wrong and once you've done something wrong you regret it once you put

00:50:54.720 something into reality you cannot take it out of reality it's there forever and it's a like a document

00:51:00.940 of of your life and what you have done and what your existence meant in this universe forever and it's

00:51:07.920 hard sometimes if we think of the things we did wrong and of course in this human nature we we always

00:51:12.840 mess up and make wrong decisions that's just part of being human of course but to strive at least and

00:51:19.820 to say well maybe this is already something that i'm doing which is not the most meaningful maybe i

00:51:24.300 should rethink that before i have to go back and and well live with the responsibility of what i've done

00:51:31.020 without the freedom to change it okay that makes sense so as you were talking i was thinking about

00:51:36.700 something i do on autopilot that i'm not happy about and i could i wish i could do different or want to do

00:51:42.440 different you know getting grumpy with my kids when they do something frustrating so i had to think

00:51:48.500 about okay this is how i usually do it if this happens again i don't have to do it that way there's

00:51:53.720 another way i could do it right yeah okay what it would be like if i already had done it yeah i would

00:51:59.900 regret it so why not choose to not even put it into existence in the first place okay i like that okay

00:52:06.040 thank you i finally understand it it's been 25 years or probably more i know a lot of people because

00:52:12.340 it's a new year there's listeners who are hoping to improve themselves maybe live a life with more

00:52:19.080 meaning they want to be better humans are there any daily or weekly practices that you've come across

00:52:26.540 or maybe you've developed you're also a licensed psychotherapist that people can do to keep their

00:52:32.400 eye on finding meaning in their lives even when things aren't going their way yeah yeah well that's a

00:52:39.280 good question i mean it's it's actually really good a lot of times a lot of the problems could

00:52:44.900 be prevented and logotherapy has a lot to offer not just for people who already were already some

00:52:51.100 you know some crisis is in their lives but even before that to kind of check am i on the right path

00:52:57.200 or is this maybe uh not such a good or stable path that i'm on a meaningful path ultimately that's what

00:53:04.120 it's about and so uh one of the things there are a couple of exercises a lot of exercises were

00:53:10.460 developed by elizabeth lucas my grandfather was very impatient he didn't take much time to develop

00:53:15.620 you know meditations and things like that but elizabeth lucas did and there are a lot of

00:53:20.680 resources that you can find in her books you know one of the things that's part of an exercise

00:53:26.940 is to think to imagine if your life was over tonight at midnight what would be the things

00:53:33.940 that well first of all that that you would say i'm glad this or that happened i'm glad i had this

00:53:40.200 experience i'm glad i had this encounter i'm glad i was able to i don't know do this in my life to

00:53:46.320 achieve something but then the second question is what are the things that i would really regret

00:53:53.520 knowing that my life is going to end in a couple of hours that i wish i would have had more time to do

00:54:00.080 to finish to start um to turn into reality from a possibility and what would be really heartbreaking

00:54:10.280 i would not feel good about leaving that undone or unexperienced and think about that and then open

00:54:19.380 your eyes again and take a look at what that is and you'll be aware that probably you're not going

00:54:27.240 to die at midnight maybe but hopefully not but if there is something that comes to mind that you

00:54:35.480 really would regret not having done go do it don't waste your time because possibilities can be gone

00:54:42.840 the next moment if there is something meaningful that you're postponing for whatever reason

00:54:49.280 because it's hard because it's uncomfortable because it's sacrifice because i don't know maybe

00:54:55.600 you've forgotten about it you know life things happen and things come come in between uh us and

00:55:02.880 what's really important remember that and then go out and do it while you can i love it well alex

00:55:10.460 this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about your work

00:55:13.400 well there is the logotherapy online academy that is now offering training in english for the first

00:55:22.700 time which i'm doing together with dr heidi schönfeld logotherapy minus online.com you can find it

00:55:32.500 there and there's also the victor frankel institute of america where you can do a online course which is

00:55:40.720 sort of a short and snappy overview a basic introduction to logotherapy and you can do that

00:55:47.260 on your own from from home and it doesn't take much effort well alex vesely thank you for the time it's

00:55:53.460 been a pleasure it's been a pleasure for me thank you my guest here is alexander vesely he's the

00:55:58.820 grandson of victor frankel and also a documentarian who did a documentary about victor frankel you can find

00:56:03.900 more information about his work at the website victorfrankelinstitute.org also check out our show notes at

00:56:08.640 aom.is slash frankel where you can find links to resources where you delve deeper into this topic

00:56:12.960 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our website at

00:56:24.240 artofmanliness.com where you can find our podcast archives and also check out our new newsletter

00:56:28.120 it's called dying breed you can find more information at dyingbreed.net

00:56:31.520 until next time it's brett mckay reminding you to listen to aom podcast but put what you've heard into action

00:56:36.840 you

The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

Man's Search for Meaning, With Viktor Frankl's Grandson

Episode Stats

Misogynist Sentences

Hate Speech Sentences

Summary

Transcript