man-s-search-for-meaning

MAN'S SEARCH FOR MEANING
people polled admitted that man needs "something"
for the sake of which to live. Moreover, 61 percent
conceded that there was something, or someone, in
their own lives for whose sake they were even ready to
die. I repeated this poll at my hospital department in
Vienna among both the patients and the personnel,
and the outcome was practically the same as among
the thousands of people screened in France; the difference
was only 2 percent.
Another statistical survey, of 7,948 students at
forty-eight colleges, was conducted by social scientists
from Johns Hopkins University. Their preliminary
report is part of a two-year study sponsored by
the National Institute of Mental Health. Asked what
they considered "very-important" to them now, 16
percent of the students checked "making a lot of
money"; 78 percent said their first goal was "finding a
purpose and meaning to my life."
Of course, there may be some cases in which an
individual's concern with values is really a camouflage
of hidden inner conflicts; but, if so, they represent the
exceptions from the rule rather than the rule itself. In
these cases we have actually to deal with pseudovalues,
and as such they have to be unmasked. Unmasking,
however, should stop as soon as one is confronted
with what is authentic and genuine in man, e.g., man's
desire for a life that is as meaningful as possible. If it
does not stop then, the only thing that the "unmasking
psychologist" really unmasks is his own "hidden motive"
- namely, his unconscious need to debase and
depreciate what is genuine, what is genuinely human,
in man.
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