The Search For Personal Meaning

          Is meaning something we create through our choices and actions, or is it something already defined and pre-existing, waiting to be discovered? Is it a personal experience, or is it a function of the shared values and structures of the social order in which we live?  Is meaning part of a divine plan, or merely an illusion created by evolution to ensure the species' survival?  As the psychiatrist Victor Frankl (1946) articulates in his book Man’s Search For Meaning, it is these sorts of metaphysical questions that are at the core of our everyday existence: “Man’s search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a ‘secondary rationalization’ of instinctual drives. This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can be fulfilled by him alone (2006, p. 99).
          As the historian Yuval Harari (2015) explains, the search for meaning is a relatively new development in the history of our species. Before modern times, individuals did not question or struggle with personal meaning internally.  Instead, meaning was embedded in the externally accepted structures of religion, social hierarchy, and the traditional roles and labors tied to one’s birth and station in life. Before the Enlightenment, the average person’s life was defined by hard work, social responsibilities, religious rituals and obligations. As  Harari (2015) points out, “The lives of most people throughout history were too brutal and short for them to devote time to abstract musings” (p. 264).  With its shift toward secularism, technological advancement, and economic expansion, the Industrial Revolution offered individuals the leisure time to look inward, self-reflect, and question the purpose of existence.  
      No matter how solid or coherent it may appear, the modern self remains vulnerable to self-doubt and uncertainty.  From early childhood, its identity is fragile, sustained by the ongoing validation of others and society. As Lacan (1991) observes, the narrative of the ego is a collage of signifiers, detached from any anchor of fundamental significance: “The ego is structured exactly like a fiction, like a mirage” (p. 16). When these supports falter or disappear, the self can unravel, exposing the nothingness at the core of its being: “Man is the being through whom nothingness comes into the world” (Sartre, 1956, p. 121). In such moments of dissociation, a person may experience a profound sense of self-alienation, accompanied by existential angst and dread that arises when confronted by a loss of identity, meaning, and direction. To quote the psychoanalyst Erich Fromm (1955), “The alienated person is out of touch with himself as he is out of touch with any other person. He does not experience himself as the center of his world, as the creator of his own acts -- but as a passive observer of events which he cannot control or understand” (p. 120).
          The experience of being disconnected from others and the world can often result in a deeply profound sense of self-alienation, leaving the individual feeling hopeless and disoriented. Though this sense of self-alienation can happen at any time throughout one's lifespan, individuals are most vulnerable during adolescence and middle age. As the psychoanalyst Erik Erikson describes in his work on human development, the adolescent and the midlife adult struggle the most with the metaphysical questions of selfhood, purpose, and temporality. 
         With their whole life still ahead, adolescents look forward to the future as they struggle to construct their identity. To become a productive and meaningful self amidst the demands of peers, family, and social ideals and expectations is enormous pressure.  Erikson (1968)  referred to this adolescent development stage  as “identity versus role confusion.”  It is a period in which the adolescent becomes preoccupied with metaphysical questions such as: “Who am I?”,  “How do I become my essence?”, and  “What does it mean to be a being in the world?” During this developmental stage, adolescents experiment with different roles, relationships, and beliefs within the social environment to form a coherent sense of self, purpose, and direction. Failing to resolve this question of meaning can result in role confusion, a fragmented self-image, and despair. As Erikson (1968) points out,  “In the social jungle of human existence, there is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity” (p. 130).
        Around middle age, the question of personal meaning often resurfaces with renewed urgency. This time, the question arises in the developmental conflict of “generativity versus stagnation.”  The middle-aged adult is not confronted, as the adolescent is, with the metaphysical question of ‘Who am I?’, but rather the deeper concerns of self-reflection, such as ‘What is the purpose of my life?’ and ‘What can I accomplish to transcend the finitude of my existence and give myself meaning?” Around middle age, the horizon of death becomes more immediate.  Facing one’s finitude is an impetus for self-reflection, looking back upon the past and reassessing one’s self-worth and value. As Erikson (1950)  notes, middle age is a time to ask oneself how your life made a positive impact on others, your family, friends, and society as a whole:  “Generativity, then, is primarily the concern in establishing and guiding the next generation. Often, it is no longer a question of who I am, but of what I can give” (p. 267). 
         When a person views their legacy with regret or a sense of failure, they risk falling into a deep depression, a paralyzing state of worthlessness, stagnation, and despair. This can often happen in the final years of life, when a person feels their time on earth was wasted, having added little or no value to others and the world around them. Erikson described this final psychosocial stage as the conflict between “integrity versus despair.” He believed that unless a person perceives their legacy was meaningful and complete, they end up in a state of existential paralysis and dread: “Despair expresses the feeling that time is short, too short for the attempt to start a new life and to try out alternate roads to integrity. Such a despair is often hidden behind a show of disgust, or a chronic contemptuousness” (Erikson, 1959, p.104).
            I often see patients in the midst of such a crisis of meaning. They seem psychologically detached, floating by like a sailboat without a rudder. They feel alienated from others and their surroundings. They describe their experience as watching life unfold like a movie, viewing life passively as an outsider rather than actively participating in everyday living.  Oftentimes, they become so depressed that they cannot get out of bed, and they say things such as “Life is pointless and absurd.” The meaning of their existence sounds like the meaningless absurdity of life described by Albert Camus (1942)  in his book The Myth of Sisyphus:“The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy” (p. 168).  
          These individuals do not realize that avoidance of living is itself a mode of being --  one that is ultimately the most inauthentic and restrictive. They are cowering rather than facing the metaphysical questions of being. To quote Heidegger (1927), “Even in evasion, Dasein still comports itself towards itself. It does not flee from itself but rather into itself as inauthenticity” (1962, p. 188).

Dr. Martin H. Klein is an clinical psychologist and executive coach trained in applied existentialism and psychoanalysis.