My younger
daughter was home this past week for her spring break from graduate
school. She brought with her a stack of
books that she thought that my wife perhaps might enjoy reading. Included in that stack was a copy of Victor
Frankl’s classic work Man’s Search for Meaning.
I have read
different parts of Frankl’s work over the years and find him engaging and
insightful. I was delighted, then, that
during the first year of my Ph.D. program at Southern Methodist University,
Frankl came there to lecture. I still
have the ticket stub and the page of notes I took from the lecture. I also discovered the a clip from the
lecture on the web:
http://www.viktorfrankl.org/e/clipgallery.html (see SMU 1987)
Here Frankl
discusses our need for both a depth psychology and a height psychology, and for
both freedom and responsibility. I agree
that we need both a depth psychology and a height psychology, an ability to dig
deep within to examine the fears, anxieties, traumas and triumphs that are
there, and a recognition that we are symbolic, meaning-seeking,
meaning-creating beings. I agree with
Frankl when he argues that in our society we need to balance freedom and
responsibility. Asking questions about
the common good has become too rare, and we desperately need to find our way
back to them.
With Faith and With Feathers,
David
