Your Search For A Meaningful Life http://www.logotherapylearningcenter.com 2 YOUR SEARCH FOR A MEANINGFUL LIFE BOOK ONE Opening Avenues Of Fulfillment By Resolving Challenges Of Love, Labor And Leadership With Frankle/DeVille Logotherapy LOGOTHERAPY FOR FULFILLMENT ® LOGOTHERAPY (Spirit Wellness) = f (Personal Meaning x Communal Belonging) Logotherapy is the synthesis of existential psychology and metaphysical philosophy that offers pleasurable, powerful and permanent benefits in order to create and sustain a satisfying life during good times and bad. www.logotherapylearningcenter.com All Rights Reserved @ DeVille Logotherapy Learning Center 2010 Your Search For A Meaningful Life http://www.logotherapylearningcenter.com 3 CONTENT BOOK ONE PSYCHOSPIRITUAL GROWTH For The Reader, ABOUT MEANING AND BELONGING ------------------ 4 Part One – CONSTANT CHANGE CHAPTER ONE - FRANKL AND FRUSTRATION--------------------------------------- 28 CHAPTER TWO - CHANGE AND COMPLEXITY---------------------------------------- 51 CHAPTER THREE - LIFE AND CHANGE ------------------------------------------------ 69 Part Two – PERSONAL MATURING CHAPTER FOUR - THE MEANING OF MEANING-------------------------------------- 78 CHAPTER FIVE - ELEMENTS OF SATISFACTION------------------------------------ 94 CHAPTER SIX - BEYOND FEAR AND ANXIETY--------------------------------------- 105 Part Three – LOGOTHERAPY METHODS CHAPTER SEVEN - A PRINCIPLE OF SOUND RELATIONSHIPS----------------- 125 CHAPTER EIGHT - THE PRINCIPLE OF RECIPROCITY ---------------------------- 130 CHAPTER NINE - SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY------------------------------------ 134 CHAPTER TEN - BEYOND SELF-DECEPTION----------------------------------------- 139 CHAPTER ELEVEN - LOVING, LABORING AND LEADING PEACEFULLY --- 144 BOOK TWO FOCUSING ALL YOUR POWERS Part Four - PHYSICAL ASPECTS OF MEANING CHAPTER TWELVE - SERVING SOCIETY FAITHFULLY ----------------------------- 151 CHAPTER THIRTEEN - PLAYING JOYOUSLY ------------------------------------------- 170 Part Five - PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF MEANING CHAPTER FOURTEEN - RELATING WARMLY------------------------------------------- 186 CHAPTER FIFTEEN - LEARNING WISELY----------------------------------------------- 207 Part Six - PHILOSOPHICAL ASPECTS OF MEANING CHAPTER SIXTEEN - CONNECTING DEVOUTLY-------------------------------------- 222 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - PERSEVERING BRAVELY---------------------------------- 244 CONCLUSION BECOMING - FOREVER BECOMING---------------------------------------------------- 258 LOGOTHERAPY OVERVIEW------------------------------------------- 266 WORKBOOK FOR LOGOTHERAPY AND LIFE -------------------------------------- 269 All Rights Reserved @ DeVille Logotherapy Learning Center 2010 Your Search For A Meaningful Life http://www.logotherapylearningcenter.com 4 FOR THE READER ABOUT MEANING AND BELONGING (You must read this to understand Logotherapy) LOGOTHERAPY (Spirit Wellness) = f (Personal Meaning x Communal Belonging) We of the DEVILLE LOGOTHERAPY LEARNING CENTER understand as our late tutor and friend Dr. Viktor Frankl wrote so brilliantly in his world class book MAN’S SEARCH FOR MEANING, that finding personal meaning is the prime motivation of normal men and women in affluent societies that regularly meet our physical and psychological needs. Viktor was the most influential professional contributor to our own careers -- although as the elements of existential psychology and metaphysical philosophy matured in the half century since Frankl did his seminal work -- we have realized that there is another factor of equal importance in loving, laboring and leading wisely and well. We have learned through our interactions with a great many persons in many settings and through much research, normal men and women also need supportive interpersonal relationships among competent people in emotionally secure places where they know they belong. Unfortunately, because life with its many uncertainties offers none of us a rose garden, we are also subjected to the painful trials and tribulations of life as old Father Job discovered in the Old Testament story of a good man suffering great pain although he had sinned against no one. Job philosophized in the midst of his undeserved suffering, angst and resentment – We humans are born to trouble as surely as the smoke of a campfire rises upward. Indeed we are often anxious and unhappy as so many marriages fail, parents grow ill and die and children flirt with disaster while careers and businesses vanish ephemerally -- like a puff of campfire smoke in a breeze. While we humans strive to make our way through life with as little pain as possible, we must find or create for ourselves the legitimate personal attitudes and activities along with sound supportive communal relationships that make life worth living despite our difficult experiences. Only then can we live wisely and well despite the tragic human quartet of suffering, guilt, rage and the death dread that frustrates all of us during life’s painful situations. All Rights Reserved @ DeVille Logotherapy Learning Center 2010 Your Search For A Meaningful Life http://www.logotherapylearningcenter.com 5 Fortunately, during the last half century or so Frankl’s Logotherapy that we think of as spirit wellness, has arguably become the world’s most successful approach to developing a life filled with a sense of purpose in secure places where we share support among people with whom we have faith, hope and love. Logotherapy is much more effective than Freud’s Psychoanalysis, Adler’s Personal Psychology, Skinner’s Behaviorism or Berne’s Transactional Analysis -- because it empowers multitudes of normal persons who learn how to manage their lives successfully enough to change their worlds -- rather than the vastly fewer mentally disturbed women and men. There is no magic in Logotherapy, but it does work wonders in our lives when we apply it to empower ourselves, our families, organizations and communities. Our DEVILLE LOGOTHERAPY LEARNING CENTER logo illustrates this normal progression of a satisfying life from the physical through the psychological to the philosophical aspects of existence. Logotherapy For Fulfillment ® Frankl/DeVille Logotherapy isn’t used primarily for coping with or suffering through mental illness per se, although it is quite beneficial even there. That is why we neither conduct psychotherapy nor recommend psychotropic medications to manage life’s painful challenges. Logotherapy can make life consistently rewarding for normal, reasonably well adjusted men and women who from time to time become frustrated by and disappointed with the many pressures and problems within our complex and often confusing society. Our twenty Logotherapy text books and/or study guides, along with our lectures, short courses, seminars, retreats and counseling – are focused on harnessing the resilient human spirit that creates every successful institution. Gracious and generous souls along with their blood, toil, tears and sweat are responsible for virtually every loving marriage, maturing family, challenging classroom, devout faith community, art institute, public radio station, customer centered business, healing medical center, generous service club and governmental service center. Very little satisfaction is found by chance as if a lost coin on a sidewalk. All Rights Reserved @ DeVille Logotherapy Learning Center 2010 Your Search For A Meaningful Life http://www.logotherapylearningcenter.com 6 When Dr. Joe Butterworth and his wife had a child born to them with spina bifida, they discovered to their dismay Denver had no children’s hospital to adequately treat her serious condition. Joe grumped around for a week or two and then proceeded to make the creation of a children’s hospital his major life’s work. He continued his medical practice but after hours, he literally bullied and/or charmed the city into building a world class medical center for children in an empty field, where he had knelt one night and dedicated the site to God and the Rocky Mountain region’s children. Joe later confessed I was beyond shame for Denver’s kids. I begged, borrowed and stole from anyone who stopped walking long enough to hear my pitch, There is nothing you cannot accomplish once you learn how to change the world. When asked how he really did it, Joe grinned and revealed his secret. PERSISTENCE, PERSISTENCE, PERSISTENCE! LOGOTHERAPY (Spirit Wellness) = f (Personal Meaning x Communal Belonging) The above equation that represents Logotherapy reveals the two crucial sources of fulfillment that when combined can produce a satisfying life for committed men and women. We contemporary creature-selves not only need to know that our love, labor and leadership is meaningful to ourselves and our immediate family, most of us also want to feel that our contributions are significant and appreciated by the society we serve in some broader sphere. Every normal person wants to believe that his or her life is being invested wisely, is well-spent and of value to someone -- whether on a grand scale and heroic manner or in our family through humble careers with our healthy and happy children. We need to prosper in some physical, psychological and philosophical manner -- with an awareness of purpose in our attitudes and activities and a feeling of permanence in our relationships. We want to live wisely and well -- despite the pressures that that are so common in our materialistic, often dehumanizing society. Multitudes of good people labor day after day at miserable, mind-numbing tasks