Man’s Search for Meaning in Modern Crises
Periods of crisis have a way of stripping life down to its essentials. Certainty disappears. Plans dissolve. The future feels unclear, and familiar coping strategies stop working. In moments like these, many people are struggling emotionally and existentially.
Few books speak to this experience as powerfully as Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Written after surviving Nazi concentration camps, Frankl’s work is not a story of optimism. It’s a study of what allows human beings to endure suffering without losing their sense of self.
Why Frankl Still Resonates Today
Frankl observed that suffering alone does not break people. What proves most destructive is suffering without meaning. When pain feels arbitrary, endless, or disconnected from purpose, despair takes root.
Modern crises may look different from those Frankl endured, but the psychological terrain is familiar. Burnout, moral injury, chronic stress, loss, and identity disruption all raise the same underlying question: What makes this life worth enduring?
Meaning Is Not the Same as Positivity
One of Frankl’s most misunderstood ideas is meaning itself. Meaning does not require liking what is happening. It does not demand gratitude for suffering or a positive outlook at all costs.
Frankl directly challenged the idea that mental health comes from comfort or the absence of struggle. He wrote:
“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.”
In other words, the absence of meaning, not pain, is the most profound existential distress a person can experience. Meaning isn’t something we can pursue directly. It emerges through genuine action. The reward ensues from engagement, not the chase.
This idea runs counter to much modern advice that equates well-being with relief or ease. Frankl argued that a certain amount of tension, when oriented toward something meaningful, gives life direction, structure, and purpose.
Meaning, in this sense, is not about eliminating discomfort. It is about choosing what is worth enduring discomfort for.
Frankl argued that meaning is found through:
- What we give to the world (work, contribution, service)
- What we take from the world (love, connection, beauty)
- The attitude we choose when suffering is unavoidable
This third path, attitude, is about our agency. Our freedom to choose despite the suffering. When circumstances cannot be changed, how we relate to them remains a human freedom.
Meaning as a Protective Factor in Crisis
Research across psychology and trauma studies continues to support Frankl’s observations. A sense of meaning acts as a buffer against despair, burnout, and hopelessness. It does not erase pain, but it changes how pain is metabolized.
People grounded in meaning are not immune to distress. They are, however, more likely to sustain engagement with life, maintain values under pressure, and recover more fully after crisis.
Trauma as a Crisis of Meaning
Trauma often disrupts a person’s core beliefs about how the world works. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) acknowledges this directly in Trauma-Informed Care in Behavioral Health Services (TIP 57), noting that trauma frequently creates a crisis of faith rooted in meaning.
As TIP 57 explains, trauma can lead individuals to question fundamental, life-organizing assumptions: beliefs about safety, trust in others, fairness, purpose, and expectations for the future. These questions are natural responses to experiences that violate deeply held assumptions, not signs of weakness or failure.
This perspective echoes Frankl’s work. When trauma shatters previously held meanings, distress often follows because the framework the survivor relied on no longer holds. Healing, then, involves rebuilding meaning that can withstand reality as it now is.
Meaning in the Middle of Modern Chaos
Today’s crises are often quieter but no less corrosive. Constant urgency, exposure to trauma, ethical conflict, and the erosion of boundaries leave many people exhausted and disconnected from why they started.
Frankl’s work reminds us that meaning is something we actively construct as life unfolds, even when conditions are imperfect.
This perspective is especially relevant for helpers, leaders, and caregivers whose sense of purpose can be slowly worn down by cumulative stress rather than a single traumatic event.
Meaning Can’t Be Reduced to Parts
Existential psychiatrist Irvin Yalom once shared a story that he had heard from Frankl. The story illustrates the problem of reductionism with gentle humor. A cat was accused of eating ten pounds of butter. When brought before an arbiter, the cat was weighed and found to weigh exactly ten pounds. The arbiter announced, “Here is the butter, but where is the cat?”
Yalom used this story to highlight a central humanistic idea: breaking something down into its component parts does not necessarily reconstruct the whole. Knowing the weight of the butter does not tell us where the living creature went.
People are greater than the sum of their parts. No matter how carefully we analyze the components of the mind, conscious and unconscious processes, the ego, id, or superego, we still fail to grasp the central, vital agency: the person whose mind these parts belong to.
Meaning, Yalom argued, cannot be discovered by studying isolated components, because meaning is not caused. It is created. It emerges from a person who is not reducible to any single part of themselves.
Trauma, burnout, and existential distress cannot be resolved through symptom management alone. When an individual becomes shattered, putting the pieces back together does not resurrect the person. They are still a whole person whose meaning may need rebuilding. When meaning collapses, the task is not simply to fix a part, but to help the person rebuild a coherent sense of self that can once again hold purpose. For helpers trained to troubleshoot systems and fix components, we must remember and stay grounded in that people, including ourselves, are not machines.
Strategize Your Success
Finding meaning is not a solo task. Reflection, dialogue, and guided exploration often help clarify values that feel buried beneath stress or obligation.
Tactical Counseling integrates existential and meaning-centered approaches to help individuals navigate crisis, transition, and burnout with clarity and intention. Counseling is about rediscovering what still matters when circumstances are hard.
If you’re questioning direction, motivation, or identity during a challenging season, support from a psychotherapist or other mental health clinician can help you reconnect with a purpose that is resilient, realistic, and your own. Together, we can Strategize Your Success.
Resources for Further Reading
- Frankl, V. (1992). Man’s search for meaning: An introduction to logotherapy (4th ed.). Beacon Press. https://amzn.to/49spZJb
- Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2014). Trauma-Informed Care in Behavioral Health Services Treatment Improvement Protocol (TIP) Series 57. HHS Publication No. (SMA) 14-4816. https://library.samhsa.gov/sites/default/files/sma15-4912.pdf
- Yalom, I. D. (1980). Existential Psychotherapy. BasicBooks. https://amzn.to/4pBjoCs