The will to live

Often, a collective belief arises in something that we can't see or prove the existence of. Sometimes, we defend our belief on the basis that we have no other adequate explanation for a specific phenomenon, or based on our own observations.

Many of us believe in the will to live. We have no proof that we can will ourselves to heal after illness, or to continue to live when science suggests that we should have given up the ghost. Yet we believe, partly because it seems to make sense that if we really, really want to stay alive, we will do, to a certain point. Perhaps this makes sense to us because we are aware that even when we are very tired, we are capable of forcing ourselves to remain awake for long periods of time - and so life's tiniest challenges convince us to believe in the power of our minds (maybe even our souls) to control aspects of the physical.

Psychologists and philosophers have addressed the phenomenon of the will to live and they concluded with varying opinions as to its nature. Freud understood our most powerful driver to be a will to pleasure; Alfred Adler created an individual psychology based on the will to power; Viktor Frankl, whose work I discussed in a previous post, developed the branch of psychotherapy called logotherapy, which centres upon the will to meaning. 19th century philosopher, Schopenhauer understood man's will as a powerful but negative force. His analysis of man's will led him to believe that emotional, physical and sexual desires led only to pain and suffering. He favoured a lifestyle free of human desires, similar to that promoted by the Stoics, Buddhism and Vedanta.

This morning I read a report by a Massachusetts USA based oncologist. He writes that although the will to live can not be measured accurately, nor understood in a scientific sense, from his surgery he notes that a strong will to live can improve quality of life and may even prolong life. His goes on to say that patients who have a positive attitude are better able to cope with the challenges presented by illness and may respond better to therapy.

He quotes from Coping with Cancer, which says that the most important ingredient in the will to live is hope. Much like in the writing of Viktor Frankl, hope is described as the element that people live on when logic tells them that they have little chance for a happy future, or indeed a future of any kind.

Another study that I found at Psychiatry Online noted that the will to live is often influenced by existential variables such as hopelessness, the feeling of being a burden to others and a loss of dignity.

Essentially, it appears that by believing that we are worthy of happiness and that we have the potential to be happy we may boost our will to live and in so doing, actually improve our chances of a healthy, happy and long life.

So, my message today is think positive - blind hope may save your life one day.

Logotherapy and the search for meaning

Viktor E. Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning is a slim volume, but within its 154 pages it contains concisely presented insights into our human psychology that go a long way to explaining the role of meaning in our lives and the problems that we encounter when we believe that our lives have become meaningless.

The book is divided into two parts. The first section offers an account of the psychological impact of living within concentration camps during World War II. The second section offers a brief introduction to logotherapy, which is considered to be the third school of psychology, after Freud’s psychoanalysis and Adler’s individual psychology.

Having survived three concentration camps, Frankl is in an unusual position to discuss the psychological impact of cruelty, suffering and the role of hope during times of intense challenge. His account of his time in the camps is not a description of the atrocities that occurred there, but rather a description of the effects upon the mind, of life in a concentration camp. Some of the insights that I found to be the most interesting included his description of the deadening of emotions that occurred to prisoners within the camp and how hardened most became to the suffering and death all around them. He is clearly a deep feeling man however, he notes that he himself did not always behave with compassion and that in those circumstances, personal survival and the survival of one’s family took precedence over almost all else, even if that meant that others died.

The role of hope, as a belief in a possible positive future, appears to have been paramount to ensuring the survival of any prisoner and Frankl notes that when a prisoner gave up hope and ate the last bit of bread that he had been saving, or smoked the cigarette that he had buried deep in a pocket for safe-keeping, it was a virtual certainty that that prisoner would be dead within a few days, or even hours. It seems that when man lives on the very knife edge of starvation and exhaustion, hope can sustain him from meal to meal, but without that hope, he will perish before help can come.

The book was first published in 1946 and my edition is an imprint of 1992. On the front cover of the copy that I bought the following line is printed: 9 million copies sold. I wonder how many people have read the book now and I suggest that if you have not read it, you do. I found it to be well worth the few hours that it takes to flick from cover to cover. In his own introduction to this edition, Frankl describes his thoughts when interviewers or TV presenters ask him how he feels about the success of his book. He writes: I react by reporting that in the first place I do not at all see in the bestseller status of my book an achievement and accomplishment on my part, but rather an expression of the misery of our time: if hundreds of thousands of people reach out for a book whose very title promises to deal with the question of a meaning of life, it must be a question that burns under their fingernails.”

In my very humble opinion, the fact that many of us are searching for meaning need not necessarily be read as a negative aspect of our times. In the section on logotherapy Frankl notes that depression in often caused by a lack of meaning and that when people have a purpose, any purpose to their lives, they become more positive about the nature of their existence. He writes that far from meaning being a god-given right with which we are born and that we must only seek in order to discover, we must see our lives as an opportunity to create meaning and to find a purpose for our existence.

Frankl thought that it was unfortunate that many of those who read his book had not yet found meaning in their lives. I think that it is positive that so many people are out there seeking that meaning, searching for a way to infuse their lives with purpose and reading the wise words of Viktor E. Frankl in order to help them along their way.