1.  Man’s Search for Meaning  Holocaust survivor (Man’s Search for Meaning)  4 levels to human beings:  1. somatic (the body)  2. psychic (all the things Freud talked about,  3. spiritual (missing from Freud: the Heart of human being)  4. religious (sometimes thinks part of spiritual, sometimes something else)

2.  Concerned with the meaning of human activity  what makes us human is meaningful human activity  talks of 3 things:  1. existence  2. spirituality  3. will to meaning  spirituality: not necessarily religious but something to be achieved

3.  Believed one’s Spirituality manifests itself in two ways:  1 ) freedom : only possible in the “face of things”: instincts, inherited disposition, influence of the environment;  How do you know you are free?: the ability to make a stand against the 3 things: existence, spirituality, will to meaning  2) responsibility : my responsibility is ultimately about one’s life;  Realize only I can die my death; only I can live my life

4.  What is morality? The search for meaning  This is adulthood: a self that is owned  for anything to be moral it has to be done in freedom and responsibility  essence of the human is moral  Essence of human is spiritual

5.  Suffering, guilt, death  It is here where we most need to find meaning  It is here where the most important meanings are found  Where we face ourselves most clearly, where our existence is most at stake

6.  *if freedom and responsibility are at the heart of the human, it is a good description of adulthood  if not being adult, not being fully human  -spirituality is really something that is adult: they go together: is coming from the self  -meaning found in the existential analysis; he is putting religion in context of existential analysis; religion is part of the spiritual  -you can only be religious if you are free to choose  -contrasted w/Freud who saw religion as infantile and neurotic

7.  Gets its clearest expression in light of our suffering, guilt, and death  -Here also is the heart of the human  -It is in the religious that the most tragic part of our humanity is given meaning  -religion and the existential analysis: everything with Frankel has to do w/meaning

8.  if religion understood primarily in terms of meaning: ultimate meaning of one’s life, (supra-meaning) suggests an abundance of meaning to be found in all things, especially one’s suffering  Meaning that suffering takes in context of supra-meaning: is never purely rational or logical, but intuitive, more-than-rational

9.  Why do so many people not grasp supra- meaning?  -Frankel’s explanation: we are unconsciously religious  -Conversionary experience? Understood in terms of the unconscious being made conscious  -says we have repressed religio  -why does religio remain unconscious and repressed?  -afraid others will interpret it away

10.  -1) authoritarianism: authority on who God is, what He expects, what we believe, how to experience God  -2) rationalism: illusion that God can be grasped by intellect alone: meaning without an existential meaning  -3) Anthropomorphism: God commonly imagined in human terms: can be angry, vengeful, perfectionist, depressed: all our negative characteristics  -these keep religion repressed, and prevent religious experience from happening  -still, we want, even need these three things: a creative tension needs to be maintained

11.  Logotherapy: therapy of meaning  what does it do? Leads and challenges person to accept their freedom and responsibility  to take a stand; to be responsible for this life  challenges the person to find the value and meaning of their life  *Education towards freedom and responsibility is education for adulthood