Will to Meaning

Frankl's claim that the primary motivational force in human beings is not pleasure (Freud) or power (Adler) but the search for meaning — and that frustration of this will produces existential distress.

Against reductionism: Freud reduced all motivation to the pleasure principle; Adler to the will to power. Frankl's third Viennese school: the will to meaning is irreducible — not a secondary derivative of biological drives. Meaning is found in three ways: through creative work (what we give to the world), experiential values (what we receive from the world — love, beauty), and attitudinal values (the stance we take toward unavoidable suffering). Even in suffering, meaning can be found.