In writing last week’s column based on Viktor Frankl’s wonderful book “Man’s Search for Meaning” (Simon and Schuster, A Clarion Book, pp. 145), I felt a little insecure writing about psychology. Not being a psychologist, I was nervous about whether I was accurate in how I explained Frankl’s logotherapy or meaning therapy.
Re-reading the book this week I came upon a page that removed any insecurity. The page was about Frankl’s view of love. His view of love is exactly what I have been teaching in all my philosophy courses at St. John’s University. The philosophical view of the human person that Frankl based his psychological theory on seems to be exactly the philosophical vision of person that I present to students.
I tell the students that it is my philosophy of person that I am presenting but I immediately add that I have borrowed insights from many philosophers. The following is what Frankl wrote about love:
“Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By the spiritual act of love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him; which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized.
“Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true” (p. 113-114).
I am tempted to call what Frankl has said about love not only the mystery of love but the miracle of love. In classes at St John’s I tell the students that I believe love is the most powerful force in the world, even more powerful than hydrogen bombs.
The bombs can destroy the physical makeup of persons but only love being loved can create persons. The experience of being loved can enable the beloved to become a new person. Not only is the power of being loved amazing but the lover benefits enormously in loving.
I have come to believe that every person is created by God to be a lover. This is the basic radical vocation of every person. This is what God has created in creating persons. I am called by God to be a lover. That is my basic vocation and the basic vocation of every person.
I try to be a lover as a priest. Others may try to be lovers by being married or being parents or being lawyers or engineers or whatever. We have no choice about whether we are called to be lovers. This is how God has made us. We do have a choice whether we accept that call or refuse to accept it.
We can choose to embrace that vocation or to reject it but if we refuse to love than we have missed the meaning and mystery of life. As free persons we make many choices in life. The basic choice is saying “yes” or “no” to the vocation God has given us.
Frankl has emphasized the power that the lover has in relation to the beloved. I find that power amazing. But I also find what can happen to the lover amazing. In loving the lover finds his basic, radical meaning. In loving the lover is also transformed. I don’t find that there is a great deal in contemporary culture encouraging us to be unselfish.
Yet our basic nature as created by God ties us together. How I treat others will influence who I become and who I become will influence how I treat others. There is a popular view that religion has become irrelevant, that it has nothing to do with human experience. This view is totally erroneous.
The basic Christian moral teaching that we should love our neighbor speaks to the basic need of every human being. Actually it is a double need. Every person needs to be loved and every person needs to be a lover.
Rather than being irrelevant Christianity speaks to our most radical needs and preaches a doctrine that, if followed, would transform our experience. Indeed it would help to sanctify our experience.
Frankl wrote the following:
“Thus it can be seen that mental health based on a certain degree of tension, the tension bwtweeen what one hs already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should become.
“Such a tension is inherent in the human being and therefore is indispensable to mental well-bwing. We should not, then, about challenging man with a potential meaning for him o fulfill”(pp. 106-107).
I find that exciting.
