Letters to the Editor

To the Editor,

My initial reaction is gratitude that Dr. Viktor E. Frankl (Vol. 32, 1) has exposed such a significant, vital, yet most difficult topic in his article. The findings that a significant proportion of human populations suffer from a sense of futility and emptiness, i.e., an existential vacuum that is increasing and spreading, seems to be a believable statistic. Also quite believable is the statement that unlike former generations, modern man no longer accepts totalitarian dogma or blindly conforms to convention. After the problem, namely, the absence of meaning of life to many of the minds of the human beings who were surveyed, Frankl attributes the condition to indoctrination of students and man in general along reductionist lines. Such reductionist interpretation defining man in mechanistic, deterministic, stimulus-response, reaction formation terms, equating idealism with nothing more than hangups, he says, undermines and erodes the enthusiasm and humanism of youth and man.

Frankl concedes unmasking the phony and the spurious of convention and dogma is a perfectly legitimate undertaking, but contends it should stop at some point before complete disillusionment. When he reaches this place in his article, the author attacks what he characterizes as “patients who are suffering from the obsessive compulsion to analyse themselves, to observe and watch themselves, to reflect upon themselves.” He mentions the cultural climate in the United States that makes for the danger that this compulsion will become a collective obsessive neurosis, citing a study of values of college students ranking “self-interpretation” as the highest on the list with “self-actualization” scoring next highest.

Frankl contends that this is another manifestation of the existential vacuum, stating that the fact that college students rate reflection upon themselves and self-interpretation so highly, evidences their frustration over their search for meaning in life.

To reveal what he thinks co