Frankl Quote on Meaning: Not Pleasure or Power, But Meaning

Quote

"Man is not ultimately concerned with pleasure or power but with meaning: the will to meaning is the primary motivational force in human life." — Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning (1946)

Author

Viktor Frankl (1905–1997) was an Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor, the founder of logotherapy.

Source

The quotation is from Man's Search for Meaning (1946), where Frankl states the thesis of logotherapy against the two preceding Viennese schools.

Context

The saying belongs to the founding moment of logotherapy. Frankl was trained in the tradition of the Viennese school: he had corresponded with Freud as a teenager and had joined Adler's circle before breaking with him in 1927. The break was over the question of the primary drive. Freud's pleasure principle made the pursuit of pleasure the engine of human life; Adler's will to power made the striving for superiority the engine. Frankl argued that both were partial: the deepest drive is neither pleasure nor power but meaning — the will to discover and fulfill a purpose. The thesis is the foundation of the "Third Viennese School."

Meaning

The quotation states the central thesis of logotherapy with complete clarity. "Man is not ultimately concerned with pleasure or power" — the rejection: the two great psychologists of the age had located the primary drive in pleasure and power, and Frankl rejected both as reductions. "But with meaning" — the affirmation: the deepest concern of the human being is the search for meaning — the purpose that makes life worth living. "The will to meaning is the primary motivational force" — the thesis: the will to meaning is not a secondary drive but the primary one, and its frustration — the existential vacuum — is the signature neurosis of the modern age. The quotation is the foundation of the whole of logotherapy, and it grounds the Meaning & Suffering collection.

Related Wisdom

The quotation belongs to the logotherapeutic account of meaning and purpose. Its thesis of the will to meaning connects to the wider wisdom tradition's teaching on the search for meaning, and it grounds the practice of finding meaning in life.