The Unheard Cry for Meaning: Psychotherapy and Humanism

Ultimately, man is not subject to the conditions that confront him; rather, these conditions are subject to his decision. Wittingly or unwittingly, he decides whether he will face up or give in, whether or not he will let himself

It is true that we can’t take anything with us when we die; but that wholeness of our life, which we complete in the very moment of our death, lies outside the grave and outside the grave it remains—and it does so, not although, but because it has slipped into the past. Even what we have forgotten, what has escaped from our consciousness, is not er

To be sure, in everyday life man is inclined to misunderstand the meaning of death. When the alarm clock goes off in the morning and frightens us from our dreams, we experience this awakening as if something terrible were breaking into the world of our dreams. And, still caught in our dreams, we often do not (at least not immediately) realize that

if everything is stored in the past forever, it is important to decide in the present what we wish to eternalize by making it part of the past.

Man’s life lasts threescore years and ten, possibly fourscore years, and if it is a good life it will have been worth the trouble.

Reductionism is the nihilism of today. It is true that Jean-Paul Sartre’s brand of existentialism hinges on the pivots “Being and Nothingness,” but the lesson to be learned from existentialism is a hyphenated nothingness, namely, the no-thingness of the human being. A human being is not

everything is transitory—everything and everybody, be it, say, a child we have produced, or the great love from which the child has sprung, or a great thought—they are transitory altogether.

The borderline of eternity is the place where at every moment of our lives the decision is made as to what should be eternalized and what should not.

one thing among other things. Things determine each other. Man, however, determines himself. Rather, he decides whether or not he lets himself be determined, be it by the drives and instincts that push him, or the reasons and meanings that pull him.