Finding meaning in our suffering can counter act the tendency instilled in us by conventional psychiatry to be ashamed of our unhappiness
We can find meaning in uncontrollable suffering by taking it as a challenge to triumph and change our attitudes. Edith Weisskopf-Joelson, a professor of psychology at the University of Georgia, contended, in her article on logotherapy, acknowledged that Psychiatry’s expectation for constant positivity leads to the suppression of outrage toward oppression and the dismissal of trauma caused by society: “our current mental-hygiene philosophy stresses the idea that people ought to be happy, that unhappiness is a symptom of maladjustment. Such a value system might be responsible for the fact that the burden of unavoidable unhappiness is increased by unhappiness about being unhappy.” And in another paper she expressed the hope that logotherapy “may help counteract certain unhealthy trends in the present-day culture of the United States, where the incurable sufferer is given very little opportunity to be proud of his suffering and to consider it ennobling rather than degrading” so that “he is not only unhappy, but also ashamed of being unhappy.”
References
- Frankl, Victor. (1946). Man’s Search for Meaning Chapter 2 Logotherapy In A Nutshell (p. 127). Boston, MA: Beacon Books.
Metadata
Type:🔴 Tags: Psychology / Psychiatry Status:☀️