Mental health is based on a tension between what one is now and what one should become
Having meaning to ones life can help someone withstand even the worst conditions. Thus it can be seen that mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has 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-being. We should not, then, be hesitant about challenging someone with a potential meaning for them to fulfill. It is only thus that we evoke his will to meaning from its state of latency.
I consider it a dangerous misconception of mental hygiene to assume that what people need in the first place is equilibrium or, as it is called in biology, “homeostasis,” i.e., a tensionless state. What people actually need is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What they is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by them. What people need is not homeostasis but what Frankl called “noö-dynamics”
And one should not think that this holds true only for normal conditions; in neurotic individuals, it is even more valid. If architects want to strengthen a decrepit arch, they increase the load which is laid upon it, for thereby the parts are joined more firmly together. So if therapists wish to foster their patients’ mental health, they should not be afraid to create a sound amount of tension through a reorientation toward the meaning of one’s life.
References
- Frankl, Victor. (1946). Man’s Search for Meaning Chapter 2 Logotherapy In A Nutshell (p. 119). Boston, MA: Beacon Books.
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