SOURCE: "Viktor Frankl and the Will to Meaning," in The Christian Century, Vol. LXXIX, No. 23, June 6, 1962, pp. 722, 724.

Rowland is an American reporter, editor, and author of Hurt and Healing (1969). In the following essay, he examines Frankl's notion of the "will to meaning" as an essential supplementary element in modern depth psychology.

Two elderly psychiatrists sat together at the round dining table opposite a young psychiatrist and a Methodist chaplain in his middle years. Between the two pairs sat two newsmen, Murray Ilson of the New York Times and myself. The subject was the meaning of human life, and the place of this question in psychiatry.

"The question has no place in psychiatry," one of the older psychiatrists said flatly. "It is a philosophical question." He nodded toward the head table in the ballroom, indicating the man who was to speak: Viktor E. Frankl of Vienna. Dr. Frankl has...