Maintaining Meaning in Life in Old Age: Personality and Social Factors

Abstract

For many years the problem of meaning in life has been a central part of several scientific disciplines, especially philosophy or theology. Several decades ago, psychology also started to study this phenomenon. It was particularly stimulated by practicing psychologists and psychiatrists who recognized the importance of meaning in the lives of their clients and patients, as they were often dealing with this problem. Several prominent psychotherapists, especially in the area of existential psychology, brought the problem of meaning into the heart of their theories. Frankl (1996, 1997) in his logotherapy and existential analysis approach, emphasized that the need for meaning is a central human motivation, and the inability to fulfil this need could lead to a state he named the “existential vacuum”. If a person remains in this state, it can cause psychological problems such as depression or neurosis. Yalom (1980), known for his original approach to existential psychotherapy, considers meaninglessness as one of the four existential givens (together with death, freedom and isolation) producing existential anxiety. To overcome meaninglessness and related existential anxiety, a person should create his or her own personal meaning in life and fully engage in its realization. Yalom presents two ways of showing how people create and fulfil their meaning: cosmic meaning is related to the meaning scheme beyond the person’s self, such as religion or spirituality; terrestrial meaning represents secular values such as commitments, creativity, generativity, and so on. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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