Meaning stands as one of the most contested and generative terms in the depth-psychological corpus, traversing existential, Jungian, logotherapeutic, linguistic, and mythological registers without ever settling into a single definition. Yalom frames the problem structurally: human beings are meaning-seeking creatures inhabiting a universe that supplies no pre-ordained meaning, forcing each individual to construct rather than discover significance. Frankl, writing from the radical context of the concentration camp, insists that the will to meaning is the primary human drive and that its absence — the existential vacuum — produces neurosis. Jung and von Franz press further, arguing that meaning is not a cognitive acquisition but a living, trans-rational event, something closer to revelation than inference: a ‘quantum leap in the psyche’ that touches feeling as much as intellect, and that cannot be reduced to mere causal order. Edinger sharpens the distinction between abstract and subjective meaning, locating authentic meaning in interiority and identifying its loss with the decline of the religious function. Campbell situates meaning mythologically, as the transmission of existential truth through narrative symbol. Neimeyer approaches meaning empirically, as the cognitive-emotional work of reconstruction following loss. What unites these voices is the recognition that meaning is not given but achieved — and that its collapse is both the wound and the threshold of transformation.
The realization of ‘meaning’ is therefore not a simple acquisition of information or of knowledge, but rather a living experience that touches the heart just as much as the mind.
Von Franz, drawing on Jung, argues that meaning is a trans-rational illumination — a ‘quantum leap in the psyche’ irreducible to discursive or logical cognition.
, Psyche and Matter, 2014thesis
How does a being who needs meaning find meaning in a universe that has no meaning?
Yalom formulates the central existential paradox: the meaning-seeking human being inhabits a contingent universe that contains no inherent design or purpose.
, Existential Psychotherapy, 1980thesis
Meaning is found in subjectivity. But who values subjectivity? When we use the word subjective, we usually say or imply only subjective, as though the subjective element were of no consequence.
Edinger distinguishes abstract from living meaning, arguing that authentic life-meaning is inescapably subjective and that Western culture’s bias toward objectivity renders this source inaccessible.
, Ego and Archetype: Individuation and the Religious Function of the Psyche, 1972thesis
Meaning, on the contrary, implies feeling reactions and ethical decisions; it contains a personal nuance.
Von Franz distinguishes ‘order’ from ‘meaning,’ insisting that genuine meaning necessarily involves personal feeling and ethical confrontation, not merely rational pattern recognition.
, Psyche and Matter, 2014thesis
The feeling of meaninglessness… is not a matter of pathology; rather than being the sign and symptom of a neurosis, it is, I would say, the proof of one’s humanness.
Frankl distinguishes the existential experience of meaninglessness from pathology, while warning that the resulting existential vacuum can become pathogenic through depression, aggression, and addiction.
, Man’s Search for Meaning, 1946thesis
Modern secular humans face the task of finding some direction to life without an external beacon. How does one proceed to construct one’s own meaning — a meaning sturdy enough to support one’s life?
Yalom traces the modern meaning crisis to the collapse of cosmic and religious meaning systems, placing the burden of meaning-construction squarely on the individual subject.
, Existential Psychotherapy, 1980supporting
There is no pre-existing design, no purpose ‘out there.’ How could there be one when each of us constitutes our own ‘out there’?
Yalom critiques the naive assumption underlying the question ‘what is the meaning of life,’ asserting that the human being is a meaning-giving, not meaning-receiving, subject.
, Existential Psychotherapy, 1980supporting
Once a sense of meaning is developed, it gives birth to values — which, in turn, act synergistically to augment one’s sense of meaning.
Yalom argues for a reciprocal relationship between meaning and values: a coherent meaning schema generates the evaluative guidelines necessary for purposeful action.
, Existential Psychotherapy, 1980supporting
Searching for meaning may be a general response to severe, unexpected negative life events… finding meaning is critical for successful adjustment.
Neimeyer surveys empirical evidence that meaning-seeking is a universal response to traumatic loss, and that meaning reconstruction is central to healthy bereavement adjustment.
, Meaning Reconstruction and the Experience of Losssupporting
The concept of ‘order’ is not identical with the concept of ‘meaning.’ Even an organic being is, in spite of the meaningful design implicit within
Von Franz, citing Jung, draws a sharp distinction between causal order and meaning, arguing that the latter exceeds mere structural patterning and requires a qualitatively different mode of apprehension.
, Psyche and Matter, 2014supporting
Frankl has made a significant contribution in placing the issue of meaning before the therapist and in his many penetrating insights into the clinical implications of the search for meaning.
Yalom acknowledges Frankl’s foundational role in bringing the question of meaning into clinical psychotherapy through logotherapy and the crucible of concentration camp experience.
, Existential Psychotherapy, 1980supporting
The meanings they attach can be defined as their cognitive representations of reality… meanings are critical in understanding family grieving.
Neimeyer defines meaning operationally as cognitive representations of reality, demonstrating how shared and divergent meaning-constructions shape the trajectory of grief within families.
, Meaning Reconstruction and the Experience of Losssupporting
The universe makes ‘meaning’ manifest by its very existence, form and life.
Von Franz, drawing on Ruyer’s philosophy, suggests that meaning is not merely a subjective attribution but is ontologically embedded in the structure and existence of the universe itself.
, Psyche and Matter, 2014supporting
In appreciating a story through mythical intentionality one must look beyond the literal (visible) meaning of the story to its deeper (invisible) existential meaning.
Campbell argues that myth communicates existential meaning through a double register — literal narrative and deeper archetypal significance — requiring a transformation of consciousness in the reader.
, The Power of Myth, 1988supporting
Meaning is in dis-engaging from the collective unit.
Campbell locates the mythological function of meaning in the individual’s separation from collective identity toward deeper psychic structure and universal orientation.
, The Power of Myth, 1988supporting
The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife
Hollis’s title frames midlife individuation as a movement from suffering toward meaning, situating the search for meaning as the defining psychological task of the second half of life.
, The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife, 1993aside
The authors suggest that both a framework and a belief that one is fulfilling that framework is necessary to a sense of life meaning.
Yalom reviews the Life Regard Index as an empirical instrument, noting that life meaning requires both a guiding framework and the felt sense of fulfilling it.
, Existential Psychotherapy, 1980aside
Religious meaning be discovered in ritual, that is, in the rituals of the collective unit.
Drawing on Campbell, Noel argues that in agricultural religious cultures meaning shifts from individual mystical rebirth to collective ritual enactment of death and fertility cycles.
, Paths to the Power of Myth: Joseph Campbell and the Study of Religion, 1990aside