"The
need for meaning in life goes far beyond the mechanical techniques of
selecting a goal to be achieved by positive thinking. If a person
selects a goal just to satisfy the demands of others he will quickly
revert back to self-defeating trap circuits. He will rapidly lose
ambition, and though he may try to appear as if he is succeeding in what
he is doing, he will feel miserable because he is not really committed
to this objective. All the success seminars in the world will not make a
potential Mozart or Monet content to be president of the Chase
Manhattan Bank. Positive therapy strives to help people acquire a deeply
positive orientation to living by enabling them to recover a
long-buried dream or to implant firmly the roots of a new one. This need
for deep personal meaning has been succinctly expressed by Friedrich
Nietzsche: 'He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.' The
phenomenon was directly observed by Viktor Frankl in Nazi concentration
camps. Those prisoners who had a deeply rooted reason to survive — a
meaningful project, a loving family — best withstood that prolonged
torture without reverting to counterhuman patterns of behavior."
- Allen Wiesen, psychologist
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