trend, it attacked the thesis of “happiness through liberation” and set itself the goal of freeing people from their internal inhibitions, the burden of their fear of authority, their subjugation to others, and possibly even their bad conscience. “You must ultimately think of yourself,” was emblazoned on its banner, and it taught those seeking its advice to fight for their own requirements, to categorically reject excessive demands, and to live out their right to have their needs satisfied.
No objection could be made to all this, and one would still be sure of being on the right path to happiness, if the economic situation in Western industrialised countries had not changed dramatically for the better in the second half of the twentieth century. Prosperity spread, and at the same time the population was freed from almost every need. People were no longer hungry, sexual restrictions disappeared, there was an abundance of jobs (until the nineties), strict authority died out, and leisure time, with numerous affordable amusements for everyone, rose sharply. What earlier psychotherapy had been able to eradicate by way of inner distress was overshadowed by the economic miracle with its eradication of external distress. But hoped-for happiness did not appear. Instead, statistics dispayed skyrocketing numbers of suicides, drug overdoses, crimes, divorces, and the like, and overall, an indescribable increase of neurotic, broken, badtempered and deeply dissatisfied people. The thesis that happiness lies in deliverance from distress had to be revised.
Specifically, the conventional psychological understanding of the human being needed to move in the direction of logotherapy. For Frankl had already realised in the thirties that people not only need to know by what they live, they also want to know for what they live; they need not only means to live, but also a purpose for their lives. The anxious question from earlier times, which had preoccupied people in times of distress: “What do I do to live?”, was turned around in times of prosperity and was suddenly asked no less anxiously: “What do I live to do?” A secure and luxurious life had come to be taken for granted, but the why for living was gone and this resulted in a frightening lack of answers.
One striking example of this is a report from Finland, which found that the consumption of alcohol has multiplied sixfold since the introduction of modern central heating systems in the country. The connection seems strange, and it is yet logical. Before this technical advance, weekends were often used by families to collect wood in the forest, in order to lay in supplies for the long winter. The excursions were opportunities for recreation and conversation, fitness training and meaningful work in one. Afterwards, one only had to turn a dial on the thermostat, and the room would become warm. But what was one to do on Sunday? Many were seduced into sitting in front of the TV and consuming one beer after another out of sheer boredom …
What is clearly illustrated by this problem is precisely the field of tension created by the noo-psychic antagonism, expressed theoretically as the antithesis of the “homeostatic principle” and “noodynamics” (Frankl). The homoeostatic principle of the two-dimensional plane of being in humans and animals says that urgent needs (hunger, thirst, freezing, sexual desire, need for safety, etc.) call for abreaction and satisfaction, so that a living organism can regain its internal equilibrium. The living creature is then in balance within itself until the pressure of a new drive sets it back into motion. The preservation of the inner balance – homeostasis – is thus the basic motivational force by which undertakings are initiated. No action takes place without a prick of internal or external discomfort.
This self-regulating principle is valid in the animal kingdom, but it cannot be so easily transferred to a “spiritual being” like a human, as has repeatedly been shown in times of general need-satisfaction. For us humans, a balance of inner drives means anything but inner peace and contentment. It soon produces a feeling of emptiness and superfluity, an aimlessness (what is to be striven for when most needs have already been satisfied?) and a reduced affirmation of existence. In an extreme case this leads to “dying in the golden cage”: a spiritual death resulting from a missing “reason for vigour”.
“It is all the more important because psychic hygiene has been more or less dominated by a mistaken principle up to the present day: the conviction that what man needs first and foremost is inner peace and balance, relaxation at all costs. However, individual reflections and experiences have shown that a human needs tension much more than relaxation – a certain healthy dose of tension! The tension, for example, which is experienced through the demands of a life-meaning, a task which must be fulfilled, especially when the demands are concerned with the meaning of an existence, the fulfilment of which is reserved for, required of and applied to exclusively this one human being. Far from being psychically harmful, such tension promotes psychic well-being, to the extent that the “noo-dynamics”, as I would call them, characterize everything that is human; for being human means, unavoidably and without exception, being in tension between what is and what should be.”13
In contrast to the homoeostatic principle, the principle of noodynamics sees healthy people as being in tension between what is and what should be, where “is” is the current (world) situation, and “should be” is a change (however small) in the constructively changed situation. This change does not stem from an externally imposed prescription, but from one’s own recognition of a meaningful and attainable goal. In the consciousness it takes the form of an image of a concrete task, which is, so to speak, exclusively waiting for oneself because no one else can fulfil it at the same time, to the same extent or as well. One could say that “what is” is reality as perceived and “what should be” is an intuitive ideal which provides a noodynamic tension between reality and ideal.
Of course, this relationship of tension is different in different stages of life, indeed from day to day, and is is rare for “what should be” to be fully attainable, but it provides a direction for human action. Let’s look at an example. A young man is a student of medicine. The “what is” pole consists, amongst other things, of his financial support from his parents, his lack of a professional field of activity, and, in the world “outside”, a lot of sick people. The “what should be” pole is his goal of becoming a capable physician, who continually fights against the illnesses and premature deaths of his fellow human beings, and thereby not least expresses gratitude to his parents for what they have done for him. As long as the student remains in such a relationship of tension, he will devote himself to his studies with a maximum of intensity.
If, in this example, homeostatic rather than noodynamic aspects were to play a role, we would have to assume that the young man was studying to compensate for an imbalance in his psyche – perhaps the result of a weakly developed self-awareness. Perhaps he hopes that one day, as a qualified doctor in an elevated social position, he will be able to impress beautiful women and enjoy a high level of prestige, which would restore his inner balance. Whether he is going to complete his studies successfully on the basis of this unhealthy – because not fittingly human – kind of motivation is highly questionable, because who is going to struggle through thick books and undergo nerve-racking examinations just to revitalise his or her own self-confidence?
According to the noodynamic principle, there is always a value from the external world which is pointed to by “what should be”, such as the production of a work, the starting of a family, the construction of a home, the filling of a role in the workplace, or the improvement of political circumstances. The homeostatic principle, on the other hand, is exclusively concerned with the ego. Interestingly, both are found in the human being: on the psychic level, longing for pleasure and satisfaction of drives, and on the spiritual level striving for the fulfilment of meaning and values. From a logotherapeutic point of view, however, the latter is the crucial factor: the “will to the meaning” is the human’s original primary motivation – and if it is not, the person is on the road to illness. Since, noodynamic tension involves transcending the ego, a human being must also be able to transcend him or herself; Frankl called this the “capacity for selftranscendence”.
In logotherapy, self-transcendence is regarded as the highest level of
