09/19/2026
Bellow is an excerpt I found to be particularly poignant from a 1963 paper by James C. Crumbaugh & Leonard T. Maholick, entitled "An Experimental Study in Existentialism: The Psychometric Approach to [Viktor] Frankl's Concept of Noöegenic Neurosis." The essay is to be found in a collection by Viktor Frankl entitled "Psychotherapy & Existentialism: Selected Papers on Logotherapy," which is not a particularly good book, and one which is riddled with moronic and incomplete ideas, but as it is said, even a broken clock is right twice a day.
What I find of particular interest and potential usefulness in this excerpt is the illumination of the possibility of the extent to which we may be misdiagnosing depression--namely within ourselves--, and elevating its relevance by pathologizing it, rather than demystifying it as merely a clumsy approach to managing the challenges of our lives. Please feel welcome to leave your thoughts and questions in the comments below. I would be happy to share a meaningful exchange of ideas with anyone wishing to do so. Without further adieu, here is the excerpt:
"It is likely that lack of meaning can be both a cause and an effect of depression, and that both lack of purpose and depression can result from other causes. Depression, for example, could be due to an abundance of meaning but a deficiency in techniques in acquiring meaningful ends, while lack of meaning and purpose may be present in a rhathymic (far from depressed) personality who drifts aimlessly because of a lack of organization in life experience. From the orientation of psychopathology as behaviour disorder, herein adopted, that which makes a trait a reflection of pathology is its incapacitating effect upon the individual's ability to adjust efficiently to life problems. Lack of purpose of meaning implies a failure to perceive an integrated pattern of goals and values in life with a consequent dissipation of energies which can be only debilitating. Existence may become boring and not worth the struggle to overcome obstacles. Needs still operate within, and the individual may be highly frustrated, but he has no organized frame of reference from which to perceive meaning in the elements of experience, and consequently he can plan no active attack upon the cause of frustration so drifts along in constant search of new diversion to ease tensions he is often unaware of having. Depression, often interpreted dynamically as a hostile aggression against real or imagined causes of frustrations, similarly represents an ineffectual means of dealing with the situation. Lack of purpose is probably a more generic term than depression, for the latter represents a relatively specific and inadequate technique of adjustment to conflict. Loss of meaning and purpose may follow failure of any adjustment technique."
