The Lived Experience
of
Chronic lack of Meaning/Purpose
Transitions to
Meaning and Purpose
About the Research
Why was it was done?
The researcher made a transition to strong meaning and purpose in life after four teenage years without it. Initially a teacher, she requalified as a Clinical Psychologist to help others find meaning in life. To do this she needed to know what was essential in such transitions. She planned a study she hoped would support Victor Frankl's Logotherapy. However her pilot study showed that written descriptions did not provide enough information to understand what participants were meaning and the existing analysis methods would also misrepresent them. It also showed that Victor Frankl's theory may not apply when a person has always been without meaning and purpose or is a long term sufferer.
For these reasons she began again, using a specialised scientific method for identifying the essential characteristics of the human experience being studied: Empirical Phenomenology.
How it was done
Religious, philosophical and psychological theories were put aside whereas psychological studies usually proceed by testing educated guesses called hypotheses. Many hypothesis based studies on meaning and purpose have now been published. However, there is still no consensus about what these experiences actually consist of and their results provide little help to find meaning in life.
Through lengthy interviews, twenty-four people described being without meaning and purpose in life. Ten of these also described transitions to meaning and purpose.
Themes present in all descriptions were identified through the procedures below. This is similar to the way biologists originally classified plants and animals by identifying what was always present in a species.
Rigorous Procedures
focused on truly understanding the experience of each participant
Data Gathering
The interviewees self identified as experiencers of the topic.
Through lengthy ninety minute interviews, participants described their experience of the feelings, thinking, awareness and bodily feelings of their existential vacuum or of the vacuum and transition to meaning and purpose. The interviewer's job was limited to prompting for more detail and examples, asking what was meant by words and phrases the person used, and checking understanding by paraphrasing what had just been described.
Interview analysis
Each interview was transcribed and broken into numbered and named topic units. Then every idea in each of these units was annotated with letters (a-z) and roman numerals (I- ) for sub parts of an idea.
Next, a referenced summary was made for every topic unit. These summaries were then combined into an interview summary in which the combined references for each head were add in brackets.
Commonalities and Different Manifestations Identified
Next all the interviews were compared in order to identify the ideas and themes that were present in all. Every stage of understanding involved repeated reexaminations of the original transcripts in what is termed a Hermeneutical Circle. Thus, sequential clarifications of the themes present in all were repeatedly checked against the the descriptions of each participant.
This scientific method identified
-
The essential constituents of life without meaning/purpose
-
The keys to transition
-
The many ways these similarities manifest in individual lives.
Research Findings
What the Research found
about
The Results
Long-term
Lack of Meaning & Purpose
Meaninglessness = Lack of Value
Purposelessness =
No valued & achievable Life Goals
Lack of Meaning/Purpose
reflects a Constricted
Self -concept
Value-generating beliefs create meaning as long as they are believable
Meaninglessness
begins
when nothing of value seems attainable
Value-inefficacy traps you in meaninglessness
Chronic Lack of Meaning and purpose manifests in many problems
What the Research found about:
How to Experience
Meaning & Purpose
Expand your
Self-Concept
Through
Discovering
Dependable strengths & weaknesses
What you Value
Why you have value
Integrating Excluded Parts
of yourself and your experience
Dissolving obstacles to
'Can do'
about what you value
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Assumptions
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Trauma
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Reactivity to externals