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The Human Quest for Meaning: A Handbook of Psychological Research and Clinical Applications (Personality and Clinical Psychology)

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This collection of academic but very readable papers covers three general areas:

1) Theoretical approaches to personal meaning.

2) Research in personal meaning.

3) The Role of personal meaning in counseling and psychotherapy.

Under each of these headings are a half dozen chapters by various researchers in the field. The reader is exposed to a variety of concepts and views across a wide spectrum of the topic.

I only read the first two sections because they are relevant to my project. I have a pile of little Post-It Notes bookmarking the sections that I consider important and I need to go back through them to develop a concept for my project - meaning design for residential interiors and products. However, I think that anyone interested in meaning in human lives, including religion students, would find much of interest here.

- jim

Paul T. P. Wong & Prem S. Fry, editors
The Human Quest for Meaning:
A Handbook on Psychological Research and Clinical Applications

(Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 1998) 462 pages
(ISBN: 0-8058-2503-7; hardcover)
(Library of Congress call number: BF463.M4H86 1998)

Twenty-three contributors share their research
into the psychological dimensions of meaning.
We human beings are meaning-seeking and meaning-fulfilling creatures.
The authors do not present any original insights into the meaning of life.
Rather they are content to study whatever meanings people already embrace.
Largely in the tradition of Viktor Frankl, the clinicians sometimes help clients
to reframe their perceptions of what is already happening to them.

The authors seem content to let people pursue any meanings
they happen to value because of their cultural conditioning.
There is no critique of 'false meanings' that people might be pursuing.
This book is definitely psychological rather than philosophical.

If you would like to find other books about human meaning,
search the Internet for the following exact title:
"Meaning in Life Bibliography".

James Leonard Park, existential philosopher.