Review of Exploring existential meaning: Optimizing human development across the life span.

Abstract

GARY T. REKER AND KERRY CHAMBERLAIN Exploring Existential Meaning. Optimizing Human Development Across Life Span Thousand Oaks, cA: Sage Publications, 2000, 237 pages. (ISBN 0-7619-0994-X, us$31.95, Softcover) Reviewed by WILLIAM E. SMYTHE In summer of 2000, first International Conference on Personal Meaning took place in Vancouver. The theme of conference was Searching for Meaning in New Millennium. Conference Chair Paul Wong of Trinity Western University declared conference to be historymaking endeavour, especially as it served as launching pad for International Network on Personal Meaning (INPM), home for what is now dubbed positive revolution in psychology. Those of us who attended this conference came away with distinct impression that something was emerging on disciplinary landscape of psychology. The topic of which had long been on back burners of academic psychology, was coming into foreground again. The personal quest for meaning in could no longer be dismissed as naive preoccupation of popular psychology but could be treated as serious issue for psychological research and practice. These impressions are certainly reinforced by contributions to this volume, edited by Gary Reker and Kerry Chamberlain. As James Birren writes in Forward to volume, new doorways of behavioral and social sciences are opening that are encouraging traffic in ideas and especially about issues previously considered off limits to scientific inquiry because of their theological, religious or metaphysical implications. The form of personal meaning that constitutes main focus for volume is existential characterized by editors in terms of attempts to understand how events in fit into larger context, which involves both a sense of coherence (order, reason for existence) and sense of purpose (mission in life, direction) (p. 1). This they distinguish from implicit the attachment of personal significance to objects or events in life (p. 1). Although existential meaning may be relatively as topic for systematic psychological research, it is rooted in traditions of thought that date back over half century, including work of existentialist philosophers such as Heidegger and Sartre, of literary scholars such as Bakhtin, logotherapy of Frank], and other influences. At first, these various traditions may seem somewhat discordant. The stark nihilism of existential throwness seems to stand in sharp contrast with Frankl's will to meaning, for example. However, common thread that runs through all historical traditions of existential indeed through modernity itself, is notion of meaning in as personal achievement rather than something simply given in structure of world. But if existential meaning is in this way personal achievement, it is by no means wholly idiosyncratic one. One assumption entailed by taking existential meaning seriously as research topic is that it must have some general features and constraints that can be discovered and systematically formulated. The present volume, among other recent work in this area, is predicated on this assumption. The editors give no details in their Introduction to volume concerning how this particular collaborative undertaking came about. However, they have managed to gather together contributions of an impressive array of internationally recognized researchers in this area. This is remarkably well-- integrated collection of essays, given usual standards for edited volumes. The contributed chapters, sandwiched between editors' brief Introduction and their longer integrative chapter at end, are organized into distinct sections addressing, respectively, theoretical and conceptual issues, empirical research, and applications and interventions. Part I of volume examines theoretical and conceptual issues in study of existential focusing primarily on its historical and philosophical roots. …