Our Existential Exhaustion

I was asked in a conversation in a visit with a book club about how I would define "existentialism." The group had just finished reading a book by Paul Tillich, and we were discussing my own interest in existentialism, both theologically and psychologically. I was drawn to existentialism in high school, and in my graduate training in psychology I was pulled toward the existential psychology of Vickor Frankl, Ernest Becker, and Irvin Yalom. 

I defined existentialism for the group this way: Existentialism concerns our search for meaning after the death of God.

Of course, existentialism is much more than that, but I take this to be the core of existentialism. Specifically, with the "death of God," as declared by Nietzsche, the material world is stripped of metaphysical value and significance. Without God, there is no metaphysical guarantor of meaning and value. Existence is a blank canvas. Consequently, we have to impose some meaning upon this canvas. Meaning has to be self-created and self-generated. Meaning is a task. Life is like looking at a Jackson Pollock painting:

Your life is just like that painting. It's up for interpretation. 

Obviously, generating meaning all on our own presents a psychological challenge. When life goes sideways, or when the story I've created for myself gets knocked off track, we stare at the canvas of our lives and can't make sense. That's the crux of existentialism, this struggle to "make sense."

And here's where psychology intersects with existentialism. There are mental health consequences when we can't make sense of life. As Viktor Frankl observed about modern life: 

Every age has its own collective neurosis, and every age needs its own psychotherapy to cope with it. The existential vacuum which is the mass neurosis of the present time can be described as a private and personal form of nihilism...the contention that being has no meaning.

And even if we can "make sense" of life, the self-generated nature of this effort is exhausting. In the existential vacuum created after the death of God, generating meaning takes work. And keeping meaning afloat takes work. We're on an existential hamster wheel, and I think a lot of our mental health issues are due to chronic existential exhaustion due to the constant effort of inserting self-generated meaning into the nihilistic, existential vacuum. Facing the Jackson Pollock painting that is your life, over and over and over again. In Hunting Magic Eels I describe this existential weariness as the Ache, and it’s a big part of the diagnostic picture I paint in my upcoming book The Shape of Joy.