It is interesting that Tolstoy invented for himself (though he ostensibly took the value from Catholicism) a value which resolved his depression and which is like the Jewish value concerning life. Tolstoy concluded that life itself is its own meaning for the peasant, whom he proceeded to try to imitate:

...the life of the whole labouring people, the whole of mankind who produce life, appeared to me in its true significance. I understood that that is life itself, and that the meaning given to that life is true: and I accepted it...a bird is so made that it must fly, collect food, and build a nest, and when I see that a bird does this, I have pleasure in its joy...The meaning of human life lies in supporting it...(12)

(If one realizes that the question "What is the meaning of life?" probably is semantically meaningless, one can be free to find other values and philosophical constructions.)

Another Jewish value is that a person must respect oneself. For example, a great Talmudic sage asserted: "Be not wicked in thine own esteem".(13) And a recent scholar amplified this as follows:

Be not wicked in thine own esteem.

This saying preaches the duty of self-respect. Do not think yourself so abandoned that it is useless for you to make "an appeal for mercy and grace" before God. "Regard not thyself as wholly wicked, since by so doing thou givest up hope of repentance" (Maimonides). Communities, like individuals, are under the obligation not to be wicked in their own esteem. Achad Ha-am wrote: "Nothing is more dangerous for a nation or for an individual than to plead guilty to imaginary sins. Where the sin is real--by honest endeavor the sinner can purify himself. But when a man has been persuaded to suspect himself unjustly--what can he do? Our greatest need is emancipation from self-contempt, from this idea that we are really worse than all the world. Otherwise, we may in course of time become in reality what we now imagine ourselves to be."(14)

This saying preaches the duty of self-respect. Do not think yourself so abandoned that it is useless for you to make "an appeal for mercy and grace" before God. "Regard not thyself as wholly wicked, since by so doing thou givest up hope of repentance" (Maimonides). Communities, like individuals, are under the obligation not to be wicked in their own esteem. Achad Ha-am wrote: "Nothing is more dangerous for a nation or for an individual than to plead guilty to imaginary sins. Where the sin is real--by honest endeavor the sinner can purify himself. But when a man has been persuaded to suspect himself unjustly--what can he do? Our greatest need is emancipation from self-contempt, from this idea that we are really worse than all the world. Otherwise, we may in course of time become in reality what we now imagine ourselves to be."(14)

Some Examples of Value Therapy

Frankl provides interesting examples of how depression can be relieved by a procedure like Values Therapy:

Once, an elderly general practitioner consulted me because of his severe depression. He could not overcome the loss of his wife who had died two years before and whom he had loved above all else. Now how could I help him? What should I tell him? Well, I refrained from telling him anything, but instead confronted him with the question, "What would have happened, Doctor, if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive you? "Oh," he said, "for her this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!" Whereupon I replied, "You see, Doctor, such a suffering has been spared her, and it is you who have spared her this suffering, but now, you have to pay for it by surviving and mourning her." He said no word but shook my hand and calmly left my office. Suffering ceases to be suffering in some way at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.(15)

Frankl says that "in logotherapy [his name for a process like Values Therapy] the patient is actually confronted with and reoriented toward the meaning of his life...The logotherapist's role consists in widening and broadening the visual field of the patient so that the whole spectrum of meaning and values becomes conscious and visible to him."(16)

Frankl calls his method "paradoxical intention." His procedure can be understood in terms of altering negative self-comparisons. As noted in Chapter 10, Frankl asks the patient to imagine that his actual state of affairs is different than what it is. For example (17), he asks the man whose wife died to imagine that the man himself had died first and that the wife is suffering from losing him. Then he leads the person to compare the actual with that imagined state, and to see that the actual state is preferable to the imagined state on the basis of some deeper value--in this case, the man's value that his wife not suffer from losing him. This produces a positive self-comparison in place of the former negative self-comparison, and hence removes sadness and depression.

Values Therapy may be thought of as a systematic and understandable form of what used to be called "changing one's philosophy of life". It operates directly on the person's view of the world and himself.

Based on his personal experience, Bertrand Russell urged us not to underestimate the curative power of such philosophical thinking. "My purpose is to suggest a cure for the ordinary day- to-day unhappiness from which most people in civilized countries suffer...I believe this unhappiness to be very largely due to mistaken views of the world, mistaken ethics..."(18)

Many psychologists--particularly those with psychoanalytic training--will question whether such "deep" problems as depression can be solved with such "superficial" treatments. But Values Therapy is not superficial--indeed, just the opposite. Of course it is not a perfect therapy, even for those whose depression is not well-handled with other therapeutic approaches. In some cases it may be that the struggle to make one value dominate another requires too much energy of a person, and perhaps a complete psychoanalytic cleansing would bring the person to easier ground (though psychoanalysis' track record with depression is poor). In other cases, the person may lack the powers of reasoning to carry out Values Therapy, at least by himself. Or, a person may have a strong motivation to stay miserable. Lastly, a person's hunger for love and approval may be unshakable.