The human need for meaning is at the heart of existential
psychotherapy as well as Jung's analytical psychology. This need
is so basic, so primal, and so universal, that existential
psychiatrist Viktor Frankl (1946) wrote of what he called our
"will to meaning." Whether one considers life inherently
meaningless or absurd, like Jean-Paul Sartre or Albert Camus, or
believes that life is intrinsically meaningful, like
Kierkegaard, for example, few if any existentialists would deny
our powerful psychological and spiritual hunger for meaning. As
C.G. Jung pithily put it, "Man cannot stand a meaningless life."
Which is why when confronted with a dramatic mystery such as the
sudden and inexplicable disappearance of a state-of-the-art
jetliner in mid-flight, the primitive human instinct to make
some meaning of what happened kicks into high gear.  Life's
intrinsic mystery is one of the most difficult existential facts
to accept for modern man. It poses a challenge and threat to our
scientific rationalism. Consider, fo