Search for Meaning
One possible symptom of unconscious conflicts is a permanent and unproductive search for ‘meaning’. Meaning is a result of being conscious of who I am (at any one time) and what I would like (at any one time). The greater the necessity to keep impulses unconscious, the less the person will be conscious of what he would really like and what type of self- and world presentation (formation) creates satisfaction. Feelings of meaninglessness are, therefore, created by necessity from secondary motivations (see substitute feelings), which underlies his own actions (i.e. success, money, reputation, security, power, etc.). Feelings of meaninglessness, therefore, offer an important opportunity for discovering the unconscious processes and conflicts and to develop a broader, more conscious basis for decision-making processes. However, this does not work by attempting to find, together with the client, something meaningful, but rather, it examines, what the search for meaning is a symptom of. The same applies here: no working on the change, but a functional analysis of the stagnation!