PLO 501 Life Review and Life Preview The Meaning-Centered Researcher in the World
Faculty: Maria Marshall, PhD (Profile)
ABOUT THE COURSE
The meaning-centered researcher is open to the world and open to human experience in its fullness. He or she incorporates the dimension of the spirit as a lens though which a three-dimensional view of the self, others, and the world emerges, and a dynamic meaning-oriented encounter can take place. This course offers an overview of Viktor Frankl’s life dovetailing the development and evolution of Logotherapy and Existential Analysis. This meaning-centered view of the world and helping others to find purposeful goals is based on skills that can be honed, and principles that can be lived and practiced. Through attentive reflection, students are invited to participate in a meaning-centered self-discovery aimed at fostering growth and development. The “Mountain Range Exercise,” as a biographical method for collecting historical sources of meaning will be introduced through the reflective questions for each Module. Students are invited to reflect on the “peaks and valleys” of their lives. The questions will facilitate pondering (1) life received as a gift; (2) the life that they wish to live; and (3) the life that they wish to leave as their legacy. A phenomenological-hermeneutic exploration of students’ self-experience, self-awareness and self-reflection will be complemented with activating the capacities of the human spirit for self-distancing and self-transcendence in the process of self-discovery.