ABSTRACT
Personal meaning is not a constant; it changes, develops, expands, or, regrettably, collapses over time. This chapter posits that what phenomenology offers us is a psychology of meaning. Polanyi has asserted that personal meaning can only exist in an environment of intellectual freedom in which an individual is free to speak out her thoughts and values and act on them as she sees fit. The relations of the quest for personal meaning to the society and the social networks of which an individual is a member are, as we shall see, exceedingly complex. Common to all is a feeling of existential emptiness and meaninglessness that the successful people have tried to cover over by thrusting themselves into activity in a seemingly passionate pursuit of life. Meaning is a creature of the self, a self that is both holistic and disautonomous. The search for meaning relies to a larger extent on appraisal systems that operate consciously in the Left Brain.
