Description: An exploration of self-transcendence through text, images, and video.
Viktor Frankl believed that self-transcendence played a fundamental role in the search for meaning in one’s life. As did Abraham Maslow, who came to believe he had made a mistake by placing self-actualization—rather than self-transcendence—as the fullest expression of human potential within his famous hierarchy of needs. In the present day, positive psychology, inspired in part by the work of Frankl and Maslow, also sees self-transcendence as a fundamental human value. This site is a look at my research on
Being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself—be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets oneself—by giving oneself to a cause to serve or another person to love—the more human one is and the more one actualizes oneself. What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more one would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only
Photo by Kirsten Lewis Jane Goodall reaches out to Flint, the first infant born at Gombe after her arrival. (Photo by Hugo van Lawick) Éliane Radigue (Photo by Jacques Brisseaut) Transcendence refers to the very highest and most inclusive or holistic levels of human consciousness, behaving and relating, as ends rather than means, to one self, to significant others, to human beings in general, to other species, to nature, and to the cosmos.”