Book Review: Exploring Existential Meaning: Optimizing Human Development Across the Life Span, by Gary T. Recker &

Existential meaning has, like a well-meaning ghost, hung around the periphery of mainstream psychology and therapy for well over fifty years, unsure whether it wants to simply scare the wits out of people or to reveal a hitherto unacknowledged area of existence. For psychologists the issue can be formulated in terms of a long-standing suspicion of philosophy, particularly European philosophy. This is particularly the case at the present time with the ascendancy of cognitive-behavioural methods in which thoughts and behaviour are seen as fundamental to emotional well-being. Thus, asking a client to concentrate on meaning seems too much like a second order commentary on more primary cognitions and as such something of a smokescreen. To focus on behaviour simply highlights the fact that meaning is ascribed ex post facto, thereby deriving any form of meaningful measurement of behaviour itself.

Exploring Existential Meaning certainly challenges one of these assumptions by showing that meaning is lived and therefore measurable. The extent to which meaning can be understood in terms of ongoing cognitions is covered rather less well. The book is divided into four sections, covering theoretical and conceptual issues, research on existential meaning, applications and interventions and overview and new directions. Sadly this division didn't really work, not simply because one 'theoretical' chapter found its way into the applications and interventions section, but also because the difference between research and applications was not made clear enough in the chapters chosen. Moreover the areas chosen for the applications' section, 'meaning in caregivers of persons with Alzheimer's disease', 'meaning within life threatening illness' and 'religion and meaning in later life' mainly limited the field to a somewhat older population. It would have been useful to have included research on the use of existential meaning within a broader clinical context, for instance substance misuse or forensic services in which some empirical work on life meaning has already been undertaken.

Such criticisms aside, I had a more general query concerning the overall aim of the book. Part of the difficulty lies within the title. 'Exploration' implies uncertainty, uncharted territory, and to a certain extent adventure. 'Optimization' on the other hand suggests that the land has been found and the task at hand is to fill it in the most favourable way. Although this tension is never really resolved, individual chapters are worth reading and the book does provide in one volume, material that would usually be spread around a multiplicity of journals.

R.G. Hill