7: Spirituality for the College Mental Health Crisis: The Relational Aspect of Self-Transcendence and Its Role in Education

In the scholarship of holistic education and spirituality in education, self-transcendence has been acknowledged as an important spiritual capacity. Still, its associations with the human existential condition of the search for meaning have yet to be fully explored. Viennese psychiatrist Viktor E. Frankl is well-renowned for his contributions to the psychology of meaning. His writings stress self-transcendence as the defining quality of human existence and one of the aspects of the will to meaning—humankind’s fundamental drive towards a realm beyond oneself filled with meaning and values. The frustration of the will to meaning may give cause to certain mental conditions that, though not pathological in nature, may produce negative psychological effects. Drawing on Frankl’s intuitions for a spiritually-infused education, I make the case that a deeper understanding of the role of self-transcendence in holistic education can allow the field to have a say in the current college mental health crisis. I offer curricular and pedagogical guidelines that derive from this investigation.