Abstract
A young mother’s child dies unexpectedly, and she feels lost in her grief. A transgender man wants to find happiness. A ten-year-old boy loses his father to a fatal heart attack, and he wants to travel back in time to warn him. A college junior watches her mother die a lingering cancer death, and wonders why dying has to be so hard. These are the origin stories of four faculty members who have unusually personal motivations for their scholarship: Bereavement researcher Gillian, social scientist Jesse, theoretical physicist Ronald Mallett, and bioethicist Peggy Battin. Chapter 1 introduces these individuals and invites the reader to consider how Viktor Frankl’s existential psychology (logotherapy) can help explain the intensely motivating and profoundly therapeutic impact of unusually personal scholarship.
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Notes
- 1.
Frankl’s books were written and translated during a historical period when it was acceptable to use the word “man” inclusively to mean “human beings.” I will retain “man” in order to preserve the integrity of Frankl’s quotes. Elsewhere I will use “human beings.”
- 2.
R1 is the Carnegie classification for universities with the highest research productivity.
- 3.
Jesse’s specific discipline is obscured to protect his identity.
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Esping, A. (2018). Introduction to Part I: Warming the Room, Turning on the Lights. In: Epistemology, Ethics, and Meaning in Unusually Personal Scholarship. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73718-8_1
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