Guest Blog: Persian Novelist & Psychotherapist, Somayeh McKian, on Finding Meaning in Writing.

My colleague Somayeh McKian, an Iranian Psychotherapist, award winning Novelist, and Logotherapist-In-Training at the Viktor Frankl Centre Northern Ireland, will be publishing a series of articles exploring her connection with meaning.

Starting today, these reflections will be published on this blog, and social media. Here are Somayeh's opening thoughts, with my own:

'Logotherapy supervision sessions with Scott have been among the most rewarding experiences of my decade-long psychotherapy practice.

My journey began in my clinic room in Tehran, reading the Farsi translations of Dr. Viktor Frankl’s books from my library. Now, it has evolved into formal training in Logotherapy and learning the very language Dr. Frankl wrote in. This meaning-centred approach is the exact narrative I have always resonated with.

I am looking forward to sharing reflections from these supervision experiences here. Below is Scott’s introduction to the article:

"Writing, in all its forms and across genres, is a therapeutic process that is deeply personal and relational. It is a manifestation of what we call in Logotherapy & Existential Analysis an engagement with the ‘noetic dimension’ – the aspect of our being that is uniquely human.

Therapeutically, writing is at its most potent when it is done with pen and paper. Modern neuroscience tells us that traditional handwriting leads to widespread brain connectivity, a process that is more impactful and meaningful than typewriting, especially on digital devices.

Handwriting gives us space to reflect on and articulate the emotions and thoughts that confront us; it is a cathartic and creative process.

For all of these reasons, I am delighted that Somayeh is bringing her expertise and insight to the fore in a series of articles.

In this, the first of the series, she explores the connection between writing and meaning, a topic that has practical applications in the Bibliotherapy we are both interested in. Our hope is that it stimulates within the reader an interest in this area, and that it leads to a more meaningful interaction with the written word."

Finding the Ink[1] to Meaning

By Somayeh McKian

“In the evenings, when you are in the nursing home and you don’t remember anything, you don’t want to talk; and when you don’t talk, you don’t have any memories.”

This is an excerpt from my first novel, Ghrubdar. The character suffers from sundowning syndrome, identity dissociation, illusions, and a lack of memories. The character’s friend believes that talking and making memories are inherently related, that what you resonate with and express through words becomes a memory. Sometimes, when I look back at the novels I wrote several years ago, they provide me with vast images to ponder. Finding the ink to meaning, I notice that the act of writing is the literal tool used to extract meaning from life. I would suggest that meaning is "written into" our existence, and we just need to find the right words to trace it. Ink is the medium through which I conduct my existential excavation.

Beautifully, this aligns with Dr. Viktor Frankl’s idea that meaning is discovered. I am not "making" meaning; I am finding the "ink"  (the story, the metaphor, the narrative) that was already there. Indeed, my interest in Logotherapy was initiated at this very crossroad.

I write in Persian and am now learning German. The "ink" I write in remains a constant, even when the language changes, and even when German grammar presents a mountain of details. What if, when I speak in German, I construct different memories than when I speak in Farsi? Let us imagine it. You gradually begin to feel the weight of existential archaeology when you dig into your memories across the different languages you know. Perhaps changing languages doesn't change the essence of who we are but rather uncovers a completely different layer of the same psychological soil?

Look at what archaeologists do: nothing is "empty" to them, everything feels like an excavation site. They try to discover rather than invent. In my journey as both a psychotherapist and an author, I have found this to be the primary engine of storytelling. I do not impose meaning on my characters; I "detect" the meaning already latent within their struggles, their dialogues, their sense of location, and the things they resonate with. The flow of their words represents that.

In my clinical practice and my research into narrative inquiry, I have seen how individuals often live out the “inkless” version of their life stories. An inkless life is one where the pages are blank because the individual feels they have lost the agency to author their own story.

However, when we treat life as a manuscript, we begin to look for the Logos, the meaning. When people try to get closer to the characters in their own manuscripts, they usually look only for what kind of problem has been given to them to solve. Instead, they could look for the ink to meaning, or ask profound questions like: In the face of their specific suffering, what is the unique task that only this character can fulfil? Although the process of fulfilment is often aligned with pain, guilt, and death, we cannot run from these realities.

To find the ink, we must be willing to sit with the darkest corners of the manuscript. Here, Dr. Frankl  reminds us of the Tragic Triad as the core of the human condition. I remember in my research on the "Fat Female Body," I explored how these elements manifest as social and personal suffering. In writing, too, I turn the pain of being "othered" into a human achievement. Literature allows me to explore the "Will to Change," showing that past mistakes do not define future potential. Furthermore, writing provides a sense of permanence. Once a story is captured in ink, the meaning found within it is "saved" from the passage of time.

Perhaps you can resonate with my attempts to bridge the gap between the biological "destiny" of the body and the freedom of the human spirit. This process has taught me that while we cannot always choose our physical circumstances, we can choose our attitude toward them.

Writing is my way of exercising this freedom: finding the ink to meaning.

[1] Ink here serves as a metaphor for the act of writing, creative expression, and reclaiming personal agency over one’s life manuscript.