The book Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl is quoted by Harold S. Kushner as being “one of the great books of our time.” The first part of the book is a telling memoir from his perspective as a Jewish psychiatrist having survived the Nazi concentration camps during World War II. The second is an explanation of the foundations and applications of logotherapy, a branch of psychotherapy founded by Frankl himself. In this blog post, I will highlight some of his moving experiences from the concentration camps, and examine what logotherapy is and how it can be used as an effective method for those of us struggling to find meaning in our lives.
At the beginning of World War II, Viktor Frankl had the opportunity to leave Austria, and travel to the United States on an immigration visa, which would have been an escape from the concentration camps. While contemplating the decision, he received a “hint from heaven.” He asked his father about a piece of marble that was laying on the table at home, and his father explained that it was a piece of the ten commandment tablets from the largest Viennese Synagogue that the National Socialists had burned down. The commandment on that piece of marble was, “Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the land.” Viktor knew from that moment that it was his duty to stay with his parents, and endure whatever trials and tribulations were in store.
I am convinced that majority of people in Frankl’s position would have taken the opportunity to escape persecution and hardships. One could say maybe, that he didn’t know to what extent those hardships would be. Even with that in mind, he put his career as a psychiatrist second to his faith and family, which can be viewed in an honorable light.
Or could it be seen as an act of madness?
Frankl, like many others after their arrest and introduction to the concentration camps, experienced what is called in psychiatry, “delusion of reprieve.” This delusion is common to those condemned to death, where they believe until the last moment that they will be set free. Frankl acknowledged that they held onto hope that the camps wouldn’t be so bad. He says in the book, “No one could yet grasp the fact that everything would be taken away.” It is difficult for us to process life altering changes for a time, such as diagnosis of disease or death of a loved one. These situations often come with a sense of denial. The first phase of life in camp can be attributed to a sense of shock.
Similar to many of the traumatic experiences in our lives, it is not until after it happens that we are truly able to process it. While it is happening, we often resort to disbelief and catechizing. Why is this happening to me? What is going to happen? Will life ever be the same again? Is there any reason to keep living? What is the meaning of this?
Soon after their admission, it was realized that all the prisoners possessed, literally, was their naked existence. Any material connection they had to their previous lives was striped from them. Frankl writes about how he was carrying in his coat pocket the manuscript of a scientific book, which was his life’s work, and how he was forced to give it up. Much of Frankl’s sense of meaning in life was derived from that book.
When the prisoners were forced to give up their material identity, and their accolades no longer held any value, many of them lost their meaning for life. I presume that many of us also derive our meaning from the materials we possess, and the accolades we have achieved. That is what society has led us to find meaning in.
How do you expect you would react if those things were taken from you?
For the prisoners, it led to the second phase of life in camp, which was an emotional death and relative apathy.
The prisoners quickly became desensitized to the commonplace brutality and inhumane treatment within the camp. Disease was rampant and death was an everyday occurrence.
An example from the book to highlight the desensitivity of the prisoners to the horrific conditions is when Frankl was sick and staying in a hut for typhus patients. Shortly after a man died in the hut, the other prisoners went to his still warm body and proceeded to take anything that was of use to them. Such as shoes, clothes, or food rations. After a while the “nurse” came and grabbed the dead man by his legs and dragged him down the steps and out of the hut. Frankl happened to look out the window next to him to find the dead man staring at him with glazed eyes. He continued eating his soup.
Frankl writes that “it can be readily understood that such a state of strain, coupled with the constant necessity of concentrating on the task of staying alive, forced the prisoner’s inner life down to a primitive level.” When this type of regression becomes the normal response mechanism to challenges, it leads to poor decision making, and later the development of mental health disorders.
It is no surprise that suicide became a normal solution for many of the prisoners who could no longer stand to live in those horrific conditions. This leads us to ponder the question posed by Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning,
“Does man have no choice of action in the face of such circumstances?”
It is difficult for any of us who have not lived through something like this to ponder such a question, but Frankl did, and went on to write about it! His eye-witness account declares with vigor that “man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.” This is such an earth-shaking idea in its very essence; that it’s possible in every instance to find purpose for life, despite the difficult environment we might find ourselves in.
Finding meaning in suffering is one of the main pillars of logotherapy, and Frankl himself is a testament to its applicability in the real world.
Although the amount of prisoners that displayed this spiritual freedom were few in number according to Frankl, “they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” I have advocated for this in many of my other blog posts, but the way Frankl lays it out and uses his own experience as an example gave me a feeling of intense motivation that can only be felt by reading the book in its entirety.
I believe, like Frankl, that humans are self-determining by nature. Meaning that we have the ability to decide how we will react in a given situation and over time who we will become. A great example of this would be the apostle Paul, who was known to persecute Christians and had a change of heart. He went on to become a Christian martyr, and wrote much of the New Testament of the bible.
Now you might say that God chose him, and that he didn’t decide to become Christian by himself. Yes, God did choose him, but he decided to follow God’s call for him on his way to Damascus, rather than allowing the physical blindness he incurred to make him more hateful and cynical toward Christians.
The key distinction to take from this example is that in order for us to change, we must look outside ourselves.
Many people now days advise those who want to achieve self-actualization to “look within themselves.” Self-actualization is defined as the realization or fulfillment of one’s talents and potentialities. The only instance to support looking within oneself is for reflection and honesty i.e. responsibleness. No enlightenment or revelation comes from looking within.
This is another important aspect of logotherapy and is described by Frankl as “the self-transcendence of human existence.” He writes in Man’s Search for Meaning, “I wish to stress that the true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system.” His conclusion is that “self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.”
Few of the prisoners were able to transcend the conditions within the camp, but those that were, had better chances of survival. I encourage you to read the book to understand how those that implemented some form of self-transcendence fared versus those that didn’t, and ultimately how those choices impacted their destiny. In Frankl’s personal experience, he held onto the hope that he would see his wife again in the future, which gave him something to look forward to when free.
The third phase of the prisoner’s life dealt with their psychology after liberation. Personally, I hadn’t thought much about the reaction of the prisoners to the news of their freedom, but I would have expected them to break out in celebration and joy. This wasn’t the case. Frankl writes that “we could not grasp the fact that freedom was ours.” Their suffering persisted for so long and with such intensity that they lost the ability to feel pleased and had to relearn it.
What made matters even worse was how quickly they were released from such intense suffering. Frankl gives the example of this release being the psychological equivalent of the bends. He writes, “Just as the physical health of the caisson worker would be endangered if he left his diver’s chamber suddenly, so the man who has suddenly been liberated from mental pressure can suffer damage to his moral and spiritual health.” This is a fascinating observation and might explain some of the mental health issues military personnel encounter after returning home from combat. Or a caretaker after the death of a loved one that suffered many years.
The ensuing perspective of the liberated persons was to use their newfound freedom for abusive or gluttonous purposes. According to Frankl, “They justified their behavior by their own terrible experiences.” Who could blame them for acting in such a manner? Time was necessary in order to come to terms with what many view as an objective truth. That no one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them. No amount of revenge could change what had already happened. Forgiveness and a will to meaning became constructive ways to coup with their experiences in the concentration camps.
Clearly life in a concentration camp is much more daunting than any of the challenges we face today, but that is not to discount any of our challenges as irrelevant. Rather, Man’s Search for Meaning offers us the opportunity to learn from Frankl’s experience. One of the best ways for us to gain wisdom as individuals is through storytelling. It allows us to share in the experiences of one another. The book is his analysis of the experience through the lens of a psychoanalyst, which allowed him to take especially close notice of the prisoners’ behaviors. Since he had developed logotherapy prior to going to concentration camps, it gave him the chance to test the pertinence and durability of this concept in real life situations.
Logotherapy has been mentioned numerous times throughout this blog, and now it’s time to look at what it is and how it can help those of us struggling to find meaning in our lives. While conventional psychotherapy is more retrospective and introspective, logotherapy focuses on the meanings to be fulfilled by the patient in their future. It is coined as being a meaning-centered psychotherapy that has the ability to “defocus all the vicious-circle formations and feedback mechanisms which play such a great role in the development of neuroses.” Thus, confronting and reorienting a patient toward meaning in their life.
The concept of logotherapy doesn’t acknowledge an absolute meaning for life. Frankl came to a realization while in the concentration camps, “that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.” Therefore, it is of his opinion that meaning in an individual’s life can change throughout time. According to logotherapy, there are three ways to find meaning in one’s life. The first is by creating a work or deed. The second by experiencing something or encountering someone. The third by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.
Being that I’m Christian, I questioned whether this meant that logotherapy contradicted my belief in an absolute meaning for my life. I concluded that this was not the case because although I have an overarching purpose for my life, to glorify God in everything I do, the way in which God calls me to do that changes throughout life. Meaning that in one moment, I might be called to go on a mission trip to another country and find purpose in helping others. Then, God could call me to attend a seminar to further my knowledge in some area of my life. After that, I might be diagnosed with a disease and be called by God to spread awareness with others. I just gave an example that fulfills each of the ways to find meaning within logotherapy, yet they also fulfill my overarching meaning as a Christian. Thus, supporting my conclusion that they can coexist.
The first two ways to find meaning within logotherapy clearly satisfy self-transcendence as described earlier in the blog. They both involve doing or experiencing things that are outside of ourselves. I would argue that the third also involves self-transcendence. It deals with the way we outwardly react to things we cannot control. More specifically those things that cause us suffering.
Another key idea within logotherapy is that not every conflict is necessarily neurotic; some amount of conflict is normal and healthy. I believe from my experience that we have gotten away from this idea in modern medicine. People go to the doctor because they are depressed or anxious, and oftentimes doctors don’t hesitate to offer medication. This should be the last resort for those of us struggling with depression, especially kids. Logotherapy offers an alternative that can solve the problem at the source, which is the fact that many of us that suffer from depression and anxiety lack meaning for our lives.
Frankl references a poll of 7,948 students at forty-eight colleges conducted by social scientists from John Hopkins University. Those students were asked what they considered “very important” to them now, 16 percent said “making a lot of money”; 78 percent said their first goal was “finding a purpose and meaning to my life.” Finding meaning in life is an innate phenomenon within humans, and the longer we starve ourselves of it the more docile and apathetic we become. Frankl writes that “what man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.” Logotherapy actually looks to put us in uncomfortable situations where we are able to grow, rather than being a consolation and justification of victim mentality. No meaning can be achieved without energy and effort being expended. Logotherapy helps one find meaning by encouraging exploration and curiosity. Not by trying to change one’s view on the world.
Frankl sums up logotherapy as “neither teaching nor preaching. It is as far removed from logical reasoning as it is from moral exhortation. To put it figuratively, the role played by a logotherapist is that of an eye specialist rather than that of a painter. A painter tries to convey to us a picture of the world as he sees it; an ophthalmologist tries to enable us to see the world as it really is. The logotherapist’s role consists of widening and broadening the visual field of the patient so that the whole spectrum of potential meaning becomes conscious and visible to him.” This excerpt really helped me grasp what logotherapy is and how it is an effective technique.
Ultimately, it is a choice. Our choice. We may not decide our starting point or the conditions we are born into, but we are responsible for our own destiny. I don’t mean this to sound harsh because I do understand that there are neuroses that require treatment and medication. I mean this to say that when we feel like everything is stacked against us, and there is no way to escape, it will always be possible to find hope in the prospect of something good happening in the future.
There was a powerful story that reinforces this point in the book where a prisoner rushes into the hut Frankl and other prisoners were residing in. They were tired from the work that day and expressing low demeanor. He told them to come outside and see the sunset. They went out to see it, and after some time one prisoner said to another, “How beautiful the world could be!” The sunset reminded the prisoners of the world outside the concentration camp and aided them in finding hope and meaning in the prospect of their futures.
I don’t know about you, but personally I get distracted sometimes by my worries or anxiety to the point that nothing else is important. It is like a form of tunnel vision that can quickly lead to my demise. Small things like watching a sunset or smelling a flower can go a long way in opening our field of vision. I’ve even read that something as simple as saying thank you can have an impact on our overall attitude. These things help us realize that our worries matter very little in the grand scheme of life. That’s one of the many reasons Man’s Search for Meaning is so powerful. It puts the suffering and worry we experience into perspective, and also gives us hope that despite how bad we think our lives are, we are still capable of finding meaning.
If prisoners in a concentration camp can find meaning, then what is stopping us from doing the same?
Frankl writes, “we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behave like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions.”
If you’re interest in reading the book Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl click here. It is a rather short read (165 pages) for those of you worried about the length, but it has the power to change your life for the better.
I appreciate you reading this post and hope this showed you why Motivating Matters. Feel free to comment any thoughts or feedback about the article!
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