Man's Search for Meaning

“I noticed a piece of marble lying on a table at home . . . He [my father] had taken it home because it was part of the tablets on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed. One gilded Hebrew letter was engraved upon the piece; my father explained that this letter stood for one of the Commandments. Eagerly, I asked, ‘Which one is it?’ He answered, ‘Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the land.’ At that moment I decided to stay with my father and mother upon the land, and to let the American visa lapse”

This artifact was collected by the author’s father from the ashes of the last Jewish synagogue in Vienna after it had been burned by the Nazis. It clearly had great symbolic value for Frankl: he took it as a sign that he was supposed to stay with his “father” and “mother”, even though that put his own life at risk.

“This book does not claim to be an account of facts and events but of personal experiences, experiences which millions of prisoners have suffered time and again . . . This tale is not concerned with great horrors, which have already been described often enough (though less often believed), but with the multitude of small torments. In other words, it will try to answer the question: How was everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the mind of the average prisoner?”

The key terms here are “everyday life” and “mind of the average prisoner.” Everyday life was full of hardship and suffering. The prisoners lacked food, shelter, and proper clothing. They suffered from starvation, frostbite, illness, from work injuries and from beatings. Their circumstances were more than enough to drive an “average” mind into depression and madness, even to the point of suicide.

“This story is not about the suffering and death of great heroes and martyrs, nor is it about the Capos—prisoners who acted as trustees, having special privileges—or well-known prisoners. Thus it is not so much concerned with the sufferings of the mighty; but with the sacrifices, the crucifixion and deaths of the great army of unknown and unrecorded victims”

Again, Frankl treated his personal experiences and the lives of those around him with a certain scientific perspective. He was always interested in what he could learn about the human spirit and the will to live. He and his fellow prisoners had every reason to give up and die. Yet many of them survived and, like the author, lived productive lives after the war.

“It is easy for an outsider to get the wrong impression of camp life, a conception mingled with sentiment and pity. Little does he know of the hard fight for existence which raged among the prisoners. This was an unrelenting struggle for day bread and for life itself, for one’s own sake or for that of a good friend”

Those who have never been in a situation like a Nazi concentration camp are often inclined to see the prisoners as helpless victims. They cannot appreciate how active the prisoners actually are in their fight to survive. For example, they put great thought and effort into obtaining and rationing food, knowing full well that eating equals being alive.

“With the progressive dawn, the outlines of an immense camp became visible: long stretches of several rows of barbed wire fences; watch towers; searchlights; and long columns of ragged figures, grey in the greyness of dawn trekking along the straight desolate roads, to what destination we did not know . . . my imagination led me to see gallows with people dangling on them. I was horrified, but this was just as well, because step by step we had to become accustomed to a terrible and immense horror”

At first, Frankl and the other new arrivals do not know where they have been taken. They know that the environment is strange and frightening. They have no idea of the reality of the gas chambers and crematoria where the dead bodies of 90% of the prisoners are burned.

“I inquired from prisoners who had been there for some time where my colleague and friend P----- had been sent. ‘Was he sent to the left side?’ ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Then you can see him there,’ I was told. ‘Where?’ A hand pointed to the chimney a few hundred yards off, which was sending a column of flame up into the grey sky of Poland. It dissolved into a sinister cloud of smoke. ‘That’s where your friend is, floating up to Heaven,’ was the answer. But I still did not understand until the truth was explained to me in plain words”

This is Frankl’s first introduction to the reality of life at Auschwitz. He is shocked to learn of the death of his friend and just how dangerous his situation is. He, himself, might be put in a gas chamber soon.

“If someone now asked us the truth of Dostoevsky’s statement that flatly defines man as a being who can get used to anything, we would reply, ‘Yes, a man can get used to anything, but do not ask us how”

Frankl and his fellow prisoners quickly adjust to their lives as slave laborers who are brutally abused on a daily basis. At first, none of them understand how survival is possible under the extreme conditions they face. Yet they do survive, and Frankl lives to record what he witnessed about the human capacity to endure suffering.

“The thought of suicide was entertained by nearly everyone, if only for a brief time. It was born of the hopelessness of the situation, constant danger of death looming over us daily and hourly, and the closeness of deaths suffered by many of the others”

This passage is self-explanatory: when one lives with death and the constant threat of death, one inevitably considers dying oneself. In many ways it seems like a way to find relief from relentless pain and suffering.

“Apathy, the blunting of the emotions and the feeling that one could not care anymore, were the symptoms arising during the second stage of the prisoner’s psychological reactions, and which eventually made him insensitive to daily and hourly beatings. By means of this insensibility the prisoner soon surrounded himself with a very necessary protective shell”

Feeling emotions, especially sadness, pity, anger, and fear, would only make life in the camp harder. So, the prisoners learned to shut down their feelings, no matter what they witnessed that might provoke them to feel.

“I shall never forget how I was roused one night by the groans of a fellow prisoner . . . obviously having a horrible nightmare. Since I had always been especially sorry for people who suffered from fearful dreams or deliria, I wanted to wake the poor man. Suddenly I drew back the hand that was about to wake him, frightened at the thing I was about to do. At that moment I became intensely conscious of the fact that no dream, no matter how horrible, could be as bad as the reality of the camp which surrounded us, and to which I was about to recall him”

The reality of camp life was much, much worse than any nightmare could possibly be. The rest provided by sleep was also precious to men who worked long hours in extreme conditions.

“My mind still clung to the image of my wife. A thought crossed my mind: I didn’t know if she were still alive. I knew only one thing—which I have learned well by now: Love goes far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance . . . had I known that my wife was dead, I think that I would still have given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, to the contemplation of her image”

This is one of the author’s key insights. He says that love is one of man’s primary sources of meaning in life. Frankl’s love for his wife and his thoughts and memories of her gave his life meaning during his imprisonment. He believed that this is true for all people. 

“To discover that there was any semblance of art in a concentration camp must be surprise enough to an outsider, but he may be even more astonished to hear that one could find a sense of humor there as well; of course, only the faint trace of one, and then only for a few seconds or minutes. Humor was another of the soul’s weapons in the fight for self-preservation. It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds”

Part of what kept the prisoners sane was maintaining some sense of who they were before the war. Thus they enjoyed laughter, camaraderie, music and religious rituals and so on. Any chance they had to recreate these pleasant experiences, even if only briefly, helped to comfort them.

“Under the influence of a world which no longer recognized the value of human life and human dignity . . . If the man in the concentration camp did not struggle against this in a last effort to save his self-respect, he lost the feeling of being an individual, a being with a mind, with inner freedom and personal value. He thought of himself as only part of an enormous mass of people; his existence descended to the level of animal life”

The Nazis hoped to reduce the prisoners to the level of animals who would only be concerned with work and food and rest—more like mules than human beings. At times, the prisoners felt exactly like that. But they were often able to keep some sense of human dignity alive.

“When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden”

This was another key insight that Frankl had during his time in the camp. How one bears one’s burdens is an important source of meaning. Frankl saw bearing one’s burdens bravely as giving meaning to life—it is one way to define heroism.

“This uniqueness and singleness which distinguishes each individual and gives meaning to his existence has a bearing on creative work as much as it does on human love. When the impossibility of replacing a person is realized, it allows the responsibility which a man has for his existence and its continuance to appear in all its magnitude. A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw life away. He knows the ‘why’ for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any ‘how’”

Here Frankl describes two of the primary sources of meaning in life: love and achievement (“unfinished work”). No one else could write Frankl’s book after the war. Frankl believed every person has a unique contribution to make and somehow knows that he or she must fulfill his or her destiny. 

“Logotherapy focuses rather on the future, that is to say, on the meaning to be fulfilled by the patient in his future. (Logotherapy is, indeed, a meaning centered therapy.)  At the same time, logotherapy defocuses all the vicious-circle formations and feedback mechanisms which play such a great role in the development of neuroses. Thus, the typical self-centeredness of the neurotic is broken up instead of being continually fostered and reinforced”

As a psychotherapist, Frankl believed in focusing not on past trauma, but rather on the responsibility to fulfill one’s unique destiny. This is a major difference between logotherapy and traditional Freudian analysis/therapy. 

“Logos is a Greek word which denotes ‘meaning.’ Logotherapy, or, as it has been called by some authors, ‘The Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy,’ focuses on the meaning of human existence as well as man’s search for such a meaning. According to logotherapy, this striving to find a meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in man”

Frankl bases his psychotherapy on the pursuit of meaning rather than the pursuit of pleasure (Freud) or the quest for power (Adler). That makes his approach into a distinct third “school” of Psychotherapy.

“Man, however is able to live and even die for the sake of his ideals and values!”

This seems transparently true and justifies Frankl’s redefinition of human psychology and behavior. Yes, men and women will die for a cause because they find meaning in it.

“Existential frustration is in itself neither pathological nor pathogenic. A man’s concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease. It may well be that interpreting the first in terms of the latter motivates a doctor to bury his patient’s existential despair under a heap of tranquilizing drugs”

People often feel that what they want to do or what they are meant to do is impossible because of circumstances out of their control. This may lead to despair, but that is not the same as mental illness. Frankl believes that if one gives a person suffering existential frustration something to strive for, he or she can live a healthy life.

“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning to be fulfilled by him . . . the existential dynamics in a polar field of tension where one pole is represented by a meaning that is to be fulfilled and the other pole is represented by the man who has to fulfill it”

Frankl is responding to a conventional notion of the purpose of psychotherapy. According to Freud and others, patients are troubled by repressed emotions, and the therapists’ job is to find a way to release these emotions. This will lead the patient to a state of peace and calm. Conversely, Frankl argues that tension in life is actually positive. It reflects the motivation towards meaning that makes life worth living.

“Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them. In other words, man is ultimately self-determining. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment”

Frankl’s philosophy fits well with many of the principles of existentialism. Man is responsible for making choices in his life. These choices have consequences for good or bad, for himself and others. This interpretation of human life allows man great freedom to construct his own destiny.

“This in turn presupposes the human capacity to creatively turn life’s negative aspects into something positive or constructive . . . hence the reason I speak of a tragic optimism, that is, an optimism in the face of tragedy and in view of the human potential that at its best always allows for: 1) turning suffering into human achievement and accomplishment; 2) deriving from guilt the opportunity to change oneself for the better; and 3) deriving from life’s transitoriness an incentive to take responsible action”

This quote sums up what Frankl learned from his experience in the concentration camps. Part of being human is having the capacity to transform painful experiences into meaningful ones. He himself did just that by using his time in the camps to learn about human behavior so that he could become a better psychotherapist and teacher.

“People tend to see only the stubble fields of transitoriness but overlook and forget the full granaries of the past into which they have brought the harvest of their lives: the deeds done, the loves loved, and last but not least, the sufferings they have gone through with courage and dignity. From this one may see that there is no reason to pity old people. Instead, young people should envy them . . . instead of possibilities in the future, they have the realities in the past—the potentialities they have actualized, the meanings they have fulfilled, the values they have realize—and nothing and nobody can ever remove these assets from the past”

Frankl articulates one of the benefits of growing old. One can look back on one’s life and see what one has done to give it meaning. In individual memories and in the more general appreciation of family, village, and society one can say that one has fulfilled one’s destiny, done what it was that he or she was meant to accomplish in this lifetime.