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Frankl’s ‘Man’s search for meaning’

This Holy Week, I’m reading an old classic bestseller, Viktor E. Frankl’s “Man’s search for meaning .”

Thanks to Juggernaut for introducing me to Frankl’s masterpiece.

Frankl was Europe’s leading psychiatrist. “Man’s search for meaning” is about finding humanity in the most inhuman environment which was the Nazi concentration camp.

Philosophy professor and writer, Gerald F. Kreyche, describes”Man search for meaning” as “The story of a man who became a number who became a person.”

From the horrors of Auschwitz and Dachau, Frankl developed logotheraphy, a revolutionary approach to psychotherapy.

The book’s cover says at the core of his theory is the belief that man’s primary motivational force is his search for meaning.

I still have to finish the book but here are some of the Frankl’s insights which can be applicable in adversities we face today.

As they witnessed daily unspeakable cruelty and inhumanity, Frankl said, “An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.”

He said beatings occurred on the slightest provocation, sometimes for no reason at all. He related one incident when the man in front of him stepped out of the line. Before he knew it, he was also hit by the guard in the head. He related: “At such moment, it is not the physical pain which hurts the most..; it is the mental agony caused by the injustice, the unreasonableness of it all.”

There was also one time, he related, when the guard playfully picked up a stone and threw it at him.”That, to me, seemed the way to attract the attention of the beast, to call a domestic animal back to its job, a creature with which you have so little in common that you do not even punish it.”

Frankl said one of the prisoners’ defense mechanism was apathy, which he describes as “the blunting of emotions and the feeling that one could not care anymore.”

“By means of this insensibility the prisoner soon surrounded himself with a very necessary protective shell,” he said.

He narrated one incident while he was sipping greedily a bowl of soup amidst the winter cold. Not far from the hut where he was, he saw a prison “nurse” drag corpse. ” He happened to look at the dead man who glaze eyes and he recognized it as the person he was just talking with two hours earlier. “I continued sipping my soup,” he said.

“If my my lack of emotion had not surprise from the professional point of interest, I would not rememver this incident he now, because there was so little feeling involved in it,” he shared the dehumanization that they were subjected to.

Frankl said for every one of the liberated prisoners, the day comes when looking at his camp experiences, he can no longer understand how he endured it all.

“As the day of his liberation eventually came, when everything seemed to him like a beautiful dream, so also the day comes when all his camp experiences seem to him nothing but a nightmare.

“The crowning experience of all, for the homecoming man, is the wonderful feeling that after all he has suffered, there is nothing ne need not fear any more – except his God.”

Published inHuman Rights

12 Comments

  1. I can really relate to this.

    ang nagyari sa akin noong panahon ng martial law.
    shoulder length ang buhok ko noon at nakursunadahan ng mga sundalo. may dala-dala silang gunting noon. sinatsat ang buhok ko. mula noon, inisip ko na na umalis ng bansa.

  2. I watch the video and I just can’t imagine. There are no words to describe this evilness… what those people went through. I can’t fathom… it’s sad. I pray this will never ever happen again to anyone anywhere. Thanks for sharing, Ellen.

  3. What I like about Frankl’s approach is that he refers to God but not in a fanatical or bigotted way. He also accepts science as a way of getting to the truth.
    Most notable is his concept of creativity – giving something to the world through self expression: using our talents in various ways, etc.

    This was one reason I was drawn to your blog site Ellen, you said MAKING LIFE WORTH LIVING.

    I can’t thank you enough for giving me a opportunity to contribute to this meaning. I pray for yours (and everyone else’s in this blog) continued good health and may we continue to find meaning in our lives by serving others in whatever way we can.

    —————————————————
    How can we find meaning in life?

    Frankl points to three ways ­ the “meaning triangle:”

    1. Creativity (giving something to the world through self-expression: using our talents in various ways; i.e., the work we do, the gifts we give to life).
    2. Experiencing (receiving from the world: through nature, culture, relationships, interactions with others and with our environment).
    3. Change of attitude (even if we can’t change a situation or circumstance, we can still choose our attitude toward a condition; this is often a self-transcending way of finding meaning, especially in unavoidable suffering).

    The two levels of meaning in life

    Viktor Frankl talks of two different meanings:

    1. Ultimate meaning: A meaning we can never reach but just glimpse at the horizon… It can be God, but also science as the search for truth, nature, and evolution for those who do not believe in God.
    2. Meaning of the moment: We have all the time to answer the questions life asks us and, therefore, it is important to understand the meaning of each moment by fulfilling the demands life places on us.

    http://www.voidspace.org.uk/psychology/logotherapy.shtml

  4. parasabayan parasabayan

    My niece and I saw this place 5 years ago. We both could not sleep for several nights! We saw the cottages where these soon to be dead Jews were housed, the cells where the prisoners to be executed were put in, next to the wall where they were fired at days later. The crematorium and guillotine were right next to the elevated bar where the then officers and soldiers could see the jews being killed and made to ashes while they had fun drinking. We saw the hairs shaven from the heads of the victims and the shoes of even the babies and suitcases with names on them, thousands of them! We saw even suits woven from the very hair of the victims. It was haunting and eerie.

    Whoever survived this camp and lived a normal life thereafter speaks volumes on his extraordinary character!

  5. parasabayan parasabayan

    I know I have my God because of the miracles in my life!

    Science can prove evolution, who can explain miracles?

  6. ———————————————
    Over my desk there are seven paintings of leaders that have significantly influenced my life: Mother Teresa, Viktor
    Frankl, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Jalāl ad-Dīn Rumi, and Eleanor Roosevelt. As I wrote in the Preface of my book, each face watches over me as I work every day, creating an ever-present reminder of the importance of this journey of continuous renewal that you and I are on at this time in history. There are distinct messages from each of them that always seem to present for me.
    – Nelson Mandela

    http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=131086994721

  7. vic vic

    Most of us had read or seen the images and movies of the atrocities of the Nazis towards the Jews during the heights of its power and the same were repeated by many Tyrants to their own people…there was the Gulag, the Killing Fields and for Me to hear the Stories from the Horses Mouth is surreal..I had worked for many years with those who had experienced first hand the Holocaust and one I can not forget is one related by the son of the survivor who immigrated after the war of l973…as he told me, he was so tired of Wars as it always remind of his Family…

    His Father who had several siblings and belongs to a Big Prosperous wealthy family was the only survivor after the war and had to start from scratch..the details even him can not bear to tell all as no son could stand to imagine the sufferings of his own immediate family…he had fought for his country together with his wife who he had met during their military service and he last I meet him he had made himself…and the traces of Holocaust on the surface seems gone…deep inside, only him knows. we never talk about it no more.

  8. Mike Mike

    Reminded me of the movie Schindler’s List.

  9. humus humus

    Know Thyself: An answer to the search for meaning in our life comes from a philosopher, which may not be enough as nothing is enough but God. Know thyself and know the reason and emotion behind your regrets. It is the leading light that guides psychiatrists and psychologists to help man know and underswtand that God dwells in them.

  10. senshi senshi

    Auschwitz-Birkenau — I was there 5 years ago! I bought a coffee table book and 2 videos of the place. It’s a place I promise to revisit when and if I will have another opportunity.

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