Overview - Victor Frankel was a psychiatrist that was in four concentration camps. He observed how men acted under extreme circumstances. The second half of the book is his personal style of therapy called Logotherapy, which focuses on giving patients the will to find meaning.
Thesis - He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How
Three sources for meaning
- Work or Accomplishment
- Love or caring for another person -
- Courage in difficult times - suffering ceases to be suffering when it has meaning
You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you. We will never lose the freedom to choose how we respond.
Men were reduced to a number and someone had to be sacrificed for you to survive - they best of us did not return.
When men smoked a cigarette, it showed that they had given up and are chasing immediate pleasure. They will die within 48 hours.
Upon first arriving at the concentration camp, most prisoners experienced curiosity. Then they would move into a state of severe apathy. The apathy formed a protective shell. As injuries from guards blows started to dull, sometimes things like injustice or being treated sub-human hurt more than physical abuse.
Victor was able to stay strong because of the memory of his wife. He would think of her and have conversations with her. Even if she was dead, it did not matter. Love goes beyond the physical presence of the beloved. Man is saved by love.
The men would still perform (jokes, songs and stories) and sometimes miss their portion of food to attend shows.
Suffering is like a gas. If a gas is pumped into a chamber, it will fill the chamber regardless of its size. Suffering fills the human soul regardless of the size. The size of human suffering is relative.
Victor would let fate take control and surrender to the flow. There is a lot of stress in determining if you are making the right choice - should I have escaped just there?
Prisoners vs guards/capos
The prisoners felt an inferiority complex, they were reduced to complete nonentities
The Capos, prisoner guards, developed delusions of grandeur.
This caused a degraded majority and a promoted minority
Some prisoners acted like saints or like swine. Some guards showed kindness or sadism. Decent and indecent men penetrate all races of men. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on the decisions but not on conditions.
Men created meaning in their suffering and their attitude about suffering. If there is a meaning in life, then there must be meaning in suffering because suffering is an ineradicable part of life. Without suffering and death a human life cannot be complete.
The men experienced a time paradox. The days passed slowly and the weeks passed quickly.
Life is like being at the dentist: you think that the worst is still to come, but it is over already.
Victor pretended like he was already at a seminar presenting his results on the concentration camp. The present became the past. Suffering ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.
Even in suffering you are unique and alone in the universe. What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you.
Liberation
Once liberated, the men did not experience sheer joy. They had no feelings and did not feel part of the world. They would talk in the evenings and say “were you pleased today? Truthfully, no!"
Some men used their freedom licentiously and ruthlessly andjustified their actions with their terrible experiences.
Some men who for years had thought he had reached the absolute limit of all possible suffering now found that suffering had no limits and that he could still suffer more, and still more intensely.
Logotherapy
Man’s search for meaning may bring about inner tension instead of inner equilibrium. Mental Health is the tension between what a man has accomplished and what he as yet to achieve. It is a polar field of meaning that needs to be fulfilled and the man that has to fulfill it.
The meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day from hour to hour. It’s like asking a chess master “what is the best move in the world?” One should not search for an abstract meaning of life.
We are told that we need to be happy, but when we are unavoidably unhappy it causes increased unhappiness about being unhappy.
Pleasure is, and must remain, a side effect or by product, and is destroyed and spoiled to the degree to which it is made a gal in itself.