Victor Frankl

Viktor Frankl (1905-1997)

Positive psychologists are beginning to study and promote human flourishing generally, on the levels of mind, body, and spirit. Indeed, humanistic psychology has acknowledged a broad spectrum of human potentials. Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist who broke with Freud, pioneered logotherapy to meet the existential need for meaning. Frankl grew up in Vienna during the years when the Hapsburg Empire collapsed, World War I decimated the cultural confidence of Europe, and an alarming number of young people were taking their lives.[i] His intuitive, anti-reductionist concern was manifest early. In response to a comment in a lecture by his science teacher—“In the final analysis, life is nothing more than a combustion process, a process of oxidation”—the student aged about thirteen asked, “Sir, if this is so, then what can be the meaning of life?”[ii] Combative in debate, bursting with humor, and dominated by the drive to alleviate human suffering by helping others find meaning in life, Frankl dedicated himself to the practice and proclamation of his “logotherapy,” an approach tested through his years of imprisonment in Nazi concentration camps. His theory in a nutshell is that we find meaning by self-transcendence, by devoting ourselves to a cause greater than ourselves or to loving another person. The greater complexity of his theory can be glimpsed from his observations as a prisoner as recorded in Man’s Search for Meaning. After the initial shock when the prisoner is inducted into the life of the camp, an ordeal designed to strip the person of dignity, self-respect, and values generally, the essential choice loomed, whether or not to persist as a human being with a degree of freedom, sensitive to values. Prisoners nourished themselves spiritually in diverse ways. He himself had brought with him a hidden scientific manuscript to work on. Some used fragments of philosophy such as Nietzsche’s word, “He who has a why to live can endure almost any how.” Religious life, to the extent it developed, was profoundly sincere. In some cases sustenance came from a relationship with a loved one in another camp whom one did not know still to be alive. There were courageous deeds of solidarity and hopes for life beyond the camps. And that was not all. The appreciation flourished for the beauties of nature; and even art and humor played a role in keeping up the spirits of the prisoners.

Regarding the psychological importance of meaning, Frankl’s observation was that if a prisoner abandoned his commitment to whatever gave his life meaning, he would be dead within a few days, whether from a suicidal attempt to “escape” or from simply collapsing before the oppressive forces around him. Even when one could do nothing but suffer, there was at least the potential to choose one’s attitude towards that suffering. Having verified human potentials to transcend even the most extreme conditions, Frankl continued to champion human freedom and dignity and the capacity to find meaning in any circumstance whatsoever.

The need for wisdom is acutely evident from the testimony of psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, who saw some death camp prisoners persevere and survive while others gave up the struggle and died shortly thereafter. He saw that to have meaning in life, in the sense of having something to live for, can make the difference in one’s choice for life or death. Frankl did not formulate a doctrine about the meaning of life, but he was convinced of the need for some higher meaning and service to something or someone beyond the self. He also knew that every genuine answer to the question of meaning in life is shaped individually in the crucible of experience.

Here are quotations from Man’s Search for Meaning, trans. Ilse Lasch (NY: Simon and Schuster, [1946] 1962).

Many factual accounts about concentration camps are already on record. Here, facts will be significant only as far as they are part of a man’s experiences. It is the exact nature of these experiences that the following essay will attempt to describe. For those who have been inmates in a camp, it will attempt to explain their experiences in the light of present-day knowledge. And for those who have never been inside, it may help them to comprehend, and above all to understand, the experiences of that only too small percentage of prisoners who survived and who now find life very difficult. These former prisoners often say, “We dislike talking about our experiences. No explanations are needed for those who have been inside, and the others will understand neither how we felt then nor how we feel now.” (4)

[After the shock of his admission to a concentration camp, the following “abnormal” reactions were normal.] “These reactions, began to change in a few days. The prisoner passed from the first to the second phase, the phase of relative apathy, in which he achieved a kind of emotional death (18).

In spite of all the enforced physical and mental primitiveness of the life in a concentration camp, it was possible for spiritual life to deepen. Sensitive people who were used to a rich intellectual life may have suffered much pain (they were often of a delicate constitution), but the damage to their inner selves was less. They were able to retreat from their terrible surroundings to a life of inner riches and spiritual freedom. (35)

If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete. (67)

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 oopportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden. . . . Suffering had become a task on which we did not want to turn our backs. We had realized its hidden opportunities for achievement, the opportunities which caused the poet Rilke to write, “Wie viel ist aufzuleiden!” (How much suffering there is to get through!) There was plenty of suffering for us to get through. Therefore, it was necessary to face up to the full amount of suffering, trying to keep moments of weakness and furtive tears to a minimum. But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer. (78)

What about human liberty? Is there no spiritual freedom in regard to behavior and reaction to any given surroundings? Is that theory true which would have us believe that man is no more than a product of many conditional and environmental factors—be they of a biological, psychological or sociological nature? Is man but an accidental product of these? Most important do the prisoners’ reactions to the singular world of the concentration camp prove that man cannot escape the influences of his surroundings? Does man have no choice of action in the face of such circumstances?

We can answer these questions from experience as well as on principle. The experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action. There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but 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. (65)

Any attempt at fighting the camp’s psychopathological influence on the prisoner by psychotherapeutic or psychohygienic methods had to aim at giving him inner strength by pointing out to him a future goal to which he could look forward. Instinctively some of the prisoners attempted to find one on their own. (72)

The sudden loss of hope and courage can have a deadly effect. (75)

We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—dailh and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which is constantly sets for each individual. (77)

As the inner life of the prisoner tended to become more intense, he also experienced the beauty of art and nature as never before. Under their influence he sometimes even forgot his own frightful circumstances. If someone had seen our faces on the journey from Auschwitz to a Bavarian camp as we beheld the mountains of Salzburg with their summits glowing in the sunset, through the little barred windows of the prison carriage, he would never have believed that those were the faces of men who had given up all hope of life and liberty. Despite that factor—or maybe because of it—we were carried away by nature’s beauty, which we had missed for so long.

Another time we were at work in a trench. The dawn was grey around us; grey was the sky above; grey the snow in the pale light of dawn; grey the rags in which my fellow prisoners were clad, and grey their faces. I was again conversing silently with my wife, or perhaps I was struggling to find the reason for my sufferings, my slow dying. In a last violent protest against the hopelessness of imminent death, I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I head a victorious, “Yes” in answer to my question of the existence of an ultimate purpose. At that moment a light was lit in a distant farmhouse, which stood on the horizon as if painted there, in the midst of the miserable grey of a dawning morning in Bavaria. “Et lux in tenebris lucet”—and the light shineth in the darkness. For hours I stood hacking at the icy ground. The guard passed by, insulting me, and once again I communed with my beloved. More and more I felt that she was present, that she was with me; I had the feeling that I was able to touch her, able to stretch out my hand and grasp hers. The feeling was very strong: she was there. Then, at that very moment, a bird flew down silently and perched just in front of me, on the heap of soil which I had dug up from the ditch, and looked steadily at me. (38-40)

[A] young woman knew that she would die in the next few days. But when I talked to her she was cheerful in spite of this knowledge. “I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard,” she told me. “In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously.” Pointing through the window of the hut, she said, “This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness.” Through that window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. “I often talk to this tree,” she said to me. I was startled and didn’t quite know how to take her words. Was she delirious? Did she have occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. “Yes.” What did it say to her? She answered, “It said to me, ‘I am here—I am here—I am life, eternal life.’” (68-69)

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. I practically trained a friend of mine who worked next to me on the building site to develop a sense of humor. I suggested to him that we would promise each other to invent at least one amusing story daily, about some incident that could happen one day after our liberation. . . . (42)

Everything that was not connected with the immediate task of keeping oneself and one’s closest friends alive lost its value. Everything was sacrificed to this end. A man’s character became involved to the point that he was caught in a mental turmoil which threatened all the values he held and threw them into doubt. Under the influence of a world which no longer recognized the value of human life and human dignity, which had robbed man of his will and had made him an object to be exterminated (having planned, however, to make full use of him first—to the last ounce of his physical resources)—under this influence the personal ego finally suffered a loss of values. 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 then as only a part of an enormous mass of people; his existence descended to the level of animal life. (49)

[As the convoy was about to depart,] there was neither time nor desire to consider moral or ethical issues. Every man was controlled by one thought only: to keep himself alive for the family waiting for him at home, and to save his friends. With no hesitation, therefore, he would arrange for another prisoner, another “number,” to take his place in the transport. . . . On the average, only those prisoners could keep alive who, after years of trekking from camp to camp, had lost all scruples in their fight for existence; they were prepared to use every means, honest and otherwise, even brutal force, theft, and betrayal of their friends, in order to save themselves. We who have come back, by the aid of many lucky chances or miracles—whatever one may choose to call them—we know: the best of us did not return. (3-4)

The unpleasant feeling that had gripped me as soon as I had told my friend I would escape with him became more intense. Suddenly I decided to take fate into my own hands for once. I ran out of the hut and told my friend that I could not go with him. As soon as I had told him with finality that I had made up my mind to stay with my patients, the unhappy feeling left me. I did not know what the following days would bring, but I had gained an inward peace that I had never experienced before. (58)

It had been a bad day. On parade, an announcement had been made about the many actions that would, from then on, be regarded as sabotage and therefore punishable by immediate death by hanging. Among these were crimes such as cutting small strips from our old blankets (in order to improvise ankle supports) and very minor “thefts.” A few days previously a semi-starved prisoner had broken into the potato store to steal a few pounds of potatoes. The theft had been discovered and some prisoners had recognized the “burglar.” When the camp authorities head about it they ordered that the guilty man be given up to them or the whole camp would starve for a day. Naturally the 2,500 men preferred to fast. (80-81)

No one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them. (91)

Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife’s image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was th en more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.

A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth—that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. Ina position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way—an honorable way—in such a position man can, through lonving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, “The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory. . . . [Roughness intervenes.] My mind still clung to the image of my wife. A thought crossed my mind: I didn’t’ even know if she were still alive. I knew only one thing—which I have learned well by now: Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds it 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. (36-37)

[i] I am indebted to Ann V. Graber for this interpretive vision of Frankl’s life as an answer to these historical needs of his generation and for her book, Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy: Method of Choice in Ecumenical Pastoral Psychology (Lima, Ohio: Wyndham Hall Press, 2003).

[ii] Haddon Klingberg, Jr. When Life Calls Out to Us: The Love and Lifework of Viktor and Elly Frankl (New York: Doubleday, 2001), p. 44.