Man's Search for meaning.

They were able to retreat from their terrible surroundings to a life of inner riches and spiritual freedom. Only in this way, can one explain the apparant paradox that some prisoners of a less hardy make up often seemed to survive camp life better than those of a robust nature. In order to make myself clear,I am forced to fall back on personal experience. Page No.56 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- " Dr.Frankl an authors cum psychiatrist, sometimes asked his patients who suffer from a multitude of torments great and small, " Why do you not commit suicide ? " . From their answers he can often find the guideline for his psychotherapy : in one life , there is love for one's children to tie to ; in another life, a talent to be used ; in a third, perhaps only a lingering memories worth preserving. To be weave these slender threads of a broken life, into a firm pattern, of meaning and responsibility is the object and challenge of Logotherapy, which is Dr.Frankl's own version of modern existential analysis. " ( Page no.09 ) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- " In Europe today, there is a marked turning away from Freud and wide spread embracing of existential analysis, which takes several related forms - the school of Logotherapy being one. It is charactaristic of Frankl's tolerant outlook, that he does not repudiate Freud, but builds gladly on his contributions ; nor does he quarrel with other forms of existential therapy , but welcomes kinship with them ! " (Page 10) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Do net search : Dr.Gordon W.Allport, professor of psychology. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- " Again and again I therefore admonish my students both in Europe and America : " Don't aim at success - the more you aim at it, and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued ; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success : you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to your best of your knowledge. Then , you will live to see, that in the long run - in the Long Run I say ! - success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it. ( page : 17 ) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- " If my lack of emotion had not surprised me from the standpoint of professional interest, I would not remember this incident now, because there was so little feeling involved in it. ( page 42) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- " I did not know what was going in the line behind me, nor in the mind of SS guard, but suddenly I received 2 sharp blows on my head. Only then did Ispot the guard , at my side, who was using his stick. At such moments , it is not the physical pain which hurst the most ( and this applies to adults as much as to punish children) ; it the mental agony caused by the injustice, the unreasonableness of it all. (page no.42) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- " Humour was another of the soul's weapons in the fight of self preservation. It is well known that , humour, more than anything esle 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 m on the building site, to develop a sense of humour. I suggested to him that, we would promise each other to invent at least amusing story daily, about some incident that could happen one day after our liberation." ( page no.63) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- But those who stayed behind in camp, who were still capable of work, had to make use of every means, to improve their chances of survival. They were not sentimental. The prisoners saw themselves completely dependant on the moods of gurads - playthings of fate and this made them even less human than the circumstance warranted. ( Page no.74) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The purpose of my words was to find a full meaning in our life, then and there, in that hut, and in that practically hopeless situtation. I saw that my efforts had been successful. When the electric bulb flared again, I saw the miserable figures of my friends limping towards me to thank me with tears in their eyes. But I have to confess here, that only too rarely had I suffering that I must have missed many opportunities for doing so.

( page 105)

“ The body has fewer inhibitions than the mind. It made good use of the new freedom from the first moment on. It began to eat ravenously, for hours and days , even half the night. It is amazing what quantities one can eat !

(page 110)

“ Just as the physical health of caisson worker would be endangered if he left his driver’s chamber suddenly ( where is under enormous atmospheric pressure) , so the man who’s suddenly been liberated from mental pressure can suffer damage to his moral and spiritual health.

During this psychological phase, one observed that, people with natures of a more primitive kind, could not escape the influences of the brutality which had surrounded them in camp life. Now, being free, they thought they could use their freedom licentiously and ruthlessly. The only thing that had changed, for them, was that, they were now the oppressors instead of the oppressed. They became instigators, not objects of wilful force and injustice. They justified their behaviour by their own terrible experiences. This often revealed in apparently insignificant events.

( page 112)

Only slowly, could these men be guided back to the common place truth , that, no one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them. We had to strive to lead them back to this truth, or the consequences would have been much worse than the loss of a few thousands stalks of oats.

(page 113)

Apart from moral deformity , resulting from sudden release of mental pressure , there were 2 other fundamental experiences which threatened to damage the character of the liberated person : bitterness and disillusionment when he returned to his former life.

(page 113)

When we spoke about attempts to give a man in camp mental courage, we said that he had to be shown something to look forward to in the future. He had to be reminded that, life still waited for him, that a human being waited for his return. But after liberation ? There were some men who found them, who found that , no one awaited them. Woe to him, who found that, the person whose memory alone had given him courage in camp did not exist more !! Woe to him who, when the day of his dreams finally came, found it so different from all he longed for ! Perhaps, he boarded a troelly, travelled out to the home, which he has seen for year in his mind, and pressed the bell, just as he longed to do in thousands of dream, only to find that, the person who should open the door was not there, and would never be there again.

We all said to each other in camp, that there could be no earthly happiness which could compensate for all we had suffered. We were not hoping for happiness – it was not that which gave us courage and gave meaning to our suffering, our sacrifices and our dying. And yet, we were not prepared for unhappiness.

( page 114)

The crowing experience of all, for the home coming man, is the wonderful feeling that, after all he has suffered , there is nothing he needs to fear anymore – except his God.

( page 115)

“ Can you tell me in one sentence , what is meant by logo therapy ? “ he asked. “ At least, what is the difference between psychoanalysis and logo therapy ? “

“Yes” I said, “ But in the first place, can you tell me one sentence, what you think the essence of psychoanalysis is ? “

This was his answer : “ During psycho analysis, the patient must lie down a couch and tell you things which sometimes are very disagreeable to tell . “

Where upon I immediately retorted with the following improvisation : “ Now, in Logo therapy, the patient may remain sitting erect, but he must hear things which are sometimes very disagreeable to hear ! “

(Page 120)

Another stastistical survey of 7,948 students at 48 colleges was conducted by social scientists from John Hopkins university. There , preliminary report is part of a 2 year study sponsored by the national inst of mental health. Asked what they considered ‘ very important’ to them now, 16 % of students checked ‘ making lots of money’ : 78% said , their first goal was ‘ finding a purpose and meaning to my life’. Of course, there may be some cases, in which an individual’s concern with values is really a camouflage of hidden inner conflicts ; but, if so, they represent the exception from the rule , rather than rule itself.

(page 122)

“ Logo therapy regards its assignment as that of assisting the patient to find meaning in his life. In as much as Logo therapy makes him aware of the hidden logos of his experience, it is an analytical process. To this extent, logo therapy resembles psycho analysis. However, in Logo therapy ‘ s attempt to make something conscious again it does not restrict its activity to instinctual facts within the individual’s unconscious but also cares for essential realities, such as, the potential meaning of his existence to be fulfilled as well as his will to meaning.

( page 125)

To be sure, man’s search for meaning may arouse inner tension rather an inner equilibrium. However, precisely such tension is an indispensable prerequisite of mental health. There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that, there is a meaning in one’s life. There is much wisdom in the words of Nietsche, ‘ he , who has a why to live for, can bear almost any ‘ how’. ‘ I can see in these words a motto which holds true for any psycho therapy Nazi concentrations camps, one could have witnessed that , those who knew that there was a task, waiting for them to fulfil were most apt to survive. The same conclhusion has since been reached by other authors of books on concentration camps, and also by psychiatric investigations into Japanese, North Korean and North Vietanam prisoner-of-war.

(page 126)

I consider it a dangerous misconception of mental hygience to assume that, what man needs in the first place is equilibrium or, as it is called in biology, ‘ homoe statis’ , for example, a tensionless state. What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather , the striving and struggling for a worth while goal , a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him. What man needs is not homeo statis but what I call ‘ noo-dynamics’ . For Example, 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 by the man who has to fulfil it.

And one should not think that, this holds true only for normal conditions : neurotic individuals, it is even more valid .

( page 127)