Psychiatrist Victor Frankle endured many years of horrific conditions while he was imprisoned in Nazi death camps in 1945, in Theresienstat, then Aushchwitz, because he was a Jew. His mother, father, and brother were killed in these camps. Because of his immense suffering, Frankel developed a form of psychotherapy known as logotherapy. His premise is that the force behind man’s motivation is his search for meaning.
Frankel notes that injustices to man are made tolerable by man’s ability to draw on thoughts and memories of family and persons who they had meaningful relationships with, by religion, dark humor, and nature. He mentions one woman who is fated to die and how she stares at a blossoming branch of a tree and speaks of its ability to make her realize that she is alive at that moment. She had to find a reason to cope with her circumstance.
Being shuttled into train cars, 1500 traveling with meager possessions for several days the prisoners were mortified when they arrived at Auschwitz. Robbed of their possessions and packed into small places, they were fed a small piece of bread every four days. Prisoners were chosen randomly to be sent to the crematoriums. Those who survived forced every plausible method to hang on to sanity: stories, poems, songs, and dark humor .
Frankel quotes writers who discuss the concept of suffering: Dostoevsky, “not to be worthy of my suffering”, Spinoza, in ETHICS, “Emotion ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear, precise picture of it,” Tolstoy, Nietzsche “that which does not kill me makes me stronger,“ Doris Lessing, and Schopenhauer who wrote about “freedom from suffering.” He says that man who has suffered need not fear anything more than his God.
Devoting an entire chapter to logotherapy, Frankel discusses how logotherapy helps people to reverse their attitudes about their weaknesses or adverse psychological conditions. A stuttering boy found himself using his stuttering to elicit sympathy by showing he was just a stuttering boy, and by this experience was able to stop stuttering. I have related the complicated concept of logotherapy in a very concise manner. To do justice would take a more extensive explanation and synthesis.
Frankel ends the text with this quote “Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of, and since Hiroshima, we know what is at stake.” Men can and should do what is in their power.
He comes to the conclusion that everyone needs a strong goal in life to overcome the worst circumstance. Man needs to have an unconditional faith in the search for meaning in life.
[A Catholic priest recommended this text. Even though Frankel discusses in a narrative format his experiences in death camps, this is not an easy read.]
No comments:
Post a Comment