Man’s Search For Meaning (Viktore E. Frankl)
PrefaceDr. Frankl, author-psychiatrist, sometimes asks his pa-tients who suffer from a multitude of torments great and small, “Why do you not commit suicide?” From their an-swers he can often find the guide-line for his psycho-therapy: 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 lingering memories worth preserving. To weave these slender threads of a broken life into a firm pattern of mean-ing and responsibility is the object and challenge of logo-therapy, which is Dr. Frankl’s own version of modern exis-tential analysis.In this book, Dr. Frankl explains the experience which led to his discovery of logotherapy. As a longtime prisoner in bestial concentration camps he found himself stripped to naked existence. His father, mother, brother, and his wife died in camps or were sent to the gas ovens, so that, except-ing for his sister, his entire family perished in these camps. How could he every possession lost, every value destroyed, suffering from hunger, cold and brutality, hourly expecting extermination-how could he find life worth preserving? A psychiatrist who personally has faced such extremity is a psychiatrist worth listening to. He, if anyone, should be
able to view our human condition wisely and with compas-sion. Dr. Frankl’s words have a profoundly honest ring, for they rest on experiences too deep for deception. What he has to say gains in prestige because of his present position on the Medical Faculty of the University of Vienna and because of the renown of the logotherapy clinics that today are springing up in many lands, patterned on his own famous Neurological Policlinic in ViennaOne cannot help but compare Viktor Frankl’s approach to theory and therapy with the work of his predecessor, Sigmund Freud. Both physicians concern themselves pri-marily with the nature and cure of neuroses. Freud finds the root of these distressing disorders in the anxiety caused by conflicting and unconscious motives. Frankl distin-guishes several forms of neurosis, and traces some of them (the noögenic neuroses) to the failure of the sufferer to find meaning and a sense of responsibility in his existence. Freud stresses frustration in the sexual life; Frankl, frustra-tion in the “will-to-meaning.” In Europe today there is a marked turning away from Freud and a widespread em-bracing of existential analysis, which takes several related forms the school of logotherapy being one. It is character-istic 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 wel-comes kinship with them. The present narrative, brief though it is, is artfully con-structed and gripping. On two occasions I have read it through at a single sitting, unable to break away from its spell. Somewhere beyond the midpoint of the story Dr.Frankl introduces his own philosophy of logotherapy. He introduces it so gently into the continuing narrative that only after finishing the book does the reader realize that here is an essay of profound depth, and not just one more brutal tale of concentration camps.
From this autobiographical fragment the reader learns much. He learns what a human being does when he sud-denly realizes he has “nothing to lose except his so ridicu-lously naked life.” Frankl’s description of the mixed flow of emotion and apathy is arresting. First to the rescue comes a cold detached curiosity concerning one’s fate. Swiftly, too, come strategies to preserve the remnants of one’s life, though the chances of surviving are slight. Hunger, hu-miliation, fear and deep anger at injustice are rendered tolerable by closely guarded images of beloved persons, by religion, by a grim sense of humor, and even by glimpses of the healing beauties of nature-a tree or a sunset.But these moments of comfort do not establish the will to live unless they help the prisoner make larger sense out of his apparently senseless suffering. It is here that we en-counter the central theme of existentialism: to live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering. If there is a purpose in life at all, there must be a purpose in suffer-ing and in dying. But no man can tell another what this purpose is. Each must find out for himself, and must accept the responsibility that his answer prescribes. If he succeeds he will continue to grow in spite of all indignities. Frankl is fond of quoting Nietzsche, “He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.”In the concentration camp every circumstance conspires to make the prisoner lose his hold. All the familiar goals in life are snatched away. What alone remains is “the last of human freedoms” the ability to “choose one’s attitude in a given set of circumstances.” This ultimate freedom, rec-ognized by the ancient Stoics as well as by modern existen-tialists, takes on vivid significance in Frankl’s story. The prisoners were only average men, but some, at least, by choosing to be “worthy of their suffering” proved man’s capacity to rise above his outward fate.As a psychotherapist, the author, of course, wants
know how men can be helped to achieve this distinctively human capacity. How can one awaken in a patient the feeling that he is responsible to life for something, however grim his circumstances may be? Frankl gives us a moving account of one collective therapeutic session he held with his fellow prisoners.At the publisher’s request Dr. Frankl has added a state-ment of the basic tenets of logotherapy as well as a bibliog raphy. Up to now most of the publications of this “Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy” (the predecessors being the Freudian and Adlerian Schools) have been chiefly in German. The reader will therefore welcome Dr. Frankl’s supplement to his personal narrative.Unlike many European existentialists, Frankl is neither pessimistic nor antireligious. On the contrary, for a writer who faces fully the ubiquity of suffering and the forces of evil, he takes a surprisingly hopeful view of man’s capacity to transcend his predicament and discover an adequate guiding truth.I recommend this little book heartily, for it is a gem of dramatic narrative, focused upon the deepest of human problems. It has literary and philosophical merit and pro-vides a compelling introduction to the most significant psychological movement of our day.GORDON W. ALLPORTGordon W. Allport, formerly a professor of psychology at Harvard University, was one of the foremost writers and teachers in the field in this hemisphere. He was author of a large number of original works on psychology and was the editor of the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology. It is chiefly through the pioneering work of Professor All-port that Dr. Frankl’s momentous theory was introduced to this country; moreover, it is to his credit that the interest shown here in logotherapy is growing by leaps and bounds.
Preface to the 1992 EditionThis book has now lived to see nearly one hundred print-ings in English-in addition to having been published in twenty-one other languages. And the English editions alone have sold more than three million copies.These are the dry facts, and they may well be the reason why reporters of American newspapers and particularly of American TV stations more often than not start their in-terviews, after listing these facts, by exclaiming: “Dr. Frankl, your book has become a true bestseller-how do you feel about such a success?” Whereupon I react by reporting that in the first place I do not at all see in the bestseller status of my book an achievement and accomplishment on my part but rather an expression of the misery of our time: if hun-dreds of thousands of people reach out for a book whose very title promises to deal with the question of a meaning to life, it must be a question that burns under their fingernails.To be sure, something else may have contributed to the impact of the book: its second, theoretical part (“Logother-apy in a Nutshell”) boils down, as it were, to the lesson one may distill from the first part, the autobiographical account (“Experiences in a Concentration Camp”), whereas Part One
serves as the existential validation of my theories. Thus, both parts mutually support their credibility. I had none of this in mind when I wrote the book in 1945-And I did so within nine successive days and with the firm determination that the book should be published anony mously. In fact, the first printing of the original German version does not show my name on the cover, though at the last moment, just before the book’s initial publication, I did finally give in to my friends who had urged me to let it be published with my name at least on the title page. At first, however, it had been written with the absolute conviction that, as an anonymous opus, it could never earn its author literary fame. I had wanted simply to convey to the reader by way of a concrete example that life holds a potential meaning under any conditions, even the most miserable ones. And I thought that if the point were demonstrated in a situ ation as extreme as that in a concentration camp, my book might gain a hearing. I therefore felt responsible for writing down what I had gone through, for I thought it might be helpful to people who are prone to despair.And so it is both strange and remarkable to me that-among some dozens of books I have authored-precisely this one, which I had intended to be published anonymously so that it could never build up any reputation on the part of the author, did become a success. Again and again I therefore admonish my students both in Europe and in 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 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 the best of
your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run-in the long run, I sayl-success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.”The reader may ask me why I did not try to escape what was in store for me after Hitler had occupied Austria. Let me answer by recalling the following story. Shortly before the United States entered World War II, I received an invitation to come to the American Consulate in Vienna to pick up my immigration visa. My old parents were overjoyed because they expected that I would soon be allowed to leave Austria. I suddenly hesitated, however. The question beset me: could I really afford to leave my parents alone to face their fate, to be sent, sooner or later, to a concentration camp, or even to a so-called extermination camp? Where did my responsibility lie? Should I foster my brain child, logotherapy, by emigrat ing to fertile soil where I could write my books? Or should I concentrate on my duties as a real child, the child of my parents who had to do whatever he could to protect them? I pondered the problem this way and that but could not ar-rive at a solution; this was the type of dilemma that made one wish for “a hint from Heaven,” as the phrase goes.It was then that I noticed a piece of marble lying on a table at home. When I asked my father about it, he explained that he had found it on the site where the National Socialists had burned down the largest Viennese synagogue. He had taken the piece home because it was a part of the tablets on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed. One gilded Hebrew letter was engraved on the piece; my father explained that this letter stood for one of the Commandments. Eagerly I asked, “Which one is it?” He answered, “Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the land.” At that moment I decided to stay with my father and my mother upon the land, and to let the American visa lapse.
PART ONEExperiences in a Concentration Camp
THIS BOOK DOES NOT CLAIM TO BE an account of facts and events but of personal experiences, experiences which mil-lions of prisoners have suffered time and again. It is the inside story of a concentration camp, told by one of its survivors. This tale is not concerned with the great horrors, which have already been described often enough (though less often believed), but with the multitude of small tor ments. In other words, it will try to answer this question: How was everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the mind of the average prisoner?Most of the events described here did not take place in the large and famous camps, but in the small ones where most of the real extermination took place. This story is not about the suffering and death of great heroes and martyrs, nor is it about the prominent Capos-prisoners who acted as trustees, having special privileges or well-known pris-oners. Thus it is not so much concerned with the sufferings of the mighty, but with the sacrifices, the crucifixion and the deaths of the great army of unknown and unrecorded victims. It was these common prisoners, who bore no dis-tinguishing marks on their sleeves, whom the Capos really despised. While these ordinary prisoners had little or noth
ing to eat, the Capos were never hungry: in fact many of the Capos fared better in the camp than they had in their entire lives. Often they were harder on the prisoners than were the guards, and beat them more cruelly than the SS men did. These Capos, of course, were chosen only from those prisoners whose characters promised to make them suitable for such procedures, and if they did not comply with what was expected of them, they were immediately demoted. They soon became much like the SS men and the camp wardens and may be judged on a similar psychologi cal basis.It is easy for the outsider to get the wrong conception of camp life, a conception mingled with sentiment and pity. Little does he know of the hard fight for existence which raged among the prisoners. This was an unrelenting strug gle for daily bread and for life itself, for one’s own sake or for that of a good friend.Let us take the case of a transport which was officially announced to transfer a certain number of prisoners to an-other camp; but it was a fairly safe guess that its final destination would be the gas chambers. A selection of sick or feeble prisoners incapable of work would be sent to one of the big central camps which were fitted with gas chambers and crematoriums. The selection process was the signal for a free fight among all the prisoners, or of group against group. All that mattered was that one’s own name and that of one’s friend were crossed off the list of victims, though everyone knew that for each man saved another victim had to be found.A definite number of prisoners had to go with each transport. It did not really matter which, since each of them was nothing but a number. On their admission to the camp (at least this was the method in Auschwitz) all their docu
ments had been taken from them, together with their other possessions. Each prisoner, therefore, had had an oppor tunity to claim a fictitious name or profession; and for vari ous reasons many did this. The authorities were interested only in the captives’ numbers. These numbers were often tattooed on their skin, and also had to be sewn to a certain spot on the trousers, jacket, or coat. Any guard who wanted to make a charge against a prisoner just glanced at his number (and how we dreaded such glances!); he never asked for his name.of y. hTo return to the convoy about to depart. There was nei-ther 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.As I have already mentioned, the process of selecting Capos was a negative one; only the most brutal of the pris oners were chosen for this job (although there were some happy exceptions). But apart from the selection of Capos which was undertaken by the SS, there was a sort of self-selecting process going on the whole time among all of the prisoners. 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 pre-pared 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.Many factual accounts about concentration camps are al-ready 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 per-centage 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 under. stand neither how we felt then nor how we feel now.”To attempt a methodical presentation of the subject is very difficult, as psychology requires a certain scientific de. tachment. But does a man who makes his observations while he himself is a prisoner possess the necessary detach-ment? Such detachment is granted to the outsider, but he is too far removed to make any statements of real value. Only the man inside knows. His judgments may not be objective; his evaluations may be out of proportion. This is inevita-ble. An attempt must be made to avoid any personal bias, and that is the real difficulty of a book of this kind. At times it will be necessary to have the courage to tell of very in-timate experiences. I had intended to write this book anonymously, using my prison number only. But when the manuscript was completed, I saw that as an anonymous publication it would lose half its value, and that I must have the courage to state my convictions openly. I therefore refrained from deleting any of the passages, in spite of an intense dislike of exhibitionism.I shall leave it to others to distill the contents of this book into dry theories. These might become a contribution to the psychology of prison life, which was investigated after the First World War, and which acquainted us with the
syndrome of “barbed wire sickness.” We are indebted to the Second World War for enriching our knowledge of the “psychopathology of the masses,” (if I may quote a varia-tion of the well-known phrase and title of a book by LeBon), for the war gave us the war of nerves and it gave us the concentration camp.As this story is about my experiences as an ordinary pris-oner, it is important that I mention, not without pride, that I was not employed as a psychiatrist in camp, or even as a doctor, except for the last few weeks. A few of my colleagues were lucky enough to be employed in poorly heated first-aid posts applying bandages made of scraps of waste paper. But I was Number 119,104, and most of the time I was digging and laying tracks for railway lines. At one time, my job was to dig a tunnel, without help, for a water main under a road. This feat did not go unrewarded; just before Christ-mas 1944. I was presented with a gift of so-called “premium coupons.” These were issued by the construction firm to which we were practically sold as slaves: the firm paid the camp authorities a fixed price per day, per prisoner. The coupons cost the firm fifty pfennigs each and could be ex-changed for six cigarettes, often weeks later, although they sometimes lost their validity. I became the proud owner of a token worth twelve cigarettes. But more important, the cig-arettes could be exchanged for twelve soups, and twelve soups were often a very real respite from starvation.The privilege of actually smoking cigarettes was reserved for the Capo, who had his assured quota of weekly coupons; or possibly for a prisoner who worked as a foreman in a warehouse or workshop and received a few cigarettes in exchange for doing dangerous jobs. The only exceptions to this were those who had lost the will to live and wanted to “enjoy” their last days. Thus, when we saw a comrade smoking his own cigarettes, we knew he had given up faith