Man’s Search for Meaning
This month I’m looking at stories about resilience, making this weeks book an absolute classic and authority on the subject, Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl. So let’s do this.
Viktor Frankl is one of the millions of victims and fewer survivors of Hitler’s concentration camp system, having survived four different concentration camps, specifically Theresienstadt, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Kaufering, and Türkheim, which was part of the Dachau complex. And his story is somewhat singular, in that Frankl had a Visa to leave Austria and go to America, and would have been safe. He chose not to and allowed the visa to lapse because, in his words, he needed to honor his mother and his father. Neither of whom had such a visa, and were certainly destined for the camps, which at this point, were a well known fact of life. This choice, while sentencing Frankl to the camps himself, also allowed him to be with his father when his father passed, to provide some comfort.
So the first part of the book consists of Frankl giving a brief synopsis of his time at the camps and what he learned there about humanity in general. He starts by talking about the delusion of reprieve, aka shock upon arrival. It’s the fantasy belief that whatever is about to happen, you will be reprieved from it. At Auschwitz, this delusion was encouraged by the guards by having the inmates who greeted new arrivals were specially chosen and cared for to maintain calm and order, to give the illusion that this was just another work camp. A delusion that was harshly shattered shortly after arrival when Frankl made an enquiry about a colleague and friend who had traveled with him to Auschwitz. The person he asked, asked in return “Was he sent to the left side?”
“Yes” I replied
“Then you can see him there,” I was told.
“Where?” A hand pointed to the chimney a few hundred yards off, which was sending a column of flame up into the grey sky of Poland.
Gallows humor becomes normal, as well as curiosity. What will happen next? Will today be my last? Or will I see another?
How did Frankl combat phase 1? Well….humor. And not gallows humor, but “Friends whom I have met later have told me that I was not one of those whom the shock of admission greatly depressed. I only smiled, and quite sincerely, when the following episode occurred the morning after our first night in Auschwitz.
And then he tells an anecdote of a friend who snuck into their hut the first night, and gave them advice, and advised them to shave daily. This was not a hygiene tip, although it would certainly have kept lice at bay. Shaving daily would keep their faces flush with the illusion of good health, thus negating the chance they’d be taken to the gas chambers.
The second phase inmates passed into was apathy. Failing to care about anything as the shock of what was happening wore off and left them numb. When they would watch the various petty tortures inflicted on their fellow inmates in resignation to their own inevitable fate, rather than look away in horror at what was being done.
Frankl overcame apathy by thinking about his wife. Love pulled him through. “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….the salvation of man is through love and in love.”
No wonder so many people spend so much time trying to find it.
And humor kept seeing him through the dark times
The third psychological phase was disillusionment and bitterness….after liberation. Why did this happen to me? Why did liberation come too late to help….whoever the survivor lost. But it’s here that Frankl hits on one of Nietzsche’s most famous sayings: “He who has a why, can bear any how.”
And thus he was able to write Mans Search for Meaning in like 9 days. Now…he already had the book written. It was with him when he arrived in Auschwitz. But like everything else, when inmates checked in, everything was confiscated and lost on arrival. Part of his why…his overwhelming why….was to get his book out there. Logotherapy. Which is part two.
What is logotherapy? Now, Freud’s psychoanalysis was all the rage when Frankl was released from captivity, so he had to carve out his own niche here, and would tell people he was not a psychoanalyst but rather a psychotherapist. Logotherapy “focuses on the meaning of human existence as well as on man’s search for such a meaning.”
He who has a why, can bear any how.
So, start with will to meaning. Find your purpose. Or more specifically, the desire to find purpose and significance. And yes, that can absolutely include why did this happen to me? What meaning will you find in the things that happen to you? Amanda Knox…I *think* her meaning was to remain kind. Which led to the connection she formed with her prosecutor. Which remains mind blowing to me.
Freedom to will. You have a choice in how you respond to any situation. This, Frankl saw in spades in the camps. Yes, some chose cruelty, became capos and inmate-guards in the camps. But far more chose kindness. Chose to help those when they could.
Meaning in suffering. And, to be clear, Frankl does not believe suffering a la prison or concentration camps is required for this. Specifically, he says of suffering “If it is avoidable, the meaningful thing to do is to remove its cause, for unnecessary suffering is masochistic rather than heroic.” I cannot help but wonder what he would make of the current trend towards martyring yourself on the pyre of victimhood.
Especially since the end of the book, before he goes into the Afterword, discusses criminals, and how they hate being seen as victims, which deprives them of any chance of accepting responsibility for their actions.
This book was…powerful. You cannot help but be horrified by the experiences in the camps. But what he pulled out of that. How many people he helped before his own death, at 92 years old in 1997. His gift of logotherapy. The copy of the book I have is the 2006 version. The foreword is written by Rabbi Harold S. Kushner. Who points out the foreword of the 1962 edition, which would be the 3rd year of publication, was written by a prominent psychologist, Dr. Gordon Allport. Whereas this 47th year printing is written by a holy man. Mankind needs spiritual guidance to see his way into the future. Meaning is found in the holy places, whatever that may be. And in love.
The book ends with an anecdote about Frankl, written in the afterword by William J. Winslade. Frankl was asked in one sentence what the meaning of his life was. He wrote his answer down and asked his students to guess what he had said. One of the students guessed spot on: “The meaning of your life is to help others find the meaning of theirs.”
Which is exactly what Frankl had written.
