What is the meaning of life? There is no simple answer to this question. Viktor Frankl's theory is that man's deepest desire is to search for meaning, for purpose. Choosing to ignore the daily suffering of his deprived existence, Frankl searched to find meaning. He learned that by losing a friend or living through other circumstances of tragedy, he gained strength meaning in his life. Frankl found that as his life had changed and as there was more suffering to confront, he had the inner strength to deal with it to the best of his ability. Psychologically, he chose to find meaning in suffering. Frankl felt compelled to go on with his life, he explained, "if there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering." (76). Frankl learned to turn his thoughts to the future, this was another way of finding meaning in his life. Seeing his current tragic situation as though it were part of the past gave Frankl faith in his future. He knew very well the "inner life" of a prisoner, a place in his mind where he could go to escape his present surroundings. This method of imagining his future was very helpful and gave him reason to live. While struggling to find more reasons to survive, Frankl decided to occupy his mind by using the scraps of paper he had found to begin re-writing his manuscript that had been taken away from him upon his arrival to the camp. Writing his notes encouraged Frankl to go on, to see himself finally free and his manuscript completed. Writing gave Frankl a sense of
He was working in the steaming pit of hell; day after day, week after week- until now there was not an organ of his body that did its work without pain, until the sound of ocean breaks echoes in his head day and night… and from all the unending horror of this there was a respite, a deliverance- he could drink! He could forget the pain, he could slip off the burden: he would see clearly again, he would be master of his brain, of his
learned all these lessons, and became a more complete person. He found who he truly
Having a grasp of mental transcendence can aid all people to survive great personal grievances. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Dr. Frankl discovers that this method of coping with the pain and horror of the Holocaust is the only way to survive such a traumatic event. One scene has Dr. Frankl trying to sleep in his bunk with the other prisoners when a man next to him started to scream in his sleep. Frankl is about to wake him up from the nightmare but, at the last second, does not. This is because he realizes that no dream or nightmare can be worse than their current reality. As awful as that sounds, Frankl is correct in thinking that anything co...
Viktor Frankl’s life in the concentration camp was full of misery. He had to work long hours, sometimes with no help. He describes one such event, when he had to build a tunnel under a road to allow for a water pipe. He worked like a slave until he was told to stop. As he wrote further, he shared his knowledge in psychiatry. In once instance, he wrote, “The condemned man, immediately before his execution, gets the illusion that he might be reprieved at the very last minute” (Frankl P.6). He experience this very scenario in the death camps as he saw countless being murdered everyday. He says that everyone thought that things
he suffered through-out his life, ie. the war, the holocaust, his wife's suicide, and his heart disease.
Existentialists believe that “to live is to suffer; to survive is to find meaning in the suffering”. Despite all the horrific experiences in the concentration, Viktor Frankl is determined to not lose the significance of his life and succumb to the cruelty of his situation. With the use of three literary techniques- argumentation, rhetoric, and style- Frankl gives his proposition warrant that a man will not find meaning in his life by searching for it; he must give his life significance by answering questions life asks him.
Frankl believes that there exists “potential meaning inherent and dormant in all the single situations one has to face throughout his or her life” (143). Frankl finds meaning even in terrible suffering. While he in no way purports suffering as a necessary means to finding meaning, he acknowledges that the way a man responds to suffering allows him “to add a deeper meaning to his life” (67). Does this man maintain his morality? Does he become compromised by the atrocities surrounding him? Perhaps even a desire to maintain one’s morals and prove his inner strength and humanity can be seen as a meaning to
Viktor Frankl's concept regarding survival and fully living was developed through his observations and experiences in the concentration camps. He used his psychiatric training to discern the meanings of observations and to help himself become a better person. He uses analysis to develop his own concepts and describes them in steps throughout the book. When the prisoners first arrived at the camp most of them thought they would be spared at the last moment. The prisoners believed they had a chance of surviving, but this belief was eventually eliminated and it was at this time when the prisoners began to learn how to survive by using their internal strength. A sense of humor had emerged among the prisoners. This humor helped to get through some difficult situations they faced. Viktor also observed how much a person could really endure and still live. Even though the prisoners could not clean their teeth and were deprived of warmth and vitamins, they still were able to survive. The sores and abrasions on their hands did not suppurate despite the dirt that gathered on them from the hard labor. The challenge of staying alive under these wretched conditions was to have and maintain strong internal strength. During the time he spent in the camps, Viktor learned what was needed to survive and how to keep his internal strength despite his weakening external strength. During the second stage of Viktor's psychological reaction, prisoners lost their sense of feeling and emotion toward events that would be emotional to people outside the camps. This was a result of the violent environment, which consisted of beatings of prisoners and the death of many others. The prisoners could no longer feel any disgust or horr...
“There are things which must cause you to lose your reason or you have none to lose.” An Abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior (book). There were a few phases that the prisoner went into as he entered prison life. The first is what Frankl called “delusional reprieve”. He describes this as the condemened man, immidiately before he gets executed has the illusion that he might be reprieved at the very last minute. As many people were ushered into camps in the beginning, many people hung on to these shreds of hope and believed that these camps wouldn’t be so bad. In this phase people were just beginning to see how bad things were. Frankl tell of how he read somewhere that man cannot live without a stated number of hours—“Quite wrong!”, He says.
Victor frankle was a victim of the Nazi regime, and he went in to a Nazi concentration camp, in Auschwitz, and both of his parents had passed away. So in this camp, he was literally withering away and thousands of others around him were being murdered. He was pondering the current state of his life.
doubted himself more and began to make bad decisions also had took a wrong turn in his life that
A excruciating pain, like the loss of a family member or close friend, may cause a person to lose faith for better times in life. This particular source of pain was seen all too much during the Holocaust. Between eleven and seventeen million people lost their lives in concentration and work camps all across Europe including Frankl’s own family. For the ones that this tragedy directly affected, their past occasionally became their present and future: “To be sure, a human being is a finite thing, and his freedom is restricted. It is not freedom from conditions, but it is free to take a stand towards the conditions” (Frankl 130). Frankl explains that while people have the ability to change their outlook on their surroundings, it’s often difficult to escape the aftermath of horrific events from the past. Humans cannot control when, where, and how they were raised. All these factors play a crucial part in the development of one’s personality and behaviors. Your view on life can either help you progress or halt your success in finding your meaning. A person who is lost in their past will not glimpse into the possibilities of what the future hold for them. Instead they will only be in a continuous state of nihilism and lack the motivation to have any type of future at
Frankl, in his book Man's Search for Meaning, addresses some of the same issues that are associated with magical realism. Frankl's will to meaning is used in distinguishing several forms of neurosis and traces some of them to the failure of the sufferer to find meaning and sense of responsibility in his existence. Freud stresses frustration in the sexual life, and Frankl stresses frustration in the will-to-meaning (9). Frankl refers to the strategies to preserve the remnants of one's life though the chances of surviving are slight. Hunger, humiliation, 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 (10). Frankl noticed that people who survived the horrors of the nazi concentration camps had purpose. The reasons for their survival is Frankle's will to meaning.
Since I had always been especially sorry for people who suffered from fearful dreams and deliria, I wanted to wake the poor man. Suddenly I drew back the hand which was ready to shake him, freighted at the thing I was about to do. At that moment I became intensely conscious of the fact that no dream, no matter how horrible, could be as bad as the reality of the camp which surrounded us, and to which I was about to recall him.” Frankl is talking about the camp being so bad that no man’s nightmare could ever come close to it. He didn’t was to wake the man from it, because he thinks that he is better off sleeping through it so he does not bring him back to the reality of the
The meaning of life, defined by Victor E. Frankl, is the will to find your meaning in life. It is not the meaning of life in general, but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment. He believes that if you are approached with the question of “what is the meaning of my life” or in this case, “life is meaningless,” then you should reverse the question to that person asking the question. For example: What are you bringing to me? What are you as an individual contributing to this life? This forces the person in question to take a look at themselves and to ultimately be responsible. Frankl says that if you are a responsible member of society than the meaning of life transcends from yourself rather from your own psyche. He also says that if we for some reason cannot find meaning within ourselves it has to be from some outside source. This is referred to as service. And an example of this is love. Victor Frankl describes three ways in which we can discover the meaning of life; Creating work-doing a deed, experiencing something-someone, and by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.