“Within a concentration camp: there are countless (sometimes life and death) choices to be made. One of the only things you can't be ripped off is your freedom to react to the situation.”
"The sort of person a prisoner became was the result of an inner decision and not the result of camp influences alone"
"There is only one thing that I dread, not to be worthy of my sufferings" Doistoievsky
”The last inner freedom cannot be lost, this spiritual freedom is what makes life meaningful.”
The first 5 chapters are relating Victor Frankl’s experience in the concentration camps. The following note are focussed on the second part of the book which presents Frankl’s work on Logotherapy.
Chapter 6
If there is a meaning to life at all then there must be a meaning to suffering. The way a man take his cross is an opportunity to generate meaning (make use off or miss out on being worthy of your suffering).
In camp, time is going differently: a day of torture lasts way longer than a week of repeated work.
Spinoza : Emotion (which is suffering) ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.
The example of thinking about your situation taught in an amphitheatre (taking a step back).
The prisoner who had lost hope in the future (his future) was lost.
He who has a why to live for (a future, an aim)/can bear almost any how. (Nietzsche)
Questions about the leaning of life can't be answered in vague terms and must be answered precisely for each man (case by case).
For the prisoners, the meaning of life was no more about achieving something but encompassing both life and death --> they needed to get meaning to suffering. The key was to face suffering and see how to react to it. Finding the courage to suffer.
Committing suicide: prisoners didn't expect anything from life anymore but life was expecting something from the - a child to raise or a book to finish.
A man who becomes responsible about something has a huge why.
Chapter 7
A talk about hope, thinking about the current situation and what could be even worse. How the prison experience could make them stronger in the future. That which doesn't kill me, makes me stronger.
Then thinking about the future : not overseeing it as no one knows what it could bear.
Aldo mentioning the past (quoting a poet): what you have experienced, no one on earth can take from you.
Opportunity to give life a meaning: human life never ceases to have a meaning (when you know how to give meaning to life *and* death/suffering)
Spoking about sacrifice: seemed pointless in a material world but very meaningful from a religious perspective or for others.
Mental stage of guards :
- some are saddists
- guard ended up being hardened to the horrors
- even among them, some took compassion on inmates
From all this we may learn that there are 2 races of men in the world : the decent and indecent men (and all the mixtures between these).
(2nd part of 7)
3rd stage of a prisoner's mental reaction : after liberation
Not believing one's freedom. Not being able to realize and enjoy. The body could eat however (a lot).
In the countryside, near the flower field:
"I called to the lord from my narrow prison and he answered me in the freedom of space" over and over again
From that hour, my new life started. Step for step I progressed until I again became an human being.
Being freed was one step but going beyond (beyond PTSD, vengeance etc.) was another.
Bitterness and desillusion was common
- we did not know about it, we also suffered
- realising that there was more to his suffering (no one was waiting for them, day of his dream really different from his hopes)
The disillusionment was very harsh for a lot of prisoners.
At some point the memory of imprisonment fades into a foggy nightmare and the happiness of the day of liberation remains. And the prisoners is left with the bliss feeling that he has nothing to fear anymore.
Logotherapy in a Nutshell #1
Logotherapy focusses rather on the future (meaning centred psychotherapy) diff. From psychoanalysis (internal search linked with past).
Logo - (Logos = Meaning in Greek), logotherapy is the 3rd Viennese school of psychotherapy.
The will to meaning : something for the sake of which to live.
Existential frustration can be understood in 3 ways:
- existence itself
- the meaning of existence
- the will to meaning
Noological (the sphere of ideas) differs from psychological (personal/emotional neuroces)
Noogenic neuroces :
- problems coming from noosphere (I.e. the frustration of not having a meaning in life, being discontent with one's career)
Note that not every conflict is neurotic (a change of vocation could be so)
You can experience an existential dispair without being sick/neurotic!!
Mere adaption to society and environment.
Noodynamics
Mental health relies on the tension between what is and what could be. That is, the meaning of life.
Pushes back on the idea of equilibrium (tension-less) state --> Healthy tension towards a goal (this is called Noodynamics).
Existential vaccuum : lack of meaning
Usually manifest itself in terms of boredom !
Sunday neurosis : existential vacuum at the end of the week (when you have nothing to.do) (same for retired people)
Existential frustration often leads to sexual obsession (to trump to void)
How to find the meaning to one's life ? (At one point in time)
Everyone one can have a personal mission to implement. Its not about asking but about taking responsibility. Logotherapy sees in responsibleness the very essence of human existence.
The essence of existence
The categorical imperative of Logotherapy: "Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you would acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now"
1. The present is past
2. The past may yet be changed and amended
In short : be responsible.
Life fineteness and finality of your actions.
It is up to the patient to decide if their actions are the highest degree of responsabiltiy.
The role of a logotherapist is an eye doctor more than a painter (helping to show the world more than showing a picture of it).
The true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather in man or his own psyche.
The self-transcendance of human existence: "Being human is always directed to something or someone other than oneself being a meaning to fulfil or another human being."
The more you forget yourself for a cause, the more human he is and the more he actualise himself (the more responsible you are).
The meaning of lifecan be discovered in 3 different ways:
1. By creating a work or doing a deed
2. By experiencing something or encountering someone
3. By the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering
Chapter 2
Experiencing something such as goodness or beauty, by experiencing nature or culture or by experiencing another human being in its uniqueness : by loving them.
The meaning of love:
Love is the only way to grasp the inner core of another human being. No one can be fully aware of the essence of another being but by loving them.
- By loving he is enabled to see the essential traits of the beloved person and also sees that which is potential in him, not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized.
- The loving person enables the loved one to actualise these potentialities, by making him aware of those and helping them achieving those.
In logotherapy love is as important as sex.
Chapter 3
The meaning of suffering
Suffering allows us to witness the human nature at its best, to turn a predicament into an achievement.
Ex: A man who have loved his wife (who died). What would have happened if she had died first? You spared her suffering. Your mourning is a sacrifice. It gave meaning to his suffering.
Note that suffering is not essential to meaning (but suffering is unavoidable)
Logotherapy 2
Loss of manuscript (mental child) in the concentration camp => new coat from a assassinated inmate with a Jewish prayer in it: "You should live your mental child instead of thinking to publish it" (that's a decent meaning to your suffering).
Likewise, inmates finding meaning in the idea of getting out were mislead: living your life only with the goal to get out is not a life worth living.
A logodrama:
A mother (30) who lost a child, is left with a crippled older son a tried to commit suicide. What would you think if you were 80, on your death bed, with no children but financial success?
Flirted with men, got rich... But at 80 without children I must say my life was a failure.
Viewing her life from the death bed helped giving it meaning.
The super-meaning (exceeding the understanding of man) : Logos
Rabbi being worthy to join his children in heaven, making meaning from his suffering.
Life's transitoryness (we will die one day)
Doesn't make it meaningless but makes us responsible to achieve our potentialities (as humans, making the most of one's humanity). Deciding what is the monument of one's existence.
Not pessimistic but activistic!
!! Not looking at your days left but at days you've managed to live to your fullest !! WBW
Logotherapy as a technique
Anticipatory anxiety - the fear is mother of the event. Hyper-intention (trying to much to experience something) (ex: trying to exp orgasm).
Hyper-attention (focussing too much on yourself or one aspect of your life (I.e. orgasm))
Attention should be focussed not on herself but on the partner (dereflected), enabling orgasms.
Logotherapy 3
Paradoxical intention (reversing the intent of your fear, laughing at it)
Ex: fear of perpspiring (decide to show them how much he could sweat instead of fearing it)
Ex2: Writer's block : show how much scribbles you can do (instead of beautifully writing)
Ex3: Stuttering boy (trying to enact your fear)
Fear of sleeplessness (in the majority of the cases due to the fact that patient ignore that the organism provides itself, by itself, with the minimum amount of sleep really needed)
Advice : try to stay awake as long as possible. Hyper intention (try to fall asleep) is replaced by paradoxical intention (try to stay awake) which usually is followed by actual sleep.
Paradoxical intention of mindful eating : try to eat as mindlessly as possible.
Note: its no panacea. Works with obsessions and fears.
The collective neurosis
The one of our age : Existential vacuum/nihilitsic philosophy (being has no meaning).
Stems from the view that a man is not free, bound by genes and birth. According to Frankl, a man still has free will.
Critique of pandeterminism (lack of free will)
The view of man which disregards his capacity to take a stand towards each condition whatsoever.
Man is not fully determined, he is self-determining. He can outgrow his conditions.
Ex: Doctor Jay - Satanic figure (Nazi Doctor) mass murderer who was apparently a great cell co-inmate.
Freedom is not the last word, part of the story but not everything. It must be accompanied with responsibility (cf. Statue of liberty + statue of Responsibility)
Freedom of will is the psyatric credo of V.Frankl.
Postscript the Case for a tragic Optimism
Remaining optimistic in spite of the tragic triad:
1. Pain
2. Guilt
3. Death
How to still say yes to life in those conditions? Tragic optimism = Optimism in the face of Tragedy.
What matters is to make the best out of every given situation!
1. Turning suffering into human achievement and accomplishment.
2. Deriving from guilt the opportunity to change oneself for the better.
3. Deriving from life transitoriness and incentive to take action.
Optimism is not to be commanded (nor hope or faith). A human being is just in the look a for a reason to be happy.
One should not pity old people, as it is true they have less opportunities than the young people but they have a lot of realities (self-actualisations, experiences) in their past already, meanings they have fulfilled. Nothing can remove that from them.
Current societies adore the young ones for their usefulness and forget the old ones for their dignity. If you only focus on current usefulness then you could as well easily advocate for euthanasia for people who've lost their social values (like Nazis did).
Nihilism doesn't mean that there is nothing but that everything is meaningless. There is no grand purpose in the universe, its just there.
Logotherapy is undogmatic, it shows what could be valuable and let the user pick.
Saints in logotherapy: