If you can remember back to my entry on the dichotomy of control, I wrote a small piece based around this quote:
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way — Viktor E. Frankl
This quote is so rich that I have decided to dedicate a whole entry to this idea. it is called Logotherapy. Logotherapy was developed by Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist and holocaust survivor who shared this new school of psychotherapy with the world following his liberation from concentration camps and the end of the Second World War.
To Be Worthy
Within the camps, he found sufficient evidence to suggest that despite terrible circumstances, man has the freedom to choose. Every second was a choice of whether you would, or would not submit to the controlling powers who threaten your existence.
There is only one thing I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings — Dostoevsky
Suffering is fundamental to our being. It is for this reason that the way in which a man accepts his fate, and the sufferings that it entails, gives him the opportunity to find deeper meaning. In the face of suffering will you be brave? Or will you forgo any essence of dignity and be reduced to no more than an animal in a cage? To bear your sufferings, of which there is no shortage of in concentration camps, serves as evidence of your agency, and inner freedom despite all forces pointing the other way.
Other observations in the camps demonstrated that those who lay aside their purpose fell victim to the camps degenerating influences. Losing purpose causes the structures within you mentally and physically to decay. It is difficult to aim upwards when your provisional existence is terrible and seemingly indefinite.
Aiming Upward
And now for the famous:
He who has a why can bear with almost any how — Nietzche
An aim or purpose — a why — pursued would strengthen prisoners to bare the terrible how of their existence. Viktor Frankl was running on the idea that he would one day see his Wife again, and the idea that he could publish his manuscript of A Pyschologists Experiences the Concentration Camp, later translated in English to Man’s Search for Meaning. “It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us”. It ultimate comes down to finding the right answers to the problems that are put in front of you, and to fulfill the tasks which are constantly set for each individual. After accepting a task, you can then reconfigure yourself spiritually, mentally and physically to see it through despite it’s challenges.
Logotherapy
As mentioned before, Logotherapy is a school of psychotherapy, which focuses on the meaning of human existence and of man’s search for this meaning. This ‘will to meaning’ is the primary force driving those to find their unique and specific meaning and to fulfil such meaning. This supercedes that of a search for pleasure (Freud) or superiority (Adler) as something so constant and everlasting that we are even willing to die for it.
It is to be emphasised that existential distress born from man’s search for meaning, and even his doubt of such a meaning, is not derived from any disease. It follows then, that any drugs or remedies which suppress this distress will likely not solve the problem.
A search for meaning is not a harmonious and perfectly regulating process. It is rather a process of constant tension. This tension is not to be avoided, for it is the most fundamental pre-requisite for a strong and resilient and relentless outlook on life. To have strong mental health is not to exist in a state of tensionless wandering. It is found in a balance between what you are now and what you will become.
It is the dwellers of Auschwitz and Dachau whom had a task waiting for them that were best positioned to survive and see the task fulfilled, and they were dealing with a lot more tension than you do everyday.
Will you accept that tasks assigned to you and see them fulfilled?
Just Something To Consider
🔗 Sources
Frankl, V. E. (1963). Man’s Search for Meaning. Washington Square Press
If you haven’t read this book. Please find try to do so.