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Frankel practically refused to give up his life under any circumstances. He was well aware of two things; that no one can escape from concentration camp, and no one will survive the concentration camp. All the prisoners shared this believe for many logical reasons; they were starving, they were freezing, they were deprived from sleeping, and they were forcefully over-worked hard labor. Prisoners were suffering, dying, and sent to the gas chambers in the daily basis. A selection of sick, injured, and feeble prisoners who were incapable of work would be sent to one of the big central camps which were fitted with gas chambers and crematoriums. Some prisoners refused both suffering and dying in the concentration camp, and chose dying by refusing work. Therefore, they were immediately taken to the gas chambers and be cremated. Some prisoners were lost hope and taken their own lives. In the middle of all those suffering and dying, Frankel found the meaning of living to stay alive.

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The author argues that a realistic fear, like the fear of death cannot be tranquilized away by its psychodynamic interpretation. And a neurotic fear such as agoraphobic (fear of being in open places), cannot be cured by philosophical understanding. However, logotherapy has developed a special technique to handle such cases. Anticipatory anxiety is frequently observed in neurotic individuals, it is the fear that it produces precisely what the patient is afraid of. It is also called excessive intention which is can be reversed the technique of logotherapy.

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No pity or remorse was felt by the SS guards in how the typhus patients were treated. They died miserably as many ran high temperatures and were often delirious and many were moribund. Once dead their shoes were taken, left over foods they may have had and their clothing for another man's use. They didn't care how long the bodies remained where other healthy people. Upon receiving complaints the nurses took the corpses by their legs allowing them to drop into the small corridor between the two rows of boards that were the beds for fifty typhus patients. Frankl even mentions how the dead corpse was placed by him while he was eating "eyes still open". This was really touching. Again, no respect for human life.

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I can only imagine how Frankl felt when he was next in line in the selection process to either be sent to the right side for work purposes or to the left side where the sick and incapable went to be transported to a "special camp". In thinking about this I can't imagine what was possibly going through his head; I'm sure "survival mode" processing. He probably had to think really quick on his feet on how he could stand out to make sure he went to the right side. Considering this he made an effort to walk upright remaining confident when it was his turn; he made sure he put in extra efforts to look smart and hard at working.  He ended up winning this battle in selection because if he looked anything less than strong and smart he would be sent to the chamber.  This really saddened me.

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One quote I really appreciated from Frankl was when he said "forces beyond your control can take away everthing you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation". This really resonated with me on so many levels. It helped me to appreciate that while there are situations that we all have to endure whether good or bad; even though not as extreme as was experienced in Auschwitz we still have the ability to decipher how we choose to handle the situation at hand to maintain our own level of sanity. Frankl mentions that while we can't control what happens to you in life you can control how you feel and then do about what happens to you.

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I thought this video version may be helpful. It simply reiterates the base points of the book.

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MAN'S SEARCH FOR MEANING BY VIKTOR FRANKL

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What do you all think about it? There is a portion of the book that I was really struck by - but again I am reminded about Freire. (I did write a paper in undergrad about German collective guilt after World War II.) Here is the portion:

"As for the concept of collective guilt, I personally think that it is totally unjustified to hold one person responsible for the behavior of another person or a collective persons. Since the end of World War II I have not become weary of publicity arguing the collective guilt concept. Sometimes, however, it takes a lot of didatic tricks to detach people from their superstitions. An American woman once confronted me with the reproach, 'How can you still write some of your books in German, Adolf Hitler's language?' In response, I asked her id she had knives in her kitchen, and when she answered that she did, I acted dismayed and shocked, exclaiming, 'How can you still use knives after so many killers have used them to stab and murder their victims?' Sh stopped objecting to my writing books in German" (Frankl 2006, 149-150).

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Sunny,

Personally, suffering was one of the greatest of Frankl's insights as well. There is so much to suffering, but again I am drawn to the Nietzsche quote: "He who has a why to live can bear almost any how."

Suffering ceases to become suffering when it has found meaning. So suffering has a purpose, and it is through that suffering that we are often better people. Frankl throws a wrench in this assumption through when he writes: "we know-the best of us did not return" (Frankl 2006, 6). This quote is in reference to those who survived the Holocaust. Surviving the Holocaust changed people. Frankl posits there are three stages. The first comes upon arrival at a camp. Everything is a shock; however, after a while, days, weeks, or months, one enters Phase 2 which is essentially a numbing stage. Death, dying, and suffering are a norm. The third Phase occurs upon liberation. When those who have survived can recount the horrors that they saw and perhaps what they did to ensure their, and perhaps their friends', survival.

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I think it's really easy to push those who perpetrated horrific crimes to the periphery, claiming that they are "monsters" and the such. Now, I am in no way condoning what these people did or have done, I just want to simply reiterate that they are human. Yes, what they did was wrong, but they are also of the same species.

Frankl says it best when he writes: "Our generation is realistic,  for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered the gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips" (Frankl 2006, 134).

Frankl also intermittently mentions how in some cases his German captors were kind, or at least if they were kind - even if it was the briefest of moments - it seemed multiplied a thousand. Strange, no? A small act of kindness from an "other" carried more weight than from those of the one's own group.

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"He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how" (Frankl 2006, 76).

Frankl uses this quote by Nietzsche several times over the course of the book. I think it encapsulates his theory of logotherapy very well. Essentially, if someone is able to find a purpose, then they have found a reason to live. Frankl used this theory to survive the several camps he was sent to. For him, he had the potentialness of meeting his wife after the war and finishing his first book which had been taken from him upon arrival at his first camp.

Hopefully, none of us will ever have to or have ever had to deal with something as horrible of the Holocaust, but I have found this theory to be most helpful in life. Finding meaning doesn't have to be a grandiose idea, instead it can be small.

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For me, the most profound part of Man's Search for Meaning was Frankl's insights on suffering that came from his time in a concentration camp. His observations about those who made it and those who did not come back time and time again to having purpose and a meaning for your suffering. He quotes Neitzsche several times throughout saying "he who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how" with many of his own observations on fellow prisoners that quickly succumbed once they lost their why. Frankl goes on to explain that the why doesn't have to be this grand, abstract meaning of life that we are so often told needs to be found. Instead it is something that is individualized and consists of man answering to his own life which is a fundamental concept of logotherapy. I find this very practical and comforting as it puts the meaning into one's own hands versus feeling the need to be struck by some greater force and getting disappointed when that doesn't happen. The prisoners that survived were more inclined to find purpose in their suffering as well as be able to focus toward the future which is certainly something we can all take to heart in our own lives as everyone suffers some unavoidable fate eventually. I also can't help but think of Freire in his discussion of the "power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed" as being the only thing sufficient enough to free both them and ultimately their oppressors (Freire 2012, 44). I think the power of this mental and spiritual freedom that we all possess and that no one can take from us is a beautiful and empowering concept.  Frankl's story and that of his fellow inmates was incredibly inspiring and I feel lucky to have read this book the second time as an adult now with my own experience with suffering to apply these greater lessons.

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Victor Frankl discusses that while their were cruel "Capos", there were also some SS guards that displayed some humanity toward the prisoners through small acts of kindness such as giving out an extra piece of bread. Frankl discusses that from these experiences it is clear that there are two races of men in this world - the "race" of the decent man and the "race" of the indecent man and both "penetrate into all groups of society." (Frankl 2006, 86) I found this passage particularly poignant and relevant for the ongoing struggles of intolerance of 'others' in our world today. So many are quick to classify an entire group as one way, using negative adjectives to bolster whatever their argument is to keep people out, treat people poorly or bomb one another. But I would argue that not only are there are two races of "decent" and "indecent" but most people, no matter what society, are decent and we judge too often by the indecent few (except when it comes to our own group of course). Frankl goes on to note that the concentration camp was an exposure of the "abyss" of the human depths in which we are all a mixture of good and evil. There are few opportunities in life that will expose this in such a raw, unfiltered way as this particular event but it is something that humankind needs to learn again and again to avoid its repetition.

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I had never heard of prisoners within concentration camps that were "promoted" to a status of pseudo guards to handle the less desirable tasks. Victor Frankl notes that these guards often "fared better than they had when they were free" and were often the most cruel in order to hold onto their elevated status in the camp (Frankl 2006, 4). I found this dynamic particularly disheartening that someone who had yesterday been a neighbor or friend, the exact same as these prisoners, could turn on their brethren so quickly and questioned how such a shift could happen. Was it just one more way in which  to survive the horrors they were facing or was there more to it? I thought again of Freire and his concept of the oppressed becoming oppressors because this is what they know and recognize to be "men". Frankl notes that the SS guards chose these Capos carefully as it is a certain type of person that has the "character" to turn against his own and perform the tasks required of them. Their dehumanization in the process of oppression led them to the point they didn’t recognize their own inhumanity or ceased to care. One has to wonder how these particular individuals reconciled their actions following their liberation from the camps.

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Common Prisoners and Capos: Was there once a good relationship?

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Common Prisoners and Capos: Was there once a good relationship?

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I was curious about Capos. Frankel introduced us to Capos that were also Jewish prisoners. The first chapter discusses a little about the process of selecting Capos.
Since this story is about who Frankel calls the common prisoners who the Capos despised I did find myself wonder why they were introduced so early in the book. Maybe Frankel was searching for the meaning of how innocent people become abusive so quickly. Were they like this for survival? Probably. Were they like this because other reasons. I began to think of the Standard Prison Experiment where a professor and graduate students studied the behavior of prison guards and inmates. The prison guards got so abusive this study had to end. However, it is interesting to consider how one's mind can change so quickly to be abusive. Below is the link to the website of the study.

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WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU PUT GOOD PEOPLE IN AN EVIL PLACE? DOES HUMANITY WIN OVER EVIL, OR DOES EVIL TRIUMPH? THESE ARE SOME OF THE QUESTIONS WE POSED IN THIS DRAMATIC SIMULATION OF PRISON LIFE CONDUCTED IN 1971 AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY.

"How we went about testing these questions and what we found may astound you. Our planned two-week investigation into the psychology of prison life had to be ended after only six days because of what the situation was doing to the college students who participated. In only a few days, our guards became sadistic and our prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress. Please read the story of what happened and what it tells us about the nature of human nature."
- Professor Philip G. Zimbardo

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WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU PUT GOOD PEOPLE IN AN EVIL PLACE? DOES HUMANITY WIN OVER EVIL, OR DOES EVIL TRIUMPH? THESE ARE SOME OF THE QUESTIONS WE POSED IN THIS DRAMATIC SIMULATION OF PRISON LIFE CONDUCTED IN 1971 AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY. "How we went about testing these questions and what we found may astound you.

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The introduction to his conversations with his wife came toward the first half of the book. I thought his statements about love and talking with her in his head were beautiful. I can't imagine how hard it would be to go through such trauma and not knowing where the love of your life is. My husband and I are a team, we do so much together. I did not know anyone when I moved to PA, and it would have been hard to be here without him. This book has become a love story in a way. Frankel would talk with his wife in his head. This was one way he escaped some of the trauma. Even though they were apart and he had no idea if she was still alive they were still a team. Love is very strong. Here's a quote, "Love goes far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance."

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Page 38 Frankel talks about his soul. It seems that the power for himself and to see hope was in his soul. By this point in the book we have already heard stories of awful tragedy and death. It seems like a powerful message about where he found his soul. He stated that a guard had whipped another man, and Frankel's thoughts were interrupted for a few minutes but then his soul found it's way back to the prisoner's existence in another world.

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It is the psychotherapeutic method that conveys by real examples that life holds a potential meaning under any conditions, even the most miserable ones. The driving force behind logotherapy is the idea that human beings are most motivated by a search for meaning,