31/01/2025
Now, I ask myself, “How can life want something from a man that it has taken everything from? Everything! Well, except his breath!”
Man’s Search for Meaning, a 1946 book written by Viktor E. Frankl, a survivor of the N**i concentration camp (prison) during World War II. He shares his horror and bitter experiences as a prisoner.
One major highlight of this book is- a man who has a “why” to live can bear with almost any “how”—Nietzsche. As such, Frankl dedicated his time/life to helping fellow prisoners find their “why” and selflessly rendering medical/psychological services to alleviate their pain and suffering.
He tells of plagues of undernourishment, starvation, torture, burning of alive and dead bodies, ravaging diseases, the overwork in extreme cold, and the physical and mental primitiveness of the life in camp.
In their quest for life, they could only help by seeing things in a humorous light and everything not connected with the immediate need of keeping oneself and one’s closest friends alive losses its value, just as they tend to lose the feeling of being an individual- they only counted because they had a prison number- dead or alive, was unimportant.
He tells that prisoners suffer apathy, irritability and inferiority complex, but the most depressing influence of all was that a prisoner could not know how long his term of imprisonment would be and their escape was sometimes looking into the past to alleviate their current suffering, but this robbed them of the opportunity to make something positive out of their present life.
He posited the theory of “logotherapy” which focuses on finding meanings to be fulfilled by the patient/prisoner in his future/meaning of human existence as well as man's search for such a meaning.
Just like in the day of liberation everything seemed like a beautiful dream, so also the day comes where all his camp/prison experiences would seem to him nothing but a nightmare.
