Monday, March 30, 2020

The Search for Meaning in Terrible Times

Seventy-five years ago, on March 26, 1945, Viktor Frankl celebrated his 40th birthday in the worst conditions imaginable. He was confined to a concentration camp in Dachau, Germany. Before the year was over, however, not only had he been liberated but he had also written an international bestselling book.
Living in Terrible Times
Currently, many countries of the world are living in a time of fear and anxiety—and of death—because of the novel coronavirus known as COVID-19. This new pandemic certainly should not be downplayed, but the circumstances in which Viktor Frankl lived in 1944-45 were far worse.
Frankl was born in Vienna, the child of Jewish parents. Being a Jew was no particular problem there—until the invasion of Austria by the Nazis in 1938. Three years later Frankl married Mathilde Grosser, and the very next year they were arrested by the Nazis.
In 1944 Frankl and his wife were transported to Auschwitz. Later, Mathilde was moved to another camp, and the next year she died of typhus at the age of 24. Frankl was also moved to a concentration camp in Dachau.
The suffering and death-toll in those prisons are almost incredible—but Frankl managed to live through that terrible time and was able to tell the story of the suffering he observed and experienced in the concentration camps.
Finding Meaning in Terrible Times
Near the end of April 1945, Frankl and his fellow prisoners were liberated. He then returned to Vienna and, among other things, wrote a book that was published the next year. The English translation was first published in 1959. Three years later it was issued again under the title Man’s Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy.  
By the time of his death in 1997, Frankl’s superlative book had sold more than ten million copies and had been translated into 24 languages. 
As early as 1926, Frankl had used the word logotherapy, the term that came to characterize what is called the Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy, preceded by the work of two other great Austrian psychiatrists: Sigmund Freud (1856~1939) and Alfred Adler (1870~1937).
Logotherapy emphasizes the importance of finding meaning in one's life. Thus, Frankl emphasized the will to meaning in contrast to the will to pleasure as found in Freudian psychoanalysis and the will to power as stressed by Adlerian psychology.
As Frankl elucidated,
It is one of the basic tenets of logotherapy that man’s main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life. That is why man is even ready to suffer, on the condition, to be sure, that his suffering has a meaning (2014 ed., p. 106).
Suffering, Frankl saw, has meaning when it helps people learn new truths and when it makes them stronger. He wrote about citing Nietzsche in a talk he gave to the 2,500 men in his camp: “That which does not kill me, makes me stronger.”
What about These Terrible Times?
There are many differences and some similarities between the current COVID-19 pandemic and the concentration camps Victor Frankl experienced in 1944-45. The suffering was greater for most of the population there and the death rates much, much higher.
But rather than a relatively small population in a very small area, the current pandemic is worldwide and is affecting, or likely soon will affect, large numbers of people in countries around the world. In fact, COVID-19 threatens to devastate poor countries.
For most of you who read this, up until now the pandemic has been mainly an inconvenience. Some, however, may already be suffering financially. But as the weeks go by, some of you may have friends or family members who become ill—and some of us may become ill with the virus ourselves.
In these trying times, let’s heed Frankl’s counsel to keep being thankful for the blessings of the past and to keep searching for meaning, which makes it possible to be resolute in the present and hopeful for the future.
FOR MORE . . .
** Click here for excerpts I gathered from Frankl’s book.
** Here is the link to “Why Meaning Matters,” a 1963 interview with Frankl (13 min.)
** Click here for an illustrated, 6½- minute summary of Man’s Search for Meaning.

12 comments:

  1. The first response I received about this morning's new blog post was from Thinking Friend Eric Dollard in Chicago:

    "Thanks, Leroy, for bringing up Victor Frankl and his book, which I read a few years ago. I highly recommend it to everyone. Frankl wrote in his book that those who survived were kept alive because they lived for something beyond themselves, whether it was a loved one or a cause. This gave these survivors meaning and purpose. (One very important cause for those survivors was to tell the story of Auschwitz.)"

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  2. Thanks for eliciting a brief review of my old relationship with Frankl. My marginal notes in *The Unconscious God* startled me! My bottom line to that book was “unbelievable!” I think I meant I found its form of argumentation unpersuasive, even when I agreed with many conclusions.

    The last words in my edition of *Man’s Search for Meaning* are: “. . . [M]an is that being who has invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who has entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord’s Prayer or the *Shema Yisrael* on his lips.”

    A human being also scratched this prayer on a concentration camp wall: “O Lord, when I shall come with glory into your kingdom, do not remember only the men of good will; remember also the men of evil. May they be remembered not only for their acts of cruelty in this camp, the evil they have done to us prisoners, but balance against their cruelty the fruits we have reaped under the stress and in the pain; the comradeship, the courage, the greatness of heart, the humility and patience which have been born in us and become part of our lives, because we have suffered at their hands.
    May the memory of us not be a nightmare to them when they stand in judgment. May all that we have suffered be acceptable to you as a ransom for them. ‘Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and die . . .’" [Source: Fowler, *Becoming Adult, Becoming Christian*, p. 121, 122]

    Now that IMHO is meaning-making!

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    1. Dick, thanks so much for your thought-provoking comments. (I was glad to hear from you again; it had been a while!)

      I realized that I had failed to include those important final words of "Man's Search for Meaning" in the excepts I posted on my supplementary blogsite, so I went back and added them. Thanks!

      Thanks, too, for sharing those powerful words from James Fowler.

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  3. This was a real opener for me because I've been using much of what he advocates and from a much Bigger&Better person than me that I respect Very much.
    I have taught for years in my Seminars that it's Not so much about the circumstances about what we cannot control, but out Attitude and response to those circumstances.
    Thanks Leroy for recommending this incredible man to me and his writings.

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    1. The above comment was from Thinking Friend John Tim Carr in California.

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    2. Thanks, John Tim, for reading and responding to this new blog post. I am pleased that you found it helpful--and in harmony with what you have taught for many years.

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  4. I was pleased with this mid-morning email from local Thinking Friend Marilyn Peot:

    Leroy, this is phenomenal! I just came in from a delicious walk in the sun all the while aware of the devastating experiences written in NIGHT by Elie Wiesel. Now you come up with Victor Frankl. Truly the Spirit is among us...showing the way.

    "To top that, Holy Week is almost upon us...giving plenty for us to ponder...the whole Paschal Mystery that reminds us life is all about dying and becoming. In our liturgy today we have the following prayer: 'O God...grant us to pass from former ways to newness of life...' The timing of this petition surely fits our present basic need for a deep conversion! The dandelions and wild flowers are reminding us: 'there is hope for the flowers'--and us!

    "By the way, I have heard that 'God is upset with us...so we've been sent to our room.'"

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    1. Marilyn, thanks for your delightful comments about this morning's blog post.

      I thought your closing words were funny--but they caused me to remember the words by Paul Tillich I read earlier today: "Loneliness expresses the pain of being alone, and solitude expresses the glory of being alone." I know you like being with people, but my guess is that when you are alone in your room you experience solitude rather than loneliness.

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  5. And this is from Bob Leeper, another local Thinking Friend.

    "Dr. Seat: Your messages are amazing and uplifting at a time when we need amazement and resilience. Much appreciated. If we feel confined now, can we imagine how Frankl survived and went on to inspire the world!!!"

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  6. Here are comments received yesterday from local Thinking Friend Bill Ryan:

    "Frankl's book was given to me in 1965, leaving a deep & lasting impact. I have read it at least twice since, including one time when I did a lot of counselling. A few years ago I recommended that it be the book that incoming students at Rockhurst read and I think they did. I'm currently reading Rabbi Jonathan Sacks's book 'To Heal a Fractured World - The Ethics of Responsibility' (2005). He sites Frankl significantly. So Frankl's work seems to continue to resonate."

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  7. CORONAVIRUS

    april fool dreams remembering
    christmas past
    mary joseph baby jesus ice cages
    seeing no palm processional
    spring without easter
    passover without justice

    april fool dreams observing
    beelzebub self quarantine photo yacht
    yellow haired orange antichrist
    denying ventilators unappreciative governors
    angel of death passes over them
    saving his strange mercy for old weak compromised unlucky
    angels of mercy

    april fool dreams seeking
    tulips daffodils green grass blue sky
    viktor frankl search for meaning
    will to pleasure will to power
    pandemic dachau corona auschwitz
    spring without easter
    passover without justice

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  8. I appreciated this post and the additional links. IMHO, we have much to learn from Shoah survivors like Frankl and Wiesel.

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