Man's Search for Meaning

I love books; all kinds of books - Novel, Classics, Fictions, Project Management & Strategic Management, Philosophy, Psychology, Anthropology, Sociology, Religions, Political Science & Conspiracy Theories, Law & Jurisprudence, Biographies, Feng Shui, Information Technology & Globalization, Accounting & Finance, Health & Nutrition, Jokes, Mahathirism & Paklahism.

But only few books leaves profound thoughts on me, and this one, Man's Search of Meaning by Viktor E Frankl (Beacon Press, Boston, 1959, 2006) is one of them.

The Forward penned by Harold S. Kushner sums up everything. In Harold’s words, "if a book has one passage, one idea with the power to change a person’s life, that alone justifies reading it, rereading it, and finding room for it on one’s shelves. This book has several such passages." I agree wholeheartedly!

In this book, Frankl described poignantly those prisoners who gave up on life, lost all Hope for a future, and inevitably died. They died less from lack of food or medicine than from lack of Hope.

But Frankl discovered an enduring insight, in that, “forces beyond our control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.” In Frankl’s words: “You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you feel and do about what happens to you.” “ …that we can never be left with nothing as long as we retain the freedom to choose how we will respond to a suffering."

In his thesis, Frankl examines his and the many prisoners’ experiences at the concentration camp, and observed that there are three phases of the inmates mental reactions to camp life: the period following the admission; the period when he is well entrenched in camp routine; and the period following his release and liberation.

The symptom that characterizes the first phase is shock. Auschwitz is the name that stood for all that was horrible: gas chambers, crematoriums, massacres, terrible and immense horror.

Newly arrived prisoners experienced the torture of other most painful emotions, all of which he tried to deaden. They were disgusted with the ugliness which surrounded them.

Days or weeks passed, and the prisoners soon passed into the second stage of his psychological reactions, for they did not avert their eyes any more. By then their feelings were blunted, and they watched unmoved and unconcerned.

Apathy, the blunting of the emotions and the feeling that once could not care any more, were the symptoms arising during the 2nd stage of the prisoners’ psychological reactions, and which eventually make them insensitive to daily and hourly beatings. This insensibility of the prisoners soon surrounded them with a very necessary protection shell. Reality dimmed, and all efforts and all emotions were centered on one task: preserving one’s own life.

The daily ration consisted of watery soup given out once daily, and a small crump of bread. The diet was absolutely inadequate, taking into consideration the heavy manual work and constant exposure to the cold in inadequate clothing. When the last layers of subcutaneous fat had vanished, they looked like skeletons disguised with skin and rags, and they could watch their bodies beginning to devour them. The organism digested its own protein, and the muscles disappeared. Then the body had no power of resistance left. They were, but a small portion of a great mass of human flesh, of a mass behind barbed wire, a mass of which daily a certain portion begins to rot because it has become lifeless.

In spite of all the enforced physical and mental primitiveness of the life in a concentration camp, it was still possible for spiritual life to deepen, Frankl said. On one of those morning march to work site, a thought of his beloved woman came to mind that transfixed Frankl: for the first time in his life he saw the truth, the truth that, LOVE is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire.

It is from then that Frankl understood, how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, in the contemplation of his beloved.

For Love goes very 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. There is no need for him to know whether she is still alive at all; for nothing could touch the strength of his love, his thoughts, and the image of his beloved. "Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death".

This intensification of the inner self helped him to find a refuge from the emptiness, desolation and spiritual poverty of his existence, by letting him escape into the past. When given free rein, his imagination played with past events, his nostalgic memory glorified them and assumed a strange character. These memories could move one to tears.

As the inner life of the prisoner tended to become more intense, he also experienced the beauty of art and nature as never before. Under their influence he sometimes even forgot his own frightful circumstances.

Humor was another of the soul’s weapons in the fight for self preservation. Humor, more than anything else, can afford aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation. The attempt to develop a sense of humor is an art of living. It was possible for the prisoners to practice the art of living in a concentration camp, although suffering is omnipotent.

The 3rd stage of a prisoner’s mental reactions is the psychology of the prisoner after his liberation. In the morning when the white flag was hoisted above the camp gates after days of high tension, the state of inner suspense was followed by total relaxation. But it would be quite wrong to think that the prisoners went mad with joy. “Freedom”, they repeated to themselves, and yet they could not grasp it. They had said this word so often during all the years they dreamed about it, that it had lost its meaning. They could not grasp the fact that freedom was theirs. They had literally lost their ability to feel pleased and had to relearn it slowly.

One day, after the liberation, Frankl walked through the country past flowering meadows, for miles and miles, toward the market town near the camp. There was no one to be seen around; there was nothing but the wide earth and sky and the larks’ jubilation and the freedom of space. He stopped, looked around, and up to the sky – and then he went down on his knees. At that moment there was little in mind – always the same: “I called to the Lord from my narrow prison and He answered me in the freedom of space.” How long he knelt, he couldn’t remember.

But from that day onwards, his new life started. Step by step he progressed, until he again became a human being.

Frankl’s experience at the concentration camp serves as the existential validation of his doctrine, Logotherapy, which seeks to convey the message that life holds a potential meaning under any condition, even the most miserable ones.

Frankl has this to tell us readers: "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."

Frankl approvingly quote the words of Nietzsche: “He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How.”

In writing this book, Frankl states that he is not writing an account of facts and events at the concentration camp but rather of his personal experiences, experiences which millions of prisoners have suffered time and again.

In attempting a methodical presentation of the subject, it was difficult, as psychology requires a certain scientific detachment. But does a man who makes his observations while he himself is a prisoner possess the necessary detachment? Such detachment is only granted to an outsider, but that outsider is too far removed to make any statements of real value. Only the man inside knows. His judgment may not be objective; his evaluations may be out of proportion. This is inevitable. Attempt to avoid personal bias may be made but it is real difficult of a book of this kind.

This book taught me some great lessons, and it is profound knowledge. I will search for meaning in life, and to live life to the fullest. For what I had conceived from the knowledge imparted unto me, no power on earth can take from me; not only my experiences in life, but all trials and tribulations that I had journeyed through, whatever great thoughts and failures I have had, and all what I had toiled, all these will not be lost, though it had past, for it will be brought back into being.

I had been through, is surely a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind.

I hope you readers will enjoy it too.

Those interested to read more