In the beginning of his book Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl
describes distraught prisoners being shipped to various concentration camps in
Germany and Poland. His book is his story of being in Auschwitz. Frankl
describes a death rate of the workers at
6 per day, not including those who perished in the ovens and gas chambers. His
descriptions are so vivid I am sitting beside him throughout his horrible
journey. I am one of the prisoners. I felt the terror as our train approached Auschwitz
and the iciness of the water hitting my skin while I was being disinfected. The
book is interesting in that it is more of a first person psychological analysis
of life in a concentration camp and not the appalling descriptive novel that
have been well used.
In reading part one I decide that Frankl is an
existential psychologist. This is not, however, a choice that he made. Rather, the
SS forced it on him. Frankl describes many situations where a normal human
would break down and give up, but many of the prisoners in the camps did not. Frankl
posits that they found some thing outside of themselves to cling to, their last
stand in life was looking forward and seeing hope. We see support for his
theory throughout his account of events: the lady who spoke to the tree for
example: “it said to me, ‘I am here—I am here—I am life, eternal life”’ and in Frankl’s
description of having extensive conversations with his wife whilst on grueling
walks to and fro between camp and work. These open lines of communication with
what I believe to be their God, or whatever version they decide, is what kept
them alive. Their “God” is their link to hope in a hopelessness, fear, and
despair filled life.
Conversely, the prisoners who lost hope and
faith in the future, the ones who had gone through the three states of mind
that Frankl describes, shock, apathy, and depersonalization, are disconnected
from a Higher Power. These prisoners Frankl sees are akin to the dogs in the
Maier and Seligman Learned Helplessness experiments that simply lay there while
being shocked by the cage in which they sit, accepting any and all punishment
that comes their way. I find it odd that the prisoners do not seem to indicate
their lives were ever in the hands of the SS or the capos, rather they name
“fate” as deciding whether they die in the camps. The
prisoners were in so much denial about their lives being in the hands of
another that “fate” made it more acceptable to them—their suffering and death.
In Part Two Frankl explains the concept of an
“existential vacuum” where human beings became detached from a number of animal
instincts and with them basic animal behaviors. Frankl explains that with the
absence of these instincts, we are free to choose our own path in life, we can
adhere to the norm and do what others are doing, or we can do as we are told—conformity
or totalitarianism respectively. He explains: “ The existential vacuum
manifests itself mainly in a state of boredom.” I believe that in this state of
boredom we go through our best transitions in life. I grew bored of chasing
women and of consuming drugs and alcohol, activities that I do not partake in even
at the time of writing this paper. Out of this boredom came the most valuable
part of my being: my spirituality, my belief system, and the motivation for a
post secondary education.
Frankl’s experiences in part one of his book clearly
pointed to the framework of Logotherapy, one would even think for a short while
about the title of the book and determine the underpinnings of Frankl’s therapy
model. Because of my past
experiences, I find Frankl’s method of looking ahead, a change in attitude, and
finding meaning in life during an intervention to uplift a client is somewhat
of an oddity. For the entirety of my degree I have been learning about methods
to deal with past trauma, healing past hurts, and looking to the past to find what went wrong, or
correcting ways of thinking that were learned in the past. Incorporating logotherapy’s three main ideas into my future
practice would take some extensive research but will definitely be worth it.
Freedom to Will
Frankl
believes that we all have an internal locus of control, that we are free to
shape our
lives
to any high or low that we choose.
I
believe that our lives are “run” by both internal and external forces. We
ultimately
choose
the direction we want to go in our lives, but along the way are forces out of
our control
that
impinge on our plans. It becomes our choice to make adjustments or not. Upon
rereading of
the
book, I find that Frankl himself is a dualistic thinker as well:
Forces
beyond your control can take away everything you possess
except
one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. You cannot control what happens
to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what
happens to you.
Will to Meaning
Frankl was alive in the camps by the
desire to see his wife again and to continue
rebuilding
his manuscript which he lost at Auschwitz. That was his will to meaning. Frankl
states
that we
are free to exist, to reach goals, and find purpose. We must do these or we
should cease
living.
I believe that no matter our will to meaning, it
will change. As stated above, my will once was to date the prettiest girl, and
to consume more drugs or alcohol than the rest. As I matured, this all came to
end as I immersed myself in First Nations Culture. My meaning was in finding
the direct connection to The Creator. Though that remains a strong part of my
meaning, I now include learning since I entered academia. My meaning changed
again three years ago when my daughter was born.
Meaning in Life
How I interpret Frankl’s idea in Meaning in Life
is the person has reached the spirit’s fullest potential.
I believe a spirit operating at it’s fullest
capacity is open and flexible, able to take each moment and turn it into
purpose. I describe this as “thinking with my heart” where I can see everything
for what it is without experience masking truth.
Applying Frankl’s method to my own life is
something I need to do: people ask me what I plan to do with my life after
school. Most of the time I have no idea what to do, I just know that I want to
help people, to better my life, and better the lives of my nuclear family. I
will eventually be helping First Nations people with our multifaceted problems.
In particular I will be focusing on Aboriginal, that is First Nations, Metis,
and Inuit, youth.
Logotherapy would benefit Aboriginal youth the
most. I have had the chance to travel across Canada to various First Nations
reserves and give talks on Education, drugs and alcohol, self-esteem, and
leadership. What I have seen is Aboriginal children who want to be doctors,
lawyers, professional skateboarders, athletes, and politicians. They really
feel that they can reach those heights as young children. When they reach
eight, nine, and ten years old, however, their dreams are extinguished by…life.
Enter drugs, alcohol, and gangs. These children finally have something to do,
and people who accept them for who they are.
Logotherapy would help me address these issues, rekindle the aspirations
they had as young children, and help them move towards their dreams again.
Frankl’s book has opened new paths of research
for me, and I am very appreciative of the suffering that he endured to bring
logotherapy to the world. I will be taking a deeper look into Frankl’s therapy
model and attempt to incorporate it into my future methods of helping. That
said, I am still struggling on how to apply it to my future clients. Perhaps
because I only heard of logotherapy at the end of my degree, a degree that has
taught me to look to the past to help fix life problems. It feels as though
logotherapy has been used for quite some time already, for as long as hope has
been the anchor to sanity. But it took Frankl to finally bring the concepts
into the light and present them in a way that makes sense. As horrible as the
Nazi concentration camps were, stories of hope shine through the grimness of it
all. Everything happens for a reason, it took the Nazi’s to help Ann Frank to
inspire the world, and to help Frankl bring logotherapy into fruition.
