Man's Search for Meaning essay

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.