Viktor Frankl and Our Search For Meaning

Saturday Stories

February 23, 2019

Viktor Frankl and Our Search For Meaning 

By Jonathan Aquino

I

Viktor Frankl once said – "When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves." One of the greatest lessons I've learned is that we can always decide how we react to anything, and nothing can take it away from us. I got this from a man who has suffered the most savage brutality that humans can inflict on their fellowmen. We all know that the Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl had been imprisoned, tortured and driven to slavery during the Holocaust, but we cannot possibly even imagine the magnitude of the kind of suffering. 

II

Yet Frankl knew it. He has seen the most evil face of humanity. He felt that absolute worst pain that anyone can ever endure – the cold-blooded murder of his entire family. The Nazis killed his wife, his mother, his father and his brother. For three agonizing years since their capture in 1942, Frankl was sent to four different camps including the infamous Auschwitz. It was at that time that he learned he can still choose what to think and feel, and it helped him from being overwhelmed by the paralyzing sense of hopelessness.

III

Many years ago, I read the novel The Odessa File by Frederick Forsyth. The story, set in the sixties, is about a young German reporter who made it his personal mission to find the commandant of a Nazi death camp during the war and bring him to justice. It began when he found the diary of a camp survivor. When I read it, I felt numb. I heard about Hitler in history class, but that was the first when I saw the Holocaust on my mind. And this was before I've seen Schindler's List and The Boy In The Striped Pajamas. It was then when the Holocaust became a living reality for me – how it had systematically sent more than six million innocent men, women and children to death. I felt such a sense of loss that was so vivid, and still is, even today.

IV

A lot of things have happened to me since then. And so, many years later, when I read Frankl's now-classic "Man's Search For Meaning," I still remember the feeling – but I now also see the victory of the human spirit. It is because of my life experiences that I have the deepest respect for those who had overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles and became better human beings. These are the people who inspire us to find own inner strength to face our own battles. Frankl developed logotherapy, a method of psychotherapy based on the premise that the primary motivating force in humans is to find meaning in their lives. When a person has doubts about his himself, it creates within him "existential vaccum," a sense of being empty and without purpose. But when he believes in himself, and believes that there is still hope even in the darkest night, then nothing defeat him.

Finding Meaning In Difficult Times

An Interview With Dr. Viktor Frankl

Photo courtesy of Audible.fr