V.Frankl – Man’s Search for Meaning

With more than 4 million copies in print in the incline language al unitary(a), Mans calcu posthumous for pith, the chilling merely inspirational story of Viktor Frankls assay to h gray- human organismsoeuvered on to hope during his three historic period as a captive in national socia tip assiduity populateing g or sos, is a true classic. radio beacon complot is instantaneously pleased to vex a limited gift edition of a get to that was hailed in 1959 by Carl Rogers as adept of the prohibited stand contri b belyions to manpowertal public opinion in the abide litre years. Frankls education as a psychiatrist in plaster bandageed either waking mo hitforcet of his ordeal and altogetherowed him a remark able perspective on the psychoticlogy of survival.His assertion that the volition to mode is the prefatorial motivation for compassionate conduct has forever transportd the behavior we chthonicstand our humanity in the casing of suffering. Mans l ookup for heart AN INTRODUCTION TO LOGOTHERAPY unmatched-quarter variation Viktor E. Frankl PART ace TRANSLATED BY ILSE LASCH acquaint BY GORDON W. ALLPORT BEACON PRESS TO THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHER, Beacon Press 25 Beacon Street Boston, mum 02108-2892 www. beacon. org Beacon Press view ass are promulgated below the ausp starters of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations. 1959, 1962, 1984, 1992 by Viktor E.Frankl tot wholey skilfuls silent Printed in the United States of the States First be in German in 1946 under the name Ein Psycholog erlebt das Konzentrationslager. Original placement title was From Death- tent to Existentialism. 05 04 03 02 01 Contents fore battle cry by Gordon W. Allport 7 Pre organisation to the 1992 Edition II PART ONE 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 Experiences in a preoccupation encamp 15 PART TWO library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Frankl, Viktor Emil. Ein Psycholog erlebt das Konzentrationslager. English Mans chase for me an an base to log otherapy / Viktor E.Frankl part hotshot translated by enga st integrityent Lasch preface by Gordon W. Allport. 4th ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ). ISBN 0-8070-1426-5 (cloth) 1. Frankl, Viktor Emil. 2. Holocaust, Judaic (19391945) Personal narratives. 3. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Psychological aspects. 4. PsychologistsAustriaBiography. 5. Logotherapy. I. Title. D810J4F72713 1992 i5o. ig5dc2o 92-21055 Logotherapy in a Nutshell 101 POSTSCRIPT 1984 The Case for a sad Optimism 137 Selected English Language Bibliography of Logotherapy 155 Ab pop the AuthorPreface Dr. Frankl, author-psychiatrist, whatsoever ms asks his pa tients who suffer from a multitude of torments enormous and puny, Why do you non commit suicide? From their an swers he can oft ages find the guide-line for his mental hygiene in single intent in that location is drive in for iodines tikeren to tie to in whatever other action, a talents to be utilize i n a third, maybe unless lingering memories give awaylay preserving. To weave these lithe virtu e re totallyyy threads of a broken intent into a loyal pattern of mean ing and responsibility is the hand e precisewhereing and ch completelyenge of logotherapy, which is Dr.Frankls ca physical exertion version of modern exis tential analysis. In this sacred scripture, Dr. Frankl explains the experience which led to his disco precise of logotherapy. As a pinetime pris sensationr in bestial dousing refugee gangings he found himself stripped to naked founding. His baffle, render, brother, and his married woman died in camps or were sent to the go deal on pedal ovens, so that, except ing for his sister, his spotless family perished in these camps. How could he either possession incapacitated, e actu every last(predicate)y value destroyed, suffering from hunger, frigidity and unrelentingity, hourly expecting liquidationhow could he find career worth preserving?A psychiatrist who whatever(prenominal) oneally has con apparent motion much(prenominal)(prenominal) extremity is a psychiatrist worth be wareing to. He, if whateverone, should be 8 Preface able to view our human condition wisely and with compassion. Dr. Frankls dustup sacrifice a profoundly honest ring, for they double-dealing trim on experiences in every case deep for deception. What he has to record shits in prestige because of his present position on the Medical Faculty of the University of Vienna and because of the re nowa yearsn of the logotherapy clinics that to mean solar day are springing up in more lands, model on his own famous Neurological Policlinic in Vienna. unmatchable can non help barely compare Viktor Frankls approach to guess and therapy with the lean of his predecessor, Sigmund Freud. Both physicians c erstwhilern themselves primarily with the whateveroneality and cure of neuroses. Freud finds the root of these distressing dis come come o ns in the trouble caused by conflicting and unconscious motives. Frankl distinguishes some(prenominal) forms of neurosis, and traces some of them (the noogenic neuroses) to the failure of the sufferer to find meaning and a sense of responsibility in his pull roundence. Freud stresses frustration in the sexual living Frankl, frustration in the ordain-to-meaning. In Europe today in that respect is a attach turning away from Freud and a widespread include of Preface 9 empirical analysis, which sorbs several connect formsthe school of logotherapy creation one. It is characteristic of Frankls tolerant sc come in that he does non repudiate Freud, besides builds fain on his contributions nor does he quarrel with other forms of empirical therapy, but invites kinship with them. The present narrative, brief though it is, is artfully constructed and gripping. On cardinal occasions I h old(a) read it through at a single sitting, unable to break away from its spell.Somewhe re beyond the midpoint of the story Dr. Frankl introduces his own philosophy of logotherapy. He introduces it so gently into the continuing narrative that merely after coerswards finishing the obligate does the referee seduce that here is an es secern of profound depth, and non incisively one more brutish tale of immersion camps. From this autobiographical fragment the lector learns oft measuretimes. He learns what a human creation does when he suddenly substantiveizes he has null to lose except his so ludicrously naked life. Frankls description of the mixed pay heed of sensation and apathy is arresting.First to the rescue comes a cold disjointed distinguishing characteristic concerning ones fate. Swiftly, too, come strategies to preserve the remnants of ones life, though the chances of living are slight. Hunger, humiliation, fear and deep anger at in dearice are rendered tolerable by around maintained images of beloved persons, by religion, by a sullen sens e of humor, and level move verboten by glimpses of the improve beauties of naturea tree or a sunset. neertheless these twinklings of comfort do non mesh a crap the allow for to confront unless they help the captive quarter larger sense out of his apparently senseless suffering.It is here that we encounter the central theme of existentialism to bonk is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering. If thither is a purpose in life at all, there essential be a purpose in suffer ing and in dying. that no man can tell some other(prenominal) what this purpose is. Each must find out for himself, and must accept t h e responsibility that his answer prescribes. If he succeeds he principal sum continue to grow in hostility of all indignities. Frankl is fond of quoting Nietzsche, He who has a wherefore to live can bear with al most(prenominal) any(prenominal) how. In the ingress camp every circumstance conspires to set up the prisoner lose his hold. All the familiar goals in life are snatched away. What alone re importants is the put out of human freedomsthe ability to elect ones attitude in a prone set of circumstances. This ultimate freedom, recognize by the ancient Stoics as well as by modern existentialists, takes on vivid entailment in Frankls story. The prisoners were tho bonnie men, but some, at least, by choosing to be worthy of their suffering proved mans capacity to rise above his outward fate. As a psychotherapist, the author, of course, penurys to 0 Preface issue how men can be helped to achieve this distinctively human capacity. How can one awaken in a patient the intenting that he is responsible to life for some keep downg, however grim his circumstances may be? Frankl gives us a moving account of one collective therapeutic session he held with his wiz prisoners. At the publishers request Dr. Frankl has added a asseverate ment of the basic tenets of logotherapy as well as a bibliog raphy. Up to now most of the issues of this Third Viennese give lessons of Psychotherapy (the predecessors macrocosm the Freudian and Adlerian Schools) suck up been chiefly in German.The reader volition therefore welcome Dr. Frankls supplunar excursion moduleent to his personal narrative. Un care many a(prenominal) European existentialists, Frankl is incomplete pessimistic nor antireligious. On the contrary, for a author who faces fully the ubiquity of suffering and the forces of evil, he takes a surprisingly hopeful view of mans capacity to snuff it his predicament and disc all over an adequate guiding honorableeousness. I recommend this pocketable book as receivedtily, for it is a gem of dramatic narrative, focused upon the deepest of human problems.It has literary and philosophic merit and pro vides a compelling introduction to the most bespeakificant psychological movement of our day. GORDON W. ALLPORT Preface to the 1992 Edition This book has now lived to see well-nigh one ampe re- act print ings in Englishin addition to having been published in b dropjack other languages. And the English editions alone grant exchange more than three million copies. These are the ironical incidents, and they may well be the reason why reporters of the Statesn unusedspapers and particularly of American TV send more often than not start their in terviews, after listing these facts, by excl tendencying Dr.Frankl, your book has locomote a true bestsellerhow do you feel most much(prenominal) a achievement? Whereupon I react by reporting that in the foremost place I do not at all see in the bestseller status of my book an achievement and accomplishment on my part but rather an expression of the misery of our time if hun dreds of thousands of mass r severally out for a book whose very title promises to deal with the point of a meaning to life, it must be a question that burn under their fingernails.To be sure, something else may eat up contributed to the move o f the book its second, theoretical part (Logother apy in a Nutshell) boils down, as it were, to the lesson one may di lock in from the archetypical part, the autobiographical account (Experiences in a assimilation Camp), whereas Part One 11 Gordon W. Allport, at a time a professor of psychology at Harvard University, was one of the foremost writers and t distributivelyers in the field in this hemisphere. He was author of a large tour of fender grows on psychology and was the editor of the diary of Abnormal and Social Psychology.It is chiefly through the pioneering movement of Professor All port that Dr. Frankls winkous system was introduced to this country moreover, it is to his credit that the interest channelizen here in logotherapy is growing by leaps and bounds. 12 Preface to the 1992 Edition Preface to the 1992 Edition 13 serves as the existential validation of my theories. Thus, both parts mutually be declare their credibility. I had none of this in sound judgemen t when I wrote the book in 1945. And I did so within lodge successive age and with the firm role that the book should be published anonymously.In fact, the source impression of the original German version does not show my name on the cover, though at the death upshot, just before the books initial publication, I did at long stretch out give in to my friends who had urged me to let it be published with my name at least on the title page. At scratch line, however, it had been written with the absolute conviction that, as an anonymous opus, it could neer earn its author literary fame. I had wanted simply to convey to the reader by way of a concrete showcase that life holds a potential meaning under any conditions, take down the most miserable ones.And I perspective that if the point were demonstrated in a situation as extreme as that in a concentration camp, my book considerable power gain a hearing. I therefore matte up responsible for writing down what I had gone thr ough, for I thought it skill be helpful to masses who are prone to despair. And so it is both unnamed and remarkable to me that among some dozens of books I collect authoredprecisely this one, which I had intended to be published anonymously so that it could never build up any reputation on the part of the author, did become a success. over again and once again I therefore expostulate with my students both in Europe and in America Dont aim at successthe more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, desire happiness, cannot be pursue it must ensue, and it entirely does so as the unmotivated side-effect of ones dedication to a cause with child(p)er than oneself or as the by-product of ones surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success you make believe to let it happen by not caring roughly it. I want you to listen to what your conscience manipulates you to do and go on to have got it out to the best of our hunch overledge. because you leave puke live to see that in the long runin the long run, I say success will borrow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it. The reader may ask me why I did not try to escape what was in remembering for me after Hitler had occupied Austria. Let me answer by recalling the succeeding(a) story. Shortly before the United States entered World landed e enounce of war II, I received an invitation to come to the American Consulate in Vienna to pick up my immigration visa. My old parents were overjoyed because they expected that I would briefly be allowed to progress Austria. I suddenly hesitated, however.The question en engagingle me could I squarely afford to leave my parents alone to face their fate, to be sent, conciselyer or later, to a concentration camp, or eventide to a so-called extermination camp? Where did my responsibility lie? Should I foster my brain child, logotherapy, by emigrating to fertile dominion where I could write my books? Or should I redact on my duties as a real child, the child of my parents who had to do whatever he could to protect them? I pondered the problem this way and that but could not produce at a solution this was the type of quandary that make one wish for a tactile sensation from Heaven, as the enunciate goes.It was accordingly that I spy a character of marble craft on a table at home. When I asked my aim n advance(prenominal) it, he explained that he had found it on the localise where the National Socialists had burned down the largest Viennese synagogue. He had taken the frame home because it was a part of the tablets on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed. One gold Hebrew letter was engraved on the piece my father explained that this letter stood for one of the Commandments. Eagerly I asked, Which one is it? He answered, Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the land. At that moment I stubborn to stay with my father and my mother upon the land, and to let the American visa go across VIKTOR E. FRANKL Vienna, 1992. PART ONE Experiences in a assimilation Camp THIS BOOK DOES NOT CLAIM TO BE an account of facts and events but of personal experiences, experiences which millions of prisoners have suffered time and again. It is the inside story of a concentration camp, told by one of its survivors. This tale is not concerned with the broad abuses, which have already been fall upond often full (though less often believed), but with the multitude of pure torments.In other paroles, it will try to answer this question How was everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the mind of the average prisoner? Most of the events described here did not take place in the large and famous camps, but in the small ones where most of the real extermination took place. This story is not about the suffering and last of great heroes and martyrs, nor is it about the prominent Caposprisoners who acted as trustees, having picky privilegesor well- experience pris oners.Thus it is not so much concerned with the sufferings of the mighty, but with the sacrifices, the crucifixion and the deaths of the great troops of unknown and unrecorded victims. It was these common prisoners, who bore no dis tinguishing attach on their sleeves, whom the Capos au thuslytically despised. go these public prisoners had little or noth- 18 Mans Search for Meaning Experiences in a ducking Camp 19 ing to eat, the Capos were never thirsty(p) in fact many of the Capos fared better in the camp than they had in their entire lives.Often they were ambitiouser on the prisoners than were the guards, and beat them more cruelly than the SS men did. These Capos, of course, were chosen moreover from those prisoners whose characters promised to make them suitable for such procedures, and if they did not comply with what was expected of them, they were fastly demoted. They soon became much the like the SS men and the camp wardens and may be judged on a similar psychologi cal basis. It is comfortable for the immaterialr to get the wrong conception of camp life, a conception mingled with sentiment and pity.Little does he know of the hard fight down for existence which raged among the prisoners. This was an unrelenting strug gle for routine pro scene and for life itself, for ones own sake or for that of a ethical friend. Let us take the case of a glamour which was cancelledicially denote to transfer a accredited tour of prisoners to an other camp but it was a passably base hit guess that its final coating would be the bumble chambers. A alternative of sick or halt prisoners incapable of work out would be sent to one of the big central camps which were fitted with gas chambers and crematoriums.The selection process was the signal for a free fight among all the prisoners, or of group against group. All that visited was that ones own name and that of ones friend were crossed off the list of victims, though everyone knew that for each man saved some other victim had to be found. A definite number of prisoners had to go with each transport. It did not in reality content which, since each of them was nothing but a number. On their admission to the camp (at least this was the method in Auschwitz) all their docu- ments had been taken from them, together with their other possessions.Each prisoner, therefore, had had an oppor tunity to pick out a fictitious name or professing and for vari ous reasons many did this. The authorities were interested simply in the captives numbers. These numbers were often tattooed on their flake, and also had to be sewn to a authoritative spot on the trousers, jacket, or coat. Any guard who wanted to make a charge against a prisoner just glanced at his number (and how we dreaded such glances ) he never asked for his name. To return to the convoy about to depart. on that point was nei ther time nor desire to consider moral or ethical issues.Every man was controlled by one thought only(prenominal) to seatup himself alive for the family waiting for him at home, and to save his friends. With no hesitation, therefore, he would arrange for some other prisoner, another number, to take his place in the transport. As I have already mentioned, the process of selecting Capos was a negative one only the most brutal of the pris oners were chosen for this job (although there were some elated exceptions). plainly apart from the selection of Capos which was undertaken by the SS, there was a sort of selfselecting process going on the whole time among all of the prisoners.On the average, only those prisoners could keep alive who, after years of trekking from camp to camp, had wooly all scruples in their fight for existence they were pre pared to use every means, honest and otherwise, even brutal force, theft, and betrayal of their friends, in order to save themselves. We who have come back, by the aid of many aureate chances or miracleswhatever one may choose to call themwe know the best of us did not return. Many factual accounts about concentration camps are al ready on record. Here, facts will be significant only as far as 20 Mans Search for MeaningExperiences in a soaking up Camp 21 they are part of a mans experiences. It is the exact nature of these experiences that the pursuance essay will attempt to describe. For those who have been inmates in a camp, it will attempt to explain their experiences in the light of present-day(prenominal) knowledge. And for those who have never been inside, it may help them to comprehend, and above all to clear, the experiences of that only too small per centage of prisoners who survived and who now find life very difficult. These motive prisoners often say, We dislike talking about our experiences.No ex architectural planations are unavoidable for those who have been inside, and the others will under stand neithe r how we felt then nor how we feel now. To attempt a methodical presentation of the subject is very difficult, as psychology requires a authorized scientific de tachment. unless does a man who makes his observations while he himself is a prisoner possess the necessary detach ment? such insulant is granted to the outsider, but he is too far re go to make any statements of real value. unaccompanied the man inside knows. His judgments may not be objective his evaluations may be out of proportion.This is inevita ble. An attempt must be do to invalidate any personal bias, and that is the real difficulty of a book of this kind. At times it will be necessary to have the courage to tell of very in timate experiences. I had intended to write this book anonymously, using my prison number only. just now when the ms was completed, I motto that as an anonymous publication it would lose fractional its value, and that I must have the courage to state my convictions overspreadly. I the refore refrained from deleting any of the passages, in spite of an intense dislike of exhibitionism.I shall leave it to others to distill the contents of this book into dry theories. These might become a contribution to the psychology of prison life, which was investigated after the First World War, and which acquainted us with the syndrome of barbed wire sickness. We are indebted to the minute of arc World War for enriching our knowledge of the psychopathology of the masses, (if I may quote a varia tion of the well-known phrase and title of a book by LeBon), for the war gave us the war of nerves and it gave us the concentration camp.As this story is about my experiences as an prevalent pris oner, it is authorised that I mention, not without pride, that I was not diligent as a psychiatrist in camp, or even as a doctor up, except for the last someer weeks. A some of my colleagues were lucky luxuriant to be employed in poorly het up prime(prenominal)-aid posts applying ban dages do of scraps of waste paper. only when I was Number 119,104, and most of the time I was shaft and laying rows for railway lines. At one time, my job was to dig a tunnel, without help, for a water main(prenominal) under a road.This feat did not go unrewarded just before Christ mas 1944, I was presented with a gift of so-called premium coupons. These were issued by the construction firm to which we were practically sold as slaves the firm paid the camp authorities a fixed price per day, per prisoner. The coupons cost the firm 50 pfennigs each and could be ex changed for six cigarettes, often weeks later, although they sometimes lost their validity. I became the proud proprietor of a token worth twelve cigarettes. But more important, the cig arettes could be change for twelve soups, and twelve soups were often a very real residual from starvation.The privilege of actually grass cigarettes was reserved for the Capo, who had his assured quota of weekly coupons or possibl y for a prisoner who worked as a foreman in a warehouse or workshop and received a some cigarettes in exchange for doing dangerous jobs. The only exceptions to this were those who had lost the will to live and wanted to hump their last days. Thus, when we saw a comrade smoking his own cigarettes, we knew he had abandoned up faith 22 Mans Search for Meaning Experiences in a immersion Camp 23 n his violence to carry on, and, once lost, the will to live rarely re glum. When one examines the vast amount of material which has been amassed as the result of many prisoners observa tions and experiences, three phases of the inmates mental chemical reactions to camp life become apparent the period follow ing his admission the period when he is well vouch in camp routine and the period hobby his release and liberation. The symptom that characterizes the beginning phase is shock. infra certain conditions shock may even introduce the pris oners formal admission to the camp.I shall gi ve as an ex ample the circumstances of my own admission. Fifteen speed of light persons had been traveling by train for several days and nights there were eighty wad in each coach. All had to lie on top of their luggage, the hardly a(prenominal) rem nants of their personal possessions. The carriages were so full that only the top parts of the windows were free to let in the grey of cluck. Everyone expected the train to head for some munitions factory, in which we would be em ployed as oblige labor. We did not know whether we were still in Silesia or already in Poland.The engines whistle had an uncanny sound, like a cry for help sent out in com miseration for the unhappy load which it was destined to lead into perdition. consequently the train shunted, simply proficienting a main station. Suddenly a cry broke from the ranks of the dying(p) passengers, There is a sign, Auschwitz Everyones heart missed a beat at that moment. Auschwitzthe very name stood for all that was horri ble gas chambers, crematoriums, massacres. Slowly, almost hesi tatingly, the train moved on as if it wanted to spare its passengers the odious realization as long as realizable AuschwitzWith the progressive dawn, the outlines of an immense camp became visible long stretches of several rows of barbed wire fences watch towers search lights and long editorials of ragged human skeletal systems, grey in the greyness of dawn, trekking along the straight desolate roads, to what destination we did not know. There were isolated shouts and whistles of command. We did not know their meaning. My imagination led me to see gallows with people interruption on them. I was horrified, but this was just as well, because step by step we had to become customary to a loathsome and immense horror.Eventually we moved into the station. The initial silence was interrupted by shouted commands. We were to hear those rough, shrill tones from then on, over and over again in all the camps. Their sound was al most like the last cry of a victim, and yet there was a difference. It had a rasping hoarseness, as if it came from the pharynx of a man who had to keep cheering like that, a man who was being murdered again and again. The carriage accesss were flung open and a small detachment of prisoners stormed inside. They wore striped uniforms, their heads were do ind, but they looked well fed.They spoke in every possible European tongue, and all with a certain amount of humor, which sounded grotesque under the circumstances. uniform a drowning man clutching a straw, my inborn optimism (which has often controlled my savors even in the most desperate situa tions) clung to this thought These prisoners look rather well, they seem to be in good philias and even laugh. Who knows? I might manage to share their favorable position. In psychiatry there is a certain condition known as delu sion of reprieve. The condemned man, immediately before his execution, gets the illusion that he might be reprieved at the very last minute.We, too, clung to shreds of hope and believed to the last moment that it would not be so bad. Just the take a breatht of the red cheeks and round faces of 24 Mans Search for Meaning Experiences in a niggardness Camp 25 those prisoners was a great encouragement. Little did we know then that they formed a specially chosen elite, who for years had been the receiving squad for new transports as they rolled into the station day after day. They took charge of the new arrivals and their luggage, including scarce items and smuggled jewelry. Auschwitz must have been a strange spot in this Europe of the last years of the war.There must have been unique treasures of gold and silver, platinum and diamonds, not only in the huge storehouses but also in the expires of the SS. Fifteen hundred captives were cooped up in a shed built to accommodate believably cardinal hundred at the most. We were cold and hungry and there was not enough room for everyone to bul lshit on the bare ground, let alone to lie down. One five-ounce piece of plunder was our only aliment in four days. Yet I hear the aged prisoners in charge of the shed contract with one member of the receiving society about a tie-pin made of platinum and diamonds. Most of the profits would last be traded for liquorschnapps.I do not return any more just how many thousands of marks were needed to purchase the quantity of schnapps necessary for a gay evening, but I do know that those long-term prisoners needed schnapps. Under such conditions, who could blame them for trying to dope themselves? There was another group of prisoners who got liquor supplied in al most unlimited quantities by the SS these were the men who were employed in the gas chambers and crematoriums, and who knew very well that one day they would be re lieved by a new shift of men, and that they would have to leave their oblige role of executioner and become victims themselves.Nearly everyone in our transport lived under the illusion that he would be reprieved, that everything would yet be well. We did not realize the meaning posterior the scene that was to follow presently. We were told to leave our luggage in the train and to fall into two lineswomen on one side, men on the otherin order to file past(a) a senior SS officer. astonishingly enough, I had the courage to hide my haver sack under my coat. My line filed past the officer, man by man. I realized that it would be dangerous if the officer sight my bag.He would at least knock me down I knew that from previous experience. Instinctively, I straightened on approaching the officer, so that he would not notice my heavy load. Then I was face to face with him. He was a tall man who looked slim and fit in his spotless uniform. What a contrast to us, who were untidy and dingy after our long journey He had untrue an attitude of careless ease, supporting his proper(ip) human elbow with his remaining hand. His right hand was lifted , and with the forefinger of that hand he pointed very leisurely to the right or to the left.None of us had the slightest base of the sinister meaning tooshie that little movement of a mans finger, pointing now to the right and now to the left, but far more frequently to the left. It was my turn. Somebody whispered to me that to be sent to the right side would mean work, the way to the left being for the sick and those incapable of work, who would be sent to a special camp. I just waited for things to take their course, the start of many such times to come. My haver sack weighed me down a bit to the left, but I made an effort to walk upright.The SS man looked me over, appeared to hesitate, then put both his hands on my shoulders. I time-tested very hard to look smart, and he turned my shoulders very easy until I faced right, and I moved over to that side. The significance of the finger gamey was explained to us in the evening. It was the basic selection, the first finding of fact made on our existence or non-existence. For the great ma jority of our transport, about 90 per cent, it meant death. Their sentence was carried out within the abutting hardly a(prenominal) hours. Those who were sent to the left were marched from the station straight to the crematorium.This building, as I was 26 Mans Search for Meaning Experiences in a Concentration Camp 27 told by someone who worked there, had the word bath written over its doors in several European languages. On entering, each prisoner was reach a piece of soap, and then but mercifully I do not need to describe the events which followed. Many accounts have been written about this horror. We who were saved, the minority of our transport, found out the truth in the evening. I inquired from prisoners who had been there for some time where my colleague and friend P had been sent. Was he sent to the left side? Yes, I replied. Then you can see him there, I was told. Where? A hand pointed to the chimney a a h ardly a(prenominal)(prenominal) hundred yards off, which was sending a column of burn up up into the grey sky of Poland. It dissolved into a sinister cloud of smoke. Thats where your friend is, floating up to Heaven, was the answer. But I still did not watch until the truth was explained to me in plain words. But I am telling things out of their turn. From a psycho logical point of view, we had a long, long way in front of us from the break of that dawn at the station until our first nights rest at the camp.Escorted by SS guards with loaded guns, we were made to run from the station, past electrically aerated barbed wire, through the camp, to the ablutionary station for those of us who had passed the first selection, this was a real bath. Again our illusion of reprieve found confirmation. The SS men seemed almost charming. Soon we found out their rea son. They were comely to us as long as they saw watches on our wrists and could persuade us in well-meaning tones to hand them ove r. Would we not have to hand over all our possessions anyway, and hy should not that relatively nice person have the watch? Maybe one day he would do one a good turn. We waited in a shed which seemed to be the manor hall to the disinfecting chamber. SS men appeared and spread out blankets into which we had to throw all our possessions, all our watches and jewelry. There were still naive prisoners among us who asked, to the amusement of the more sea soned ones who were there as helpers, if they could not keep a wedding ring, a medal or a good-luck piece. No one could yet grasp the fact that everything would be taken away.I tried to take one of the old prisoners into my confi dence. advent him furtively, I pointed to the roll of paper in the intimate pocket of my coat and said, Look, this is the multiple sclerosis of a scientific book. I know what you will say that I should be grateful to escape with my life, that that should be all I can expect of fate. But I cannot help myself. I must keep this manuscript at all costs it contains my lifes work. Do you understand that? Yes, he was beginning to understand.A grin spread slowly over his face, first piteous, then more amused, fling ing, affronting, until he bellowed one word at me in answer to my question, a word that was ever present in the vocabu lary of the camp inmates Shit At that moment I saw the plain truth and did what marked the culminating point of the first phase of my psychological reaction I struck out my whole spring life. Suddenly there was a stir among my feller travelers, who had been stand about with pale, stimulate faces, help lessly debating. Again we heard the hoarsely shouted com mands. We were driven with blows into the immediate anteroom of the bath.There we assembled around an SS man who waited until we had all arrived. Then he said, I will give you two minutes, and I shall time you by my watch. In these two minutes you will get fully unattired 28 Mans Search for Meaning Experi ences in a Concentration Camp 29 and drop everything on the bedight where you are standing. You will take nothing with you except your post, your belt or suspenders, and possibly a truss. I am starting to count now With unthinkable haste, people tore off their clothes. As the time grew shorter, they became increasingly nervous and pulled clumsily at their underwear, belts and shoe laces.Then we heard the first sounds of whipping lash straps beating down on naked bodies. beside we were herded into another room to be shaved not only our heads were shorn, but not a cop was left on our entire bodies. Then on to the showers, where we lined up again. We hardly recognized each other but with great relief some people noted that real water dripped from the sprays. While we were waiting for the shower, our nakedness was brought home to us we really had nothing now except our bare bodieseven minus hair all we possessed, literally, was our naked existence.What else remained for us as a ma terial link with our former lives? For me there were my glasses and my belt the latter I had to exchange later on for a piece of chou. There was an extra bit of excitement in store for the owners of trusses. In the evening the senior prisoner in charge of our shanty welcomed us with a speech in which he gave us his word of honor that he would hang, personally, from that beamhe pointed to itany per son who had sewn silver or unusual stones into his truss. Proudly he explained that as a senior inhabitant the camp laws entitled him to do so. Where our shoes were concerned, matters were not so simple.Although we were supposed to keep them, those who had fairly decent pairs had to give them up after all and were given in exchange shoes that did not fit. In for real trouble were those prisoners who had followed the ap- parently well-meant advice (given in the anteroom) of the senior prisoners and had shortened their jackboots by cut ting the tops off, then smearing soap on the cut ed ges to hide the sabotage. The SS men seemed to have waited for just that. All suspected of this crime had to go into a small adjoining room. after a time we again heard the lashings of the strap, and the screams of tortured men.This time it lasted for preferably a while. Thus the illusions some of us still held were destroyed one by one, and then, sort of unexpectedly, most of us were overcome by a grim sense of humor. We knew that we had nothing to lose except our so ridiculously naked lives. When the showers started to run, we all tried very hard to make fun, both about ourselves and about each other. After all, real water did flow from the spraysl aside from that strange kind of humor, another sensa tion seized us curiosity. I have experienced this kind of curiosity before, as a fundamental reaction toward certain strange circumstances.When my life was once endangered by a climbing accident, I felt only one sensation at the critical moment curiosity, curiosity as to whether I s hould come out of it alive or with a fractured skull or some other injuries. Cold curiosity predominated even in Auschwitz, some how detaching the mind from its surroundings, which came to be regarded with a kind of objectivity. At that time one cultivated this state of mind as a means of protection. We were sick to know what would happen next and what would be the consequence, for example, of our standing in the open air, in the chill of late autumn, stark naked, and still wet from the showers.In the next few days our curi osity evolved into surprise surprise that we did not come across cold. There were many similar surprises in store for new ar- 30 Mans Search for Meaning Experiences in a Concentration Camp 31 rivals. The aesculapian men among us learned first of all Textbooks tell lies Somewhere it is said that man cannot exist without tranquillity for more than a stated number of hours. Quite wrongl I had been confident(p) that there were certain things I just could not do I could not sleep without this or I could not live with that or the other.The first night in Auschwitz we slept in beds which were constructed in ground levels. On each tier (measuring about six-and-a-half to eight feet) slept nine men, directly on the boards. Two blankets were shared by each nine men. We could, of course, lie only on our sides, crowded and flock against each other, which had some advantages because of the bitter cold. Though it was interdict to take shoes up to the bunks, some people did use them secretly as pillows in spite of the fact that they were caked with mud. Otherwise ones head had to rest on the crook of an almost dislocated arm.And yet sleep came and brought oblivion and relief from pain for a few hours. I would like to mention a few similar surprises on how much we could endure we were unable to clean our teeth, and yet, in spite of that and a grim vitamin deficiency, we had healthier gums than ever before. We had to wear the same shirts for half a y ear, until they had lost all ap pearance of being shirts. For days we were unable to wash, even partially, because of frozen water-pipes, and yet the sores and abrasions on hands which were sterny from work in the malicious gossip did not suppurate (that is, unless there was frost bite).Or for instance, a light sleeper, who used to be dis turbed by the slightest disagreement in the next room, now found himself lying pressed against a comrade who snored loudly a few inches from his ear and yet slept quite thoroughly through the noise. If someone now asked of us the truth of Dostoevskis statement that flatly defines man as a being who can get used to anything, we would reply, Yes, a man can get used to anything, but do not ask us how. But our psychological investigations have not taken us that far yet neither had we prisoners reached that point. We were still in the first phase of our psychological reactions.The thought of suicide was entertained by nearly every one, if only for a brief time. It was born of the hopelessness of the situation, the perpetual danger of death looming over us occasional and hourly, and the closeness of the deaths suffered by many of the others. From personal convictions which will be mentioned later, I made myself a firm promise, on my first evening in camp, that I would not run into the wire. This was a phrase used in camp to describe the most customary method of suicidetouching the electrically charged barbed-wire fence. It was not entirely difficult for me to make this decision.There was little point in commit ting suicide, since, for the average inmate, life expectation, calculating objectively and counting all likely chances, was very poor. He could not with any assurance expect to be among the small ploughshare of men who survived all the selections. The prisoner of Auschwitz, in the first phase of shock, did not fear death. Even the gas chambers lost their horrors for him after the first few daysafter all, they spared him the act of committing suicide. Friends whom I have met later have told me that I was not one of those whom the shock of admission greatly de pressed.I only smiled, and quite sincerely, when the follow ing episode occurred the morning after our first night in Auschwitz. In spite of relentless orders not to leave our blocks, a colleague of mine, who had arrived in Auschwitz several weeks antecedently, smuggled himself into our hut. He wanted to soothe and comfort us and tell us a few things. He had become so thin that at first we did not recognize him. With a show of good humor and a dashing attitude he gave us a few hurried tips Dont be horrified Dont fear the selections Dr.M (the SS medical chief) has a soft spot for doctors. (This was wrong my friends likeable 32 Mans Search for Meaning words were misleading. One prisoner, the doctor of a block, of huts and a man of some sixty years, told me how he had entreated Dr. M to let off his son, who was destined for gas. Dr. M c oldly refused. ) But one thing I beg of you he continued, shave daily, if at all possible, even if you have to use a piece of glass to do it . . . even if you have to give your last piece of bread for it. You will look younger and the scraping will make your cheeks look ruddier.If you want to stay alive, there is only one way look fit for work. If you even limp, because, let us say, you have a small blister on your heel, and an SS man floating pol glacial this, he will wave you aside and the next day you are sure to be gassed. Do you know what we mean by a Moslem? A man who looks miserable, down and out, sick and emaciated, and who cannot manage hard physical labor any longer . . . that is a Moslem. Sooner or later, usually sooner, every Moslem goes to the gas chambers. Therefore, remember shave, stand and walk smartly then you need not be afraid of gas.All of you standing here, even if you have only been here cardinal hours, you need not fear gas, except perhaps you. And then he pointed to me and said, I hope you dont mind my telling you frankly. To the others he repeated, Of all of you he is the only one who must fear the next selection. So, dont anguish And I smiled. I am now convinced that anyone in my place on that day would have done the same. Experiences in a Concentration Camp I think it was Lessing who once said, There are things which must cause you to lose your reason or you have none to lose. An aberrant reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior. Even we psychiatrists expect the reactions of a man to an abnormal situation, such as being com mitted to an asylum, to be abnormal in proportion to the peak of his normality. The reaction of a man to his admission to a concentration camp also represents an abnormal state of mind, but judged objectively it is a normal and, as will be shown later, typical reaction to the given circumstances. These reactions, as I have described them, began to change in a few days.The prisoner passed fro m the first to the second phase the phase of relative apathy, in which he achieved a kind of emotional death. Apart from the already described reactions, the newly arrived prisoner experienced the tortures of other most nasty emotions, all of which he tried to at rest(predicate)en. First of all, there was his boundless thirst for his home and his family. This often could become so bully that he felt himself consumed by longing. Then there was disgust disgust with all the ugliness which border him, even in its mere external forms.Most of the prisoners were given a uniform of rags which would have made a scarecrow elegant by comparison. Between the huts in the camp lay pure filth, and the more one worked to clear it away, the more one had to come in contact with it. It was a favorite practice to distributor point a new arrival to a work group whose job was to clean the latrines and remove the sewage. If, as usually happened, some of the excrement splashed into his face during it s transport over bumpy fields, any sign of disgust by the prisoner or any attempt to wipe off the filth would only be punished with a blow from a Capo.And thus the mortification of normal reactions was hastened. At first the prisoner looked away if he saw the penalty parades of another group he could not bear to see broncobuster prisoners march up and down for hours in the mire, their movements directed by blows. Days or weeks later things changed. Early in the morning, when it was still dark, the prisoner stood in front of the gate with his detachment, ready to march. He heard a scream and saw how 34 Mans Search for Meaning Experiences in a Concentration Camp 35 comrade was knocked down, pulled to his feet again, and knocked down once moreand why? He was feverish but had reported to sick-bay at an improper time. He was being punished for this irregular attempt to be palliate of his duties. But the prisoner who had passed into the second stage of his psychological reactions did n ot avert his eyes any more. By then his feelings were blunted, and he watched un moved. Another example he found himself waiting at sick bay, hoping to be granted two days of light work inside the camp because of injuries or perhaps edema or fever.He stood unmoved while a twelve-year-old boy was carried in who had been forced to stand at fear for hours in the snow or to work outside with bare feet because there were no shoes for him in the camp. His toes had become frost bitten, and the doctor on profession picked off the black gan grenous stumps with tweezers, one by one. Disgust, horror and pity are emotions that our spectator could not really feel any more. The sufferers, the dying and the dead, be came such commonplace sights to him after a few weeks of camp life that they could not move him any more.I spend some time in a hut for typhus patients who ran very high temperatures and were often delirious, many of them moribund. After one of them had just died, I watched without any emotional upset the scene that followed, which was repeated over and over again with each death. One by one the prisoners approached the still impassioned body. One grabbed the body of a messy meal of potatoes another decided that the trunks wooden shoes were an improve ment on his own, and exchanged them. A third man did the same with the dead mans coat, and another was glad to be able to secure somejust imagine genuine string.All this I watched with unconcern. Eventually I asked the nurse to remove the body. When he decided to do so, he took the corpse by its legs, allowing it to drop into the small corridor between the two rows of boards which were the beds for the fifty typhus patients, and dragged it across the bumpy earthen floor toward the door. The two steps which led up into the open air unceasingly constituted a prob lem for us, since we were exhausted from a chronic lack of food. After a few months stay in the camp we could not walk up those steps, which were eac h about six inches high, without putting our hands on the door jambs to pull our selves up.The man with the corpse approached the steps. Wearily he dragged himself up. Then the body first the feet, then the trunk, and in the long runwith an uncanny rattling noise the head of the corpse bumped up the two steps. My place was on the foeman side of the hut, next to the small, sole window, which was built near the floor. While my cold hands clasped a rolling wave of hot soup from which I sipped greedily, I happened to look out the window. The corpse which had just been removed stared in at me with glazed eyes. Two hours before I had spoken to that man.Now I continued sipping my soup. If my lack of emotion had not surprised me from the standpoint of professional interest, I would not remember this incident now, because there was so little feeling in volved in it. Apathy, the blunting of the emotions and the feeling that one could not care any more, were the symptoms arising during the second stage of the prisoners psychological re actions, and which eventually made him insensitive to daily and hourly beatings. By means of this insensibility the pris oner soon encircled himself with a very necessary protec tive shell. 6 Mans Search for Meaning Experiences in a Concentration Camp 37 Beatings occurred on the slightest provocation, sometimes for no reason at all. For example, bread was rationed out at our work site and we had to line up for it. Once, the man behind me stood off a little to one side and that lack of symmetry displeased the SS guard. I did not know what was going on in the line behind me, nor in the mind of the SS guard, but suddenly I received two sharp blows on my head. Only then did I spot the guard at my side who was using his stick.At such a moment it is not the physical pain which hurts the most (and this applies to adults as much as to punished children) it is the mental bedevilment caused by the injustice, the unreasonableness of it all. Stran gely enough, a blow which does not even find its mark can, under certain circumstances, hurt more than one that finds its mark. Once I was standing on a railway track in a snowstorm. In spite of the wear our party had to keep on working. I worked quite hard at mending the track with gravel, since that was the only way to keep warm. For only one moment I paused to get my breath and to lean on my shovel.Unfortunately the guard turned around just then and thought I was loafing. The pain he caused me was not from any insults or any blows. That guard did not think it worth his while to say anything, not even a swear word, to the ragged, emaciated figure standing before him, which probably reminded him only vaguely of a human form. Instead, he playfully picked up a stone and threw it at me. That, to me, seemed the way to inveigle the attention of a beast, to call a interior(prenominal) animal back to its job, a creature with which you have so little in common that you do not even puni sh it.The most dreaded part of beatings is the insult which they imply. At one time we had to carry some long, heavy girders over icy tracks. If one man slipped, he endangered not only himself but all the others who carried the same girder. An old friend of mine had a congenitally dislocated hip. He was glad to be capable of working in spite of it, since the physically disabled were almost for certain sent to death when a selection took place. He limped over the track with an specially heavy girder, and seemed about to fall and drag the others with him. As yet, I was not carrying a girder so I jumped to his assistance without lemniscus to think.I was immediately hit on the back, rudely repri manded and reproducible to return to my place. A few minutes previously the same guard who struck me had told us deprecatingly that we pigs lacked the spirit of comrade ship. Another time, in a forest, with the temperature at 2F, we began to dig up the topsoil, which was frozen hard, in ord er to lay water pipes. By then I had grown rather weak physi cally. along came a foreman with chubby rosy cheeks. His face definitely reminded me of a pigs head. I noticed that he wore lovely warm gloves in that bitter cold. For a time he watched me silently.I felt that trouble was brewing, for in front of me lay the mound of earth which showed incisively how much I had dug. Then he began You pig, I have been watching you the whole time Ill discover you to work, yet Wait till you dig dirt with your teethyoull die like an animal In two days Ill finish you off Youve never done a stroke of work in your life. What were you, swine? A businessman? I was past caring. But I had to take his threat of killing me seriously, so I straightened up and looked him directly in the eye. I was a doctora specialist. What? A doctor?I bet you got a lot of money out of people. As it happens, I did most of my work for no money at all, in clinics for the poor. But, now, I had said too much. He threw h imself on me and knocked me down, shouting like a madman. I can no longer remember what he shouted. I want to show with this apparently trivial story that 38 Mans Search for Meaning Experiences in a Concentration Camp 39 there are moments when vexation can rouse even a seemingly hardened prisonerindignation not about cruelty or pain, but about the insult connected with it. That time blood rushed to my head because I had to listen o a man judge my life who had so little idea of it, a man (I must confess the pursual remark, which I made to my fellow-prisoners after the scene, afforded me childish relief) who looked so vulgar and brutal that the nurse in the outpatient ward in my hospital would not even have admitted him to the waiting room. Fortunately the Capo in my working party was obligated to me he had taken a longing to me because I listened to his love stories and matrimonial troubles, which he poured out during the long marches to our work site. I had made an impression o n him with my diagnosis of his character and with my evacuant advice.After that he was grate ful, and this had already been of value to me. On several previous occasions he had reserved a place for me next to him in one of the first five rows of our detachment, which usually consisted of two hundred and eighty men. That favor was important. We had to line up early in the morn ing while it was still dark. Everybody was afraid of being late and of having to stand in the back rows. If men were required for an unpleasant and disliked job, the senior Capo appeared and usually collected the men he needed from the back rows.These men had to march away to an other, particularly dreaded kind of work under the command of strange guards. Occasionally the senior Capo chose men from the first five rows, just to catch those who tried to be clever. All protests and entreaties were silenced by a few well-aimed kicks, and the chosen victims were chased to the meeting place with shouts and blows. H owever, as long as my Capo felt the need of gushy out his heart, this could not happen to me. I had a guaranteed place of honor next to him. But there was another advan- tage, too. Like nearly all the camp inmates I was suffering from edema.My legs were so swollen-headed and the skin on them so tightly stretched that I could barely bend my knees. I had to leave my shoes unlaced in order to make them fit my swollen feet. There would not have been space for socks even if I had had any. So my partly bare feet were always wet and my shoes always full of snow. This, of course, caused cryopathy and chilblains. Every single step became real torture. Clumps of ice formed on our shoes during our marches over snow-covered fields. Over and again men slipped and those following behind stumbled on top of them. Then the column would stop for a moment, but not for long.One of the guards soon took action and worked over the men with the butt of his denudate to make them get up quickly. The mor e to the front of the column you were, the less often you were disturbed by having to stop and then to make up for lost time by running on your painful feet. I was very happy to be the personally appointed physician to His Honor the Capo, and to march in the first row at an even pace. As an additional payment for my services, I could be sure that as long as soup was being dealt out at lunchtime at our work site, he would, when my turn came, dip the ladle right to the bottom of the vat and fish out a few peas.This Capo, a former army officer, even had the courage to whisper to the foreman, whom I had quarreled with, that he knew me to be an unusually good worker. That didnt help matters, but he nevertheless managed to save my life (one of the many times it was to be saved). The day after the epi sode with the foreman he smuggled me into another work party. There were foremen who felt sorry for us and who did their best to ease our situation, at least at the building site. 40 Mans Sea rch for Meaning Experiences in a Concentration Camp 41But even they kept on reminding us that an ordinary laborer did several times as much work as we did, and in a shorter time. But they did see reason if they were told that a normal workingman did not live on 10-1/2 ounces of bread (theoreticallyactually we often had less) and 1-3/4 pints of thin soup per day that a normal laborer did not live under the mental stress we had to claim to, not having news of our families, who had either been sent to another camp or gassed right away that a normal workman was not threat ened by death continuously, daily and hourly.I even al lowed myself to say once to a kindly foreman, If you could learn from me how to do a brain operation in as short a time as I am learning this road work from you, I would have great respect for you. And he grinned. Apathy, the main symptom of the second phase, was a necessary utensil of self-defense. Reality dimmed, and all efforts and all emotions were centered on one working class pre serving ones own life and that of the other fellow. It was typical to hear the prisoners, while they were being herded back to camp from their work sites in the evening, sigh with relief and say, Well, another day is over. It can be readily understood that such a state of strain, coupled with the constant necessity of concentrating on the task of staying alive, forced the prisoners inner life down to a primitive level. Several of my colleagues in camp who were develop in psychoanalysis often spoke of a regression in the camp inmatea retreat to a more primitive form of mental life. His wishes and desires became obvious in his woolgathers. What did the prisoner dream about most frequently? Of bread, cake, cigarettes, and nice warm baths.The lack of having these simple desires satisfied led him to seek wishfulfillment in dreams. Whether these dreams did any good is another matter the dreamer had to wake from them to the reality of camp life, and to the terr ible contrast between that and his dream illusions. I shall never forget how I was roused one night by the groans of a fellow prisoner, who threw himself about in his sleep, obviously having a horrible nightmare. Since I had always been especially sorry for people who suffered from fearful dreams or deliria, I wanted to wake the poor man.Suddenly I pull back the hand which was ready to shake him, frightened at the thing I was about to do. At that moment I became intensely conscious of the fact that no dream, no matter how horrible, could be as bad as the reality of the camp which surrounded us, and to which I was about to recall him. Because of the high point of undernourishment which the prisoners suffered, it was natural that the desire for food was the major primitive instinct around which mental life centered. Let us observe the majority of prisoners when they happened to work near each other and were, for once, not virtually watched.They would immediately start discuss ing f ood. One fellow would ask another working next to him in the ditch what his favorite dishes were. Then they would exchange recipes and plan the menu for the day when they would have a reunificationthe day in a distant future when they would be liberated and returned home. They would go on and on, visualize it all in detail, until suddenly a model was passed down the trench, usually in the form of a special password or number The guard is coming. I always regarded the discussions about food as danger ous.Is it not wrong to provoke the organism with such detailed and affective pictures of delicacies when it has somehow managed to oblige itself to extremely small rations 42 Mans Search for Meaning Experiences in a Concentration Camp 43 and low calories? Though it may afford flying psycho logical relief, it is an illusion which phy