In Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, three stages of his experience in the concentration camp are discussed, “the period following his admission; the period when he is well entrenched in the camp routine; and the period following his release and liberation” (Frankl 8). Likewise, Honors at Central Michigan University can be thought of in three paralleled stages: the period following the notification of one’s admission in which anticipation brews and mental preparation begins; the period when we will be rooted in our new college routine, classes, and social group; and the period after graduation where we will reflect on the experience and use all that we have learned. Frankl addressed the uniqueness of each person’s will to succeed, “This uniqueness and singleness which distinguishes each individual and gives a meaning to his existence has a bearing on creative work as much as it does on human love” (Frankl, 79). These stages will not be identical for any two individuals. Instead, each of us have the ability to use Frankl’s insights to make our experience uniquely valuable. Frankl’s insights include the inevitability of suffering, one’s ability to choose their attitude towards this suffering, and the importance of setting goals to overcome suffering. Many people, including myself prior to reading this book, tend to believe that happiness is achieved in the absence of suffering. Frankl gives a different perspective stating, “If there is a meaning in life at all, then
Shock, apathy, and disillusionment were three psychological stages that the prisoners of the Nazi concentration camps experienced. Ironically, it took an event of such tragedy and destruction to enable us to learn more about how the human mind responds to certain situations. Frankl’s methods for remaining positive can be used by every human being to give them a meaning in their lives regardless of what predicament or mental state they are in – it is in many ways like a phoenix risen from the
As with all human beings, there are happy memories and bad memories. Some have no effect, and others can change someone’s life completely. Elie Wiesel’s autobiography, Night, writes about Elie’s external conflict of the horrors of the Holocaust’s violent concentration camps. Elie resolves this conflict by having all the hope of the world in him and enduring the evident deaths of his family members; however, Elie’s trek also illustrates his character as both enduring and dependent. Elie’s decision to staying hopeful and stay enduring also reveals the universal theme of, “The toughest and darkest of times and experience can test your hope”
In Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor E. Frankl tells the honest story of his own experiences as an inmate in a concentration camp during World War II. In his book, Frankl answers the question “How was everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the mind of the average prisoner?” (Frankl, 2006, p. 3) He describes the physical, emotional, and psychological torment that he endured as well as the effect that the camp had on those around him. He breaks down the psychological experience as a prisoner into three stages: the initial shock upon admission into the camp, apathy, and the mental reactions of the prisoner after liberation. He highlights certain emotions experienced throughout the time in the camp such as delusions of reprieve, hope, curiosity, surprise, and even humor.
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl is filled to the brim with rhetorical devices from all three sections of the text. Particularly in his section about logotherapy, Frankl’s practice to find an individual’s meaning of life, he explores the three main meanings of life: accomplishment, love, and suffering. This area uses a plethora of comparison, such as parallelism and metaphor. Recurring themes are used to draw back to Frankl’s three life meanings, like word repetition and alliteration. Frankl’s use of rhetorical devices allows his audience to focus on their individual possibilities and incorporate his ideology into society.
Frankl optimistic attitude helps him achieve happiness by accepting his circumstances. He argues that if life has meaning there must be a corresponding meaning to suffering. A man acquires deeper meaning in his life after he accepts his fate. He provides a scenario where most people despise their lives when faced with tough situations. Frankl also argues that when a person’s destiny involves suffering, he must accept it as his only task in life. Such a person has to acknowledge that in suffering one is alone and opportunities will come depending on the way he weighs his burden.
Imagine being arrested, forced out of your home, transported to a jail-like camp, and seeing people die all around you while wondering if you would be next - all due to your race, religion, or sexuality. This situation seems unrealistic for the 21st century, but sadly, just one century prior, this circumstance was reality for millions of people, including Viktor Frankl, who tells the story of his Holocaust experience. Between the years of 1933 and 1945, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi soldiers captured anyone who he viewed as a lesser race. Common targets included Gypsies, Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, Afro-Germans, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, disabled people, and the most common, Jews. About two-thirds (six million) of European Jews were killed during the Holocaust, more than one million of these were children (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). Frankl turned his experiences and findings into an extremely powerful novel, Man’s Search for Meaning. He tells his story of living in a concentration camp, while also introducing and explaining his psychological theory of logotherapy.
When it comes to the topic of happiness, many professionals are divided on the ways one can reach it. Authors such as Andrew Guest and Adam Grant (of “Pursuing the Science of Happiness” and “Does Trying to Be Happy Make Us Unhappy?”, respectively) have studied the topic extensively and though they have reached a similar conclusion in their research, they are still distinct in their true definition and theory regarding happiness. On topic of the quote from Victor Frankl, their presumed opinion might be similar, but given the content of their work, there is room for dissimilarity. First, on the topic of similarities, the authors have plenty in common in regards to how they would respond to the aforementioned quote. One aspect of the quote which the authors would agree with is
In “There’s More to Life Than Being Happy,” Emily Esfahani Smith writes about the conflict between Viktor Frankl’s book, “Man’s Search for Happiness” and the culture today, which focuses on happiness in life rather than meaning. She introduces Viktor Frankl as a star medical and psychology student who survived the Holocaust in 1942. While Frankl was kept hostage in his camp, he was forced to find the good in life in order to survive. After being liberated, Frankl recorded his experience and what he learned in nine days, creating a best-seller in the United States. Smith explains that even though it has been concluded that Americans’ happiness is at an all-time high, the Center for Disease Control says that almost fifty percent of Americans have not found a purpose in life. Smith tells that bad mental health, self-esteem, and depression are less likely to be found in those who have found a pleasurable meaning in life. Happiness is associated with being a “taker”, while having a meaning life is associated with being a “giver” according to Smith. The downside to having a purpose for one’s life is the fact that he or she is usually more unhappy due to stress and worry than those who only strive for happiness, Smith explains. A study in 2011 proved that if someone has a negative circumstance occur in his or her lifetime, that event will give him or her more of a drive to find meaning in life rather than happiness. Smith concluded by linking these other sources with Frankl’s
Everyone experiences emotional and physiological obstacles in their life. However, these obstacles are incomparable to the magnitude of the obstacles the prisoners of the Holocaust faced every day. In his memoir, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, illustrates the horrors of the concentration camps and their mental tool. Over the course of Night, Wiesel demonstrates, that exposure to an uncaring, hostile world leads to destruction of faith and identity.
Through Frankl's view of suicide you can discover his view of human person. Suicide is wrong in all cases, and should not be even considered an option. He believes that all people can find some meaning in life which would prevent them from giving up all hope and ending their lives. Every human life has meaning, and therefore every human life has value. While in a concentration camp serving as a doctor to those who were ill with typhus or other diseases, he encountered two individuals who had given up hope on life. He asked them both to think of something worth living for. One answered that he had a son waiting for him at home, and the other said he was writing a book and wanted to finish it. Frankl helped them find meaning in their lives to hold on to some hope. Just as they did, anyone can find a meaning to live for, whether it be another person or a goal or achievement.
We are meant to become our truest selves by finding meaning in our lives, which, according to Frankl, can come from three places: work, love, and our attitude in the face of horrific suffering or difficulty. And at the center of this meaning is our responsibility and human right to choose. In Frankl’s theory, we all strive to fulfill a self-chosen goal, from which meaning has the potential to be found. And if no meaning is found, there is meaning yet to be found, or meaning to be drawn from the apparent lack of meaning. Whatever the case, Frankl viewed man’s lack of meaning as the greatest existential crisis, the stress of this meaninglessness giving life and shape to all of our neuroses.
In “There’s More to Life Than Being Happy,” written by Emily Smith, she talks about how Viktor Frankl made the most of everything. He had nearly nothing while being in the concentration camps, and turned that from a negative to a positive. “As he saw in the camps, those who found meaning even in the most horrendous circumstances were far more resilient to suffering than those who did not” (Smith, E. 2013, January 9. There 's More to Life Than Being Happy). The purpose of the article is to inform the reader that trying to pursue something other than happiness is an important aspect of life. Also, life is what a person does with it; living life with a purpose, whether it be living to an extent or living to the extreme. Viktor Frankl was a Jew who was captured, along with his wife and parents, and kept in a concentration camp for at least three years. By the time he was released, his wife and parents did not make
In September of 1942, Viktor Frankl was arrested in Vienna and taken to one of the many Nazi death camps. Frankl was working on a manuscript which was confiscated from him in a move to Auschwitz. In this manuscript entitled, The Doctor and the Soul, Frankl had began his work on a theory he would later call logotherapy. The term logotherapy is derived from the Greek word logos, which means meaning. According to logotherapy, the striving to find a meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in man (Frankl 121). Frankl’s theory and therapy generated and grew through his experiences in the concentration camps.
It is common sense that all the human beings would like to live a happy life and they will spare no efforts in order to realize the purpose of really living a happy life in the end. However, different people have different definitions toward what a happy life is and they tend to have different standards as for how a life is that can be regarded as a happy life. There is no doubt that people will then try different means in order to pursue a happy life based on their definition toward what a happy life is. Therefore, the following will talk about the pursuit of a happy life from the perspectives of both Dalai Lama in The Art of Happiness and Viktor E. Frankl in Man’s Searching for Meaning, during which the experiences of some characters from the film Forrest Gump will be applied as evidence. Generally speaking, the pursuit of a happy life in the minds of Dalai Lama and Viktor E. Frankl can be achieved via experiencing sufferings and adversity. It is hoped that this analysis can help people understand what a happy is from a different point of view.
Experiences encompassed in times of struggle can lead to a new transformative perspective of one’s relationship with self and the world. William Shakespeare’s last play “The Tempest” (1610), canvasses loss catalysing rediscovering the importance of life resulting in a greater understanding of how our flaws compromise our humanity. Prospero, the usurped Duke of Milan, shows this to be true, moving from a mindset focused on vengeance to a profound discovery of self. Similarly, in “Man’s Search for Meaning” (1946), fulfillment with discovering how we choose to cope and find meaning/purpose in life through unrelenting struggle is illustrated. The three-part non-fiction told by psychiatrist Viktor E. Frankl, depicts his ordeal inside of concentration camps during the Second World War, elaborating on finding true meaning in life even under the most horrific circumstances. Frankl shares his process of discovery demonstrating his ability to overcome the most overwhelming experience leading to doorway of meaning, purpose and happiness.