Viktor E. Frankl

If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.

Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.

The religious interest of the prisoners, as far and as soon as it developed, was the most sincere imaginable. The depth and vigor of religious belief often surprised and moved a new arrival.

The truth—that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.

Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.

Humor was another of the soul’s weapons in the fight for self-preservation. It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds.

To draw an analogy: a man’s suffering is similar to the behavior of gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little.

It is this spiritual freedom—which cannot be taken away—that makes life meaningful and purposeful.

The prisoner who had lost faith in the future—his future—was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay.

Human life, under any circumstances, never ceases to have a meaning, and that this infinite meaning of life includes suffering and dying, privation and death.

The crowning experience of all, for the homecoming man, is the wonderful feeling that, after all he has suffered, there is nothing he need fear any more— except his God.

The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love—the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.

In accepting this challenge to suffer bravely, life has a meaning up to the last moment, and it retains this meaning literally to the end.

Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them. In other words, man is ultimately self-determining.

Freedom, however, is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness.

But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to 'be happy.' Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically.

People have enough to live by but nothing to live for; they have the means but no meaning.

Even the helpless victim of a hopeless situation, facing a fate he cannot change, may rise above himself, may grow beyond himself, and by so doing change himself.

The existential vacuum is a widespread phenomenon of the twentieth century.

He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How.

Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning.

We have come to know Man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord’s Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.

The Quest for Meaning Sustains Life

Frankl emphasizes that the pursuit of meaning is fundamental to human survival, especially amidst extreme suffering. He reflects on Friedrich Nietzsche's words, 'He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How.' This philosophy helped him endure the brutal conditions of the concentration camps by clinging to thoughts of his loved ones and future aspirations. Frankl argues that life is not about pleasure or power, but meaning. He states, 'The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life,' positing work, love, and enduring difficult times with courage as the primary sources of this meaning.

Inner Freedom Despite External Circumstances

Frankl emphasizes that even in dire conditions like those of a concentration camp, a person’s mental and spiritual state can remain intact through an inner decision. The ultimate freedom, which Frankl refers to as spiritual freedom, is the ability to choose one's attitude toward their circumstances. Despite the severe physical and psychological constraints, the prisoners who maintained this inner freedom were able to retain their human dignity. As Frankl writes, 'Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him—mentally and spiritually.'

The Transformative Power of Suffering

Frankl does not romanticize suffering but emphasizes the capability to ascribe meaning to it through one's response. He argues that suffering in itself is meaningless, but the manner in which individuals endure and make sense of their pain can elevate them. Frankl's insight is that by finding a purpose in suffering, one transforms it into a source of personal growth. 'Suffering in and of itself is meaningless; we give our suffering meaning by the way in which we respond to it,' he writes, illustrating that courage in the face of adversity signifies the triumph of the human spirit.

The Role of Compassion and Solidarity

In a setting designed to strip prisoners of their humanity, acts of compassion and solidarity became lifelines. Frankl shares instances of prisoners who, despite their suffering, chose to help others, such as giving away their last piece of bread or comforting their campmates. These selfless acts were not mere sacrifices but symbols of the endurance of the human spirit. The narrative recounts that 'we who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others.' Such gestures reinforced a sense of community and mutual support, crucial for mental and emotional survival.

The Necessity of Existential Tension

Frankl argues that what humans fundamentally require is not a state of equilibrium or peace, but rather a dynamic struggle for a worthwhile goal. This struggle, termed 'noö-dynamics,' creates meaning by positioning an individual in a tension-filled field where they strive to achieve a personally significant purpose. Frankl illustrates this by asserting that a 'sound amount of tension' can be therapeutic and necessary for mental health. He states, 'What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.'

Human Freedom and Self-Determination

Frankl critiques the deterministic views in psychotherapy that reduce human behavior to mere outcomes of external conditions. He emphasizes human agency, asserting that individuals have the freedom to choose their responses irrespective of their circumstances. The story of Dr. J., once known as a 'mass murderer,' who evolved into a compassionate comrade in a Soviet prison, compellingly illustrates Frankl's point. He writes, 'Man is ultimately self-determining. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be.' This perspective underlines the idea that personal transformation is always possible, transcending even the bleakest of conditions.

Cultivate Emotional Detachment for Survival

In extreme adversity, creating a psychological buffer can help manage overwhelming emotional stress. Engage in practices that foster emotional resilience and detachment, which can serve as protective measures during prolonged periods of hardship.

Embrace Small Acts of Self-Care

In desolate conditions, maintaining personal routines, like daily grooming or simple hygiene, can uphold a sense of normalcy and self-worth. Even small actions, such as shaving, can profoundly impact one’s mental state and provide a semblance of control in chaotic situations.

Focus on One Day at a Time

Prioritize immediate survival over long-term visualization during crises. As Frankl and fellow prisoners marked their success by surviving each day, breaking overwhelming challenges into daily tasks can make traumatic situations more manageable.

Seek Inner Freedom

Even in adverse conditions, strive to maintain your inner freedom and self-respect. Reflect on Frankl’s notion that you always have the freedom to choose your attitude, no matter the circumstances. This can help you navigate challenging situations with a sense of purpose and resilience.

Reframe Suffering

In moments of unavoidable suffering, shift your perspective to find meaning in the experience. This could involve viewing suffering as a form of personal growth or a sacrifice for a greater good.

Suffering in and of itself is meaningless; we give our suffering meaning by the way in which we respond to it.

What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment.

Once an individual’s search for a meaning is successful, it not only renders him happy but also gives him the capability to cope with suffering.

Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue.

Only slowly could these men be guided back to the commonplace truth that no one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them.

According to logotherapy, this striving to find a meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in man.

Mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should become.

In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.

Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now.

In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.

Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.

We knew that we had nothing to lose except our so ridiculously naked lives.

Human kindness can be found in all groups, even those which as a whole it would be easy to condemn.

Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment.

The salvation of man is through love and in love.

Spiritual freedom—which cannot be taken away—that makes life meaningful and purposeful.

What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.

We are called to figure out our life’s purpose depending on what emerges in our life and our own choices. Each person may find personal meaning in different places, times, and circumstances. It could be their positive contribution at work, as a volunteer, or in any situation where they influence others.

Freedom to make choices is something most of us take for granted. When we make choices—even the smallest ones—it gives us a sense of empowerment.

When we fear something will happen, it often does. Yet, when we try and force something to happen, it rarely does. Therefore, do the thing you’re afraid of (for example, getting tongue-tied when making a speech) to be released from it.

We are in control of our fears. We are able to make decisions regardless of our environment.

A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes - within the limits of endowment and environment- he has made out of himself.

Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.

Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire... The salvation of man is through love and in love.

No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same."

So live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!

Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.

If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.

Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.

Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.

The religious interest of the prisoners, as far and as soon as it developed, was the most sincere imaginable. The depth and vigor of religious belief often surprised and moved a new arrival.

The truth—that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.

Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.

Humor was another of the soul’s weapons in the fight for self-preservation. It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds.

To draw an analogy: a man’s suffering is similar to the behavior of gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little.

It is this spiritual freedom—which cannot be taken away—that makes life meaningful and purposeful.

The prisoner who had lost faith in the future—his future—was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay.

Human life, under any circumstances, never ceases to have a meaning, and that this infinite meaning of life includes suffering and dying, privation and death.

The crowning experience of all, for the homecoming man, is the wonderful feeling that, after all he has suffered, there is nothing he need fear any more— except his God.

The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love—the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.

In accepting this challenge to suffer bravely, life has a meaning up to the last moment, and it retains this meaning literally to the end.

Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them. In other words, man is ultimately self-determining.

Freedom, however, is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness.

But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to 'be happy.' Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically.

People have enough to live by but nothing to live for; they have the means but no meaning.

Even the helpless victim of a hopeless situation, facing a fate he cannot change, may rise above himself, may grow beyond himself, and by so doing change himself.

Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.

People need meaning in their life in order to have something to look forward to.

The existential vacuum is a widespread phenomenon of the twentieth century.

He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How.

Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning.

We have come to know Man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord’s Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.

Suffering in and of itself is meaningless; we give our suffering meaning by the way in which we respond to it.

What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment.

Once an individual’s search for a meaning is successful, it not only renders him happy but also gives him the capability to cope with suffering.

Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue.

Only slowly could these men be guided back to the commonplace truth that no one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them.

According to logotherapy, this striving to find a meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in man.

Mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should become.

In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.

Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now.

In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.

Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.

We knew that we had nothing to lose except our so ridiculously naked lives.

Human kindness can be found in all groups, even those which as a whole it would be easy to condemn.

Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment.

The salvation of man is through love and in love.

Spiritual freedom—which cannot be taken away—that makes life meaningful and purposeful.

What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly.