Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning (Reading Group notes, meeting #1)

 

This is the first of two posts on my summary of Frankl's Man’s Search for Meaning, a book I am reading for my Philosophy Meetup group.  I would like to begin by stating my own existential observation of the human condition, which helps to frame my interest in the topic of Frankl’s book. 

I think the following statement is a basic (but painful) truth of the human condition. 

The human condition:  Each of us will live a finite life that entails some significant, tragic losses.  All the people we love and care about will get ill and/or frail and/or suffer and die at some point in their lives.  Many of the specific goals and aspirations we deeply care about, motivating us out of bed hundreds if not thousands of times, will go unfulfilled- either because they proved to be unattainable or were revised or abandoned.  Eventually, our own health will fade. And we all die.

This “existential angst” of the human condition is sometimes expressed in the common slogan “shit happens”.  But this slogan’s attitude always struck me as promoting an excessive “acceptingness”/fatalistic mindset that borders on perpetuating despair or indifference.  Yes we all experience adversity, but there is some control we have over how we process and deal with that adversity, and the way we manage this adversity has a profound impact on both the happiness and wellbeing of our selves and those around us.

I will share a personal experience of this.  In 2018 I received a phone call from my father, he was very despondent  and shared with me the devastating news that he was diagnosed with lung cancer. My father, who competed in the Olympic games for race walking when he was age 41, never smoked or drank alcohol.   He was still biking 70 kms on bike rides into his 80s (competitive race walking had taken a toll on his knees).  I was very close with my father and he was the most avid reader of my blog!  Processing this news was very difficult for he and our family. 

At first I really struggled with what to say to him, I wanted to offer words of support and encouragement.  However the long-term prospects against this type of cancer were grim.  The probability of surviving 5 years was very low.  Simply saying “shit happens” would have been an inhumane sentiment to express (even though it is true).  The type of support/advice I offered my father was tailored to him, and predicated upon what I knew about the power of gratitude in helping us weather the adversity of life.

My father had kept a daily journal since the 1970s, and he was a very family-oriented person, and treasured his connection to his 8 grandchildren.  So I suggested to him that he write out some personal reflections on each decade of his life, sharing some details of a big event that his own children and grandchildren did not know about that would be chronicled in a document he would leave for all of us.  

I was hoping that, rather than only seeing the loss of future time with his family, this reflective/narrative exercise would help him see and appreciate:

(1) what he had accomplished over his long lifetime (I also told him he exceeded the average life expectancy for his birth cohort in Ireland by some 30 years!) and 

(2) how the connection to his children and grandchildren would extend beyond his time here (in our memories).  

He ended up writing an extensive personal history that he shared with all his children in a document after he passed.  I like to think that by diverting some of his time and energy into that project he experienced more meaning and purpose, helping him process the tragic news of his disease diagnosis better than if he did not do such an exercise.  His last months were not spent ruminating only about “loss”.

Some time during the transition from our naïve childhood into adulthood we have to come to terms with the reality of this existential angst, something that probably is an ongoing process for us over the lifespan as life doles out different types of adversity. For many religion offers a salve that helps ease the discomfort of the human condition.  But alas, I am an atheist so that has been of no help since I came to reject the theological basis of my beliefs back in my early 20s.  Somewhere between the extremes of the strategy of denying the truth of the existential angst (by creating religion) and ruminating daily on it till we are filled with despair, lies what I think is the opportunity for “integrating” the reality of the human existential predicament with our desire to find purpose and meaning in life.  And that is why I felt motivated to read Frankl’s classic book.

In Gordon Allport’s Preface to the book he notes that Logotherapy, Frankl’s form of existential analysis, is made vivid by a question he would often ask the patients that came to see him:  Why not commit suicide? (p. 9). In the answer to this question we get a gleam of the sense of meaning and responsibility a person sees in their life.  It may be their relationships (love for their child or sibling or friend) or some fond memories of their past (e.g. sense of achievement).  Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist and holocaust survivor, spent 3 years living in Nazi concentration camps.  His wife, brother and parents all died in these camps.  He wrote the book in 9 days in 1945, and initially planned to publish it anonymously.

Frankl endured many horrors during his time in these camps, but throughout the book he frequently refers to Nietzsche’s quote, "He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how."  Of course it is better to never have to endure preventable hardships in life, but when such hardships do occur, there is a way for the human spirit to find some way to continue on with hope and purpose.  This is what his book explores.  The ways in which, even in the face of apparently unsurmountable hardship and adversity, humans have the ability to find meaning that makes them strive for a better future.  As Allport notes in the Preface, when all of a person’s freedoms are eliminated (e.g. what you wear, the labour you spend doing all day, what you eat, when you sleep, etc.) there remains only one domain of freedom—"the ability to choose one’s attitude in a given set of circumstances” (p. 12). 

Question the group can consider:  while the hardship of surviving a concentration camp is on the extreme end of adversity and hardship, can you think of your own personal life challenges, when adverse circumstances beyond your control arose but you were able to choose the attitude with which you met the challenges presented by these circumstances?  How did you cope with these adverse circumstances?  Did you adopt different attitudes over time?  What helped you cope, or not cope, with the adverse circumstances?

Frankl notes the question to which Man’s Search for Meaning is designed to address:  How was everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the mind of the average prisoner? (p. 21).  And the term “Capos” refers “to prisoners who acted as trustees, having special privileges - or well-known prisoners”.  The book is about the regular prisoners in the concentration camp, whom the Capos despised.  The former typically had very little or nothing to eat.  Frankl was prisoner #119,104, and most of the time he was put to work digging and laying tracks for railway lines.  He was only used as a doctor in the last few weeks of his time in the prison.

When the prisoners first arrived at camp Frankl notes that they commonly experienced what the field of psychiatry refers to as the "delusion of reprieve": the condemned, immediately before execution, gets the illusion that they might be reprieved at the very last minute (p. 28).  A similar phenomenon has been documented in other, less extreme, life circumstances.  For example, if you ask newly married couples to raise their hand if they think they will get a divorce no one is likely to do so.  And yet the stats on the divorce rate hovers around 50%.  If you ask Canadians how many believe they will get a cancer diagnosis over their life time, again only a few hands are likely to go up (but 50% will, sadly, receive such news).  No doubt there is a strong psychological defence mechanism at play that helps us go through life believing that divorces and cancer, while common outcomes for many people, are things likely to happen to others but not us.

Frankl details how, when initially arriving at the concentration camp, the passengers where separated into one of two groups- those that went on the left side passage, and those that were sent down the right side passage, after being assessed by guards.  The vast majority of passengers, he estimates 90%, were sent to the left side.  These were the people deemed “ill” or “weak” and they wee killed.  Frankl was sparred because he was healthy.  Prisoners thus had to conceal any illness or injury, for fear of it leading to their death if perceived by the guards or Capos.

As degrading as adjusting to the camp experience was for Frankl- having one's head’s shaved, all possessions taken, sleeping in cramped quarters, etc.- he describes that many adopted a strange kind of humour and curiosity about the circumstances (p. 35).  The minds of the inmates developed a kind of protection, which he describes as follows:

At that time one cultivated this state of mind as a means of protection. We were anxious 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 curiosity evolved into surprise; surprise that we did not catch cold. (35)

He notes Dostoevski's saying: "There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings”, which basically means humans can get use to anything, even horrific living conditions.  When this occurs Frankl claims persons meet “their suffering with a genuine inner achievement” (p. 87).

In the New Year we are doing a reading group on determinism, so I look forward to the contrasting perspectives between what neuroscience is revealing and Frankl’s argument.  Consider, for example, the emphasis Frankl places on human agency to influence our well-being in the following passage:

 

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that 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.  And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate.  (87) 

On the next page he adds “The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity - even under the most difficult circumstances - to add a deeper meaning to his life” (88).  The prisoners that lost hope for the future, he argues, were 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” (95). 

I finish my summary notes of this part of Man’s Search for Meaning with a few other passage that stood out to me that we can discuss:

 

What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that 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.  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. (98)

 

When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden. For us, as prisoners, these thoughts  (99)

 

I told my comrades (who lay motionless, although occasionally a sigh could be heard) that 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. (104)

            The psychology of the prisoner after liberation:

Psychologically, what was happening to the liberated prisoners could be called "depersonalization." Everything appeared unreal, unlikely, as in a dream. We could not believe it was true. How often in the past years had we been deceived by dreams! We dreamt that the day of liberation had come, that we had been set free, had returned home, greeted our friends, embraced our wives, sat down at the table and started to tell of all the things we had gone through   (110)

Looking forward to our discussions!

Cheers,

Colin