Man's Search for Meaning

The Meaning of Life and Freedom of Choice

• “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.”
• “Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.”
• “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…” — Follow your cause and the rest will come
• “You are always free to choose how you react in a situation.”
• “Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him—mentally and spiritually.”
• “Each man has a unique responsibility and meaning in his life.”
• “Responsibility is the very essence of human existence.”
• “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!”
• “We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.”
• “Life expects something from everybody. And it is different for each man.”

Suffering, Growth, and the Will to Meaning

• “If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering.”
• “The way you react to situations defines your character.”
• “Each man needs his why.”
• “In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.”
• “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.”
• “When we are no longer able to change a situation… we are challenged to change ourselves.” — You have the power to give suffering meaning by reacting well
• “That which does not kill me, makes me stronger.” — Nietzsche
• “Even the helpless victim of a hopeless situation… may rise above himself, may grow beyond himself, and by so doing change himself.”
• “If it is avoidable, the meaningful thing to do is to remove its cause, for unnecessary suffering is masochistic rather than heroic.”
• “Nietzsche’s words, “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how,” could be the guiding motto for all psychotherapeutic and psychohygienic efforts regarding prisoners.”

Life in the Camps

• “Some prisoners jobs awarded benefits.”
• “We knew that we had nothing to lose except our so ridiculously naked lives.”
• “Yes, a man can get used to anything, but do not ask us how.”
• “Apathy, the blunting of the emotions… eventually made him insensitive to daily and hourly beatings.”
• “Reality dimmed, and all efforts and all emotions were centered on one task: preserving one’s own life and that of the other fellow.”
• “Undernourishment… also explains the fact that the sexual urge was generally absent.”
• “Everything that was not connected with the immediate task of keeping oneself and one’s closest friends alive lost its value.”
• “The most depressing influence of all was that a prisoner could not know how long his term of imprisonment would be.”
• “In camp, a small time unit, a day, for example, appeared endless. A larger time unit, perhaps a week, seemed to pass very quickly.”
• “Such an exceptionally difficult external situation… gives man the opportunity to grow spiritually beyond himself.”
• “Life is like being at the dentist. You always think that the worst is still to come, and yet it is over already.”
• “By this method I succeeded somehow in rising above the situation… and I observed them as if they were already of the past.”
• “They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof… to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”
• “No need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.”

Liberation and Its Psychological Aftermath

• “We now come to the third stage of a prisoner’s mental reactions: the psychology of the prisoner after his liberation.”
• “Psychologically, what was happening to the liberated prisoners could be called “depersonalization.””
• “Now, being free, they thought they could use their freedom licentiously and ruthlessly.”
• “No one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them.”

Logotherapy

• “Logotherapy focuses rather on the future, that is to say, on the meanings to be fulfilled by the patient in his future.”
• “That is why I speak of a will to meaning in contrast to the pleasure principle… and in contrast to the will to power…”
• “What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal.”
• “Everyone’s task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it.” — Meaning of life
• “The neurotic who learns to laugh at himself may be on the way to self-management, perhaps to cure.”
• “Will your fear to come true and the anxiety is removed.”
• “Anticipatory anxiety.”
• “By applying paradoxical intention—the vicious circle is cut, the symptom diminishes and finally atrophies.” — Breaking the cycle of anticipatory anxiety