SCROLL DOWN PAST THE PREFATORY MATTER TO REACH THE NOTES
Man's Search for Meaning, An Introduction to Logotherapy by Viktor E. Frankl. English version copyrights: 1959, 1962, 1984, 1992, 2006.
The first English title was From Death-Camp to Existentialism: A Pyschiatrist's Path to a New Therapy
First version was published in 1946 in German under the title Ein Psycholog erlebt das Konzentrationslager (A Psychologist in the Concentration Camp)
It is of interest that Frankl's book is published by Beacon Press,
which is an arm of the Unitarian Universalist Association.
Other publishers have shared with Beacon in the publishing history, including:
Clarion (imprint of Simon & Schuster), Washington Square Press (paperback imprint of Simon & Schuster), Rider (subsidiary of Penguin Random House) for UK editions, Blackstone Publishing for unabridged audiobook and specialized print versions, Ebury Digital for contemporary digital versions.
Viktor Frankl was not a professional philosopher, but a psychiatrist whose Holocaust experience drove him to examine the will to live. But of course psychology and philosophy, now intimate siblings, were at one time indistinguishable.
Dr. Frankl's most important insight was that those who survive very harsh conditions are those who hang onto a meaningful hope of some kind. Those who give up hope are very unlikely to survive.
As a result, he developed a form of psychiatric treatment he called logotherapy, which was meant to alleviate depression and neurosis by encouraging the patient to see something really meaningful about his or her life and perhaps about life in general. That hope was then to be used as a therapeutic lodestar, making the therapy more likely to succeed.
Frankl sharply contrasted his method with the psychoanalytic method developed by fellow Austrian Sigmund Freud and his followers.
According to Gemini AI,
These notes are not necessarily straightforward transcriptions. I have felt at liberty to rewrite and supplement the originals as I go along.
The code F.MSM denotes the specific book (Man's Search for Meaning) to which notes apply. The numbers at the left represent the page numbers for the particular edition. A page number may be followed by a letter, which indicates the paragraph. Even when a paragraph continues from the preceding page, it is marked as a. When a negative sign precedes the letter, the reader is expected to count paragraphs from the bottom of the page. That is, -a and -b mean the first and second paragraphs upward from the bottom.
Occasionally will appear a random three-letter string plus number. This tells me that some note extends over several pages. If necessary I can refer back to the paper trail.
An arrow near a number, as in 32<-- says the note refers back before and including the page number. A double arrow, as in 51<-->, says the note refers to a block of text beginning and ending around the page number.
Exclamation points next to the page number or label indicate my assessment of the note's importance, rated from 1 to 5 bang marks. Question marks indicate the possibility of error on my part.
F.MSM
No page
Ironically, Frankl's decision to honor the fourth commandment by staying in Austria after the Nazi takeover for the sake of his aging parents did not save his parents, and resulted in the loss of his beloved wife, all of whom perished in the death camps.
6-7. Frankl observes that the most vicious and amoral prisoners were the most likely to survive. [I have just finished reading Will Durant's account of the final period of the Thirty Years War, which reduced the population of Europe by half, and note that the cruel barbaric fate of survivors, and what happened to their civilized values, is highly reminiscent of Frankl's account of camp conditions.]
6a. "The best of us did not return."
10b and 11-a. Condemned prisoners may suffer from "a delusion of [last-minute] reprieve." Think of Ambrose Bierce story.
FFN1
20 <--> . What strikes me is the question: How could the Nazis have reached such a level of bestiality? One can give all sorts of correct proximate causes, and even a chain of proximate causes. But how do people become inured to such depravity, whether as witnesses or participants? The atrocities are very similar to what the Stalinists did to political undesirables. [I have yet to read Arendt's Totalitarianism thru. But I wonder about her view of the "banality of evil." Evil can appear bureaucratic and hence banal, but there seems to be something more going on in at least some hearts of darkness than banality. I will have to see how she copes with the concept of evil (and good) in general.]
One thing that is often overlooked about the Nazis is their populist socialism. In the aftermath of the First World War socialism had terrific mass appeal. Recall that in its early period, the Nazi party began life as the National Socialist Workers Party, in competition with the communists, who preached international socialism under worker directorates. The arrival of the Great Depression propelled the average German toward a socialist solution in 1933 just as it hurled America toward socialist methods when FDR took over in that same year.
In other words, the demand of the people for direct economic action in line with the charismatic rhetoric of both Hitler and Roosevelt, gave both regimes enormous, unprecedented popularity and power. But Roosevelt's targets were the industrial and financial magnates whom he blamed for obstructing reform. And tho he was a typical white racist of the period, he was not antisemitic, at least not in his choice of advisers.
So the rage of impoverished America was not channeled against a particular ethnic minority. Plainly, Germany followed the route of antisemitism, which had mass appeal. But Hitler and the Nazi true believers were not mere race baiters. They believed strongly in the "Aryan religion," a form of paganism concocted by people overly influenced by Nietzsche (who would have scoffed at such fantasies). The Nazis veiled this archaic religion from the people, portraying Hitler as a good Catholic.
FFN2
The thing to be noted is that when socialism is on the rise, many among the common people identify with the notion, "Now it's our turn" with the subtext, "You people who have it good will now pay dearly! Out of our way!"
Because true socialism always aims for one-party rule, the coordinating committees become very powerful, and thence the power-hungry gravitate to those committees.
Now since what we have is a cultural-social revolution, the rule of law is viewed as a means of oppression by the elite and by those who are forced to play scapegoat. Hence the committee and its supreme leader (one such almost always emerges) claim that their policies are for the best interests of the worker: ie., the committe's word has now become law. That's the modern road to tyranny. Totalitarianism occurs both from the ideology of tyranny (individual rights are overridden for the "collective good") and the overwhelming surveillance powers of the modern era.
FFN3
But why do such regimes sink to such depths of cruelty?
1. The ideology of collective good blinds many to the rights of minorities and individuals.
2. In politics, it is often the case that the most amoral rise to the higher levels. But in democracies, balances of power tend to check such excesses. In regimes headed toward tyranny, only the most cunning and ruthless excercise true power in the control committees. Because modern tyrannies require a de facto one-party structure, the bureaucratic apparatus falls into the hands of the party, which in turn is controlled by committee. Who controls that "central committee" most effectively is generally the most ruthless.
3. The leaders of such tyrannies spur their peoples to excesses because those leaders truly believe in their blood-spilling causes. Stalin believed in socialism. Hitler believed in his strange Aryan religion (which, in fact, was a spiritual throwback to the beliefs and behavior of the Aryan wild men of ancient Central Asia).
We may also observe that Stalin was a standard-issue atheist who had no moral compass other than the expansion of communism. Hitler was a de facto atheist. That is, he had no known regard for God or man. He did however know about the power of belief. He had found that if he practiced intensive belief before undertaking a major, daring act, he often succeeded against expectations. In a power-mad man, this was a bizarre spectacle for the world to see but it certainly impressed the German citizenry.
In addition, and importantly, the Communist and Nazi ideologies filled the gap left by what Nietzsche and others called nihilism: a world in which Christianity was under siege and Christian verities were dead. These socialist, man-based value systems replaced, to disastrous effect, the traditional value system of Christian Europe, flawed as that was.
Further, we must acknowledge that it is well known that demagoguery can convert civilized group psychology into primitive and violent mob psychology. From my vantage point, mob psychology represents a regression to a lower, herd-like, communal state of consciousness. One sees relatively harmless versions on dance floors, in rock concerts and in sport arenas.
The work of maintaining the defensive individual ego and self is halted for the relief of an alternate form of consciousness dating to an animalistic period of humanity. The individual becomes one with the crowd, and will be caught up in irrational actions much as a single steer will rush along madly with a stampeded herd. Its sense of self is merged into the singular consciousness.
Demagogs prey on this hunger for simple answers to life in a complex world. They use modern media to switch off the rather weak rational mind in many people, who are glad for the relief of submerging into the primitive mass mind.
FFN4
Such leaders are skilled at unleashing the sadistic impulses found in the "lower" mind, which comes to the fore when the cultivated mind is switched off for the sake of the exhilirating effect of mob consciousness.
Those who are able to resist such pressures require a character that goes beyond externalities. They must be able to examine themselves and to seek meaning in life (not only lip service).
+++++++++++++
28b. After recounting the hellish existence of the working prisoners (those not deemed fit to work perished immediately on entry to the camps), Frankl brings up the situation of apathy, which was the main symptom of the second phase as a necessary mechanism of self-defense. We note that this is also a symptom seen among abused children in "normal" society. Sufficient emotional trauma engenders both apathy and the related passive aggressive response. In this light, we observe that Frankl's account shows that he was passive aggressive toward the guards.
77a. !!!! It was necessary to have a goal, a positive vision of the future, in order to have a faith to keep enduring.
"We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of our selves as those who were being questioned by life -- daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk or meditation, but in right action [italics mine]. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find a right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual."
79-b. !!! Frankl talked two men out of suicide by persuading them to see valid goals they had: one, the desire to see a living child waiting in a foreign land; the other, scientific work that still needed to be completed.
85-a; Footnote. The story of a merciful SS commander.
88. !!!! When liberation came, the joy and restoration of normalcy had to soak in slowly for most prisoners. One can see a similar effect among other groups, such as recovering alcoholics. Relation to the world on relatively normal terms can take a fair degree of time. That is, the word of liberation is often not grasped immediately, and may in fact unfold quite slowly.
99. Frankl terms the survival outlook in desperate and degraded situations as "the will to meaning" which he contrasts with Freud's "will to pleasure" and also with the "will to power" in the Adlerian sense. (Tho his logotherapy also contasts with the Nietzschean sense of will to power, even so the psychiatrist quotes the 19th Century German iconoclast with approval, closely paraphrasing Nietzsche's aphorism in Twilight of the Idols: "One who has a why to live for can bear almost any how. Man does not strive for happiness; only the English do." (Frankl did not include the witticism.)
105a. "I consider it a dangerous misconception of mental hygiene to assume that what man needs in the first place is equilibrium or, as it is called in biology, "homeostasis," i.e. a tensionless state. What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not a discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him."
We must agree with Frankl that a source of the plague of mental depression afflicting moderns is rooted in the belief that worthy goals are unattainable or uninteresting.
105a. "If architects want to strengthen a decrepit arch, they increase the load which is laid on it, for thereby the parts are joined more firmly together." We note that it is very important to select the right point for boosting the load, both in architecture and in psychotherapy. A good example of what Frankl means can be found among recovering alcoholics, who gently but firmly encourage each other to face certain critical character traits.
107. By "existential vacuum," Frankl means what is colloquially known as the "hole in the soul."
-b. "Moreover, there are various masks and guises under which the existential vacuum appears. Sometimes the frustrated will to meaning is vicariously compensated for by a will to power, including the most primitive form of the will to power, the will to money..."
Another substitute is the will to pleasure [hedonism].
"We can observe in such cases that the sexual libido becomes rampant in the existential vacuum."
110 a. !!!! Logotherapy says the true meaning of life is to be discovered outside self.
"The more one forgoes himself -- by giving himself to a cause or to another person to love -- the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself."
This may sound like typical self-help book drivel, but it should be understand that Frankl saw many prisoners grotesquely stripped of their human virtues, their essential humanity, as contrasted with the minority who somehow clung to a shred of their humanity. He saw these things in stark relief, which is why his message remains important.
112. "In logotherapy, life is not interpreted as a mere epiphenomenon of sexual drives and instincts in the sense of a so-called sublimation. Life is as primary a phenomenon as sex."
Sex must be a vehicle for life.
124. Frankl relates his mental trick used to help some patients with phobias to break the "vicious circles" of negativity that bring on panic reactions that result in problematic responses. He terms the trick "paradoxical intention" whereby the patient is encouraged to intend to do exactly what she or he fears, keeping a light-hearted attitude.
Frankl tells of a young physician who would, when faced with a new social situation, begin to sweat copiously, much to his extreme embarrassment. Acting on Frankl's instruction, the next time such a situation confronted him, he said to himself: "I only sweated out a quart before. But now I'm going to sweat out 10 quarts!" Within a week the sweat reaction was gone.
Yet I caution that the mental trick used to relieve a person of such an affliction may not always be sufficient. One therapist told of a fellow cured of constant backache by such a method, only to commit suicide once his "cure" disclosed to him his fundamental depression. The backache had been masking that awareness. [I don't have a reference for this paragraph, but many such instances have been reported.]
130 a. Frankl faults psychoanalysis (Freud) as excessively deterministic. "Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives into conditions or stands up to them. In other words, man is ultimately self-determining. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment."
This belief is at the core of his psychotherapy. That is, "Take responsibility for your course of action!" Frankl arrived at this point of view apparently even before he survived four concentration camps, but his observations in those hell holes deepened his conviction.
Even so, as a philosopher he has only personal conviction to go on. No one has yet resolved the mind-body problem, or related problems. And I don't necessarily agree with him. I do agree that urging someone to face himself and seek meaningfulness is a good initial method. Beyond that, there is another factor not directly addressed in this book (tho he speaks of it in another book) and that is the subject of God, which I am not going to discuss in this set of notes.
130 b. Talks about free will from moment to moment.
Paragraphs a and b really reflect his personal creed, the sort of creed that many support but which is difficult if not impossible to prove in the so-called scientific sense. The issue for us is that Frankl is pointing to a greater reality, one based on love as fundamental to the cosmos insofar as humans are concerned.
My take: This fundamental of love, how is it to be viewed, other than as an unfoldment on behalf of man? What is this unfoldment other than an embracing salvation, i.e. a "universal christological principle"?
132 a,b.
"Tho your sins be as scarlet..."
See Perplexity.ai for background on mass murderer Dr. J (sent to the Eastern front for daring to become engaged to Hitler's sister).
This tale of redemption accords with the principle of which Frankl speaks: turning toward a meaningful existence.
(The claim that Dr J had been held at an isolation cell at Steinhof is said to be unlikely. Probably a PoW snared from German army ??)
133. "...a residue of freedom, no matter how limited it might be, is left to man in neurotic and even psychotic cases. Indeed, the innermost core of the patient's personality is not even touched by a psychosis." Here Frankl appears to be suggesting some sort of soul or spirit that is not affected by conditioning.
133. Psychiatric credo:
"An incurable psychotic patient may lose his usefulness but yet retain the dignity of a human being. This is my psychiatric credo. Without it I should not think it worthwhile to be a psychiatrist. For whose sake? Just for the sake of a damaged brain machine which cannot be repaired? If the patient were not definitely more, euthanasia would be justified."
The Nazis did indeed justify euthanasia on such grounds, as do modern liberal nations, with the trend creeping into U.S. states.
Without saying so, Frankl is referring to what is traditionally termed the "divine spark" in the human being.
Advocates a rehumanization of psychiatry and society, while rejecting strict physicalism.
BELOW ARE NOTES FOR F.MSM THAT ARE
NOT ASSOCIATED WITH PAGE NUMBERS
RLL1
One must examine oneself to be sure one is not projecting one's own internal difficulties onto the external world. It is routine to find "the other" to blame rather than looking within and perhaps being forced to concede deficiencies. If people don't examine their lives, how are they to avoid grave mistakes in their advocacies?
RLL2
Re making life meaningful.
It should be noticed that a number of persons come up with incomplete modes of life that ultimately fail if those modes are not backed up by something even more spiritual. A most common modal shortfall occurs when a parent lives her or his life thru the child. Tho it is laudable to want the best for one's child, but so often the result is a parental ego trip that is less about the child and more about parental pride -- which the offspring is eventually forced to repudiate, or suffer debilitating emotional problems.
The problem here is that the parent is unwilling to give way to a higher power, tho the adult may well be blind to that wayward willfulness. The answer is to develop a God-oriented sense of humility, including toward one's children.
Another common life mode is social activism. Again, it is laudable to try to help correct social problems. But one must beware intellectual arrogance. How often, for example, do we see very wealthy people promoting on large scales causes which they are sure are correct, and yet one must wonder whether they really have the competence they think they do. A capacity to pile up riches does not necessarily imply sufficient spirital development to avoid doing more harm than good -- as has been shown many times over by the "law" of unintended consequences.
Now such persons are trying to add meaning to their lives beyond the display of riches. Some want really nothing more than to make a name for themselves outside the business world, to flatter their egos. Others may sincerely desire to make the world a better place. But, do they have sufficient spiritual insight to do so without mucking things up?
Of course one needn't be wealthy to make such a blunder. Activists and joiners who don't look within are liable to choose causes which resonate with some inner conflict or resentment.
The comments in this RLL section are my cautions on Frankl's thesis. I agree that many people lack a sense of meaning for their lives. But it is important to recognize the many vain efforts to gain that meaning on the cheap -- that is, without examining oneself as honestly as possible.
+++++
UNMARKED NOTE
Observe the difference in philosophical intensity between this man, Viktor Frankl, and those who got thru the war with relatively little deep suffering. I am thinking specifically of Martin Heidegger. Heidegger may well have been far more brilliant than Frankl in philosophical matters, but which had the character of the true helper and lover of humanity? It wasn't Heidegger.
And we have Karl Jaspers whom the Nazis oppressed, not only because his wife was Jewish, but because his book Nietzsche challenged the whole Nazi line on that philosopher. (Much has been written on Nietzsche; a good first read is the essay by Bertrand Russell in his History of Western Philosophy [1945].)
UNMARKED NOTE
!?
Much of Jaspers' fighting spirit stems from his lifelong struggle against a disease that struck him in youth that could have taken him out at any time. For him, the purpose of philosophy was to get at the core of human existence (he was an existentialist before existentialism was cool). Jaspers, who began his career as a psychiatrist, surely would have agreed with Frankl's emphasis on finding meaning for life, tho I don't believe the two had any postwar communication. THIS OBSCURE PAPER may be of interest.
Both Frankl and Jaspers were concerned with the intense core of personal existence, as opposed to thinkers like Heidegger who are more interested in metaphysical abstractions. (That remark should not be taken as a putdown of the subject of metaphysics.)
F.MSM/General/Axial
As a non-Christian, Frankl would not be expected to use a term such as universal christological principle (a principle, we may say, that clearly dates at least to Zoroaster or soon after his lifetime). Yet, as Frankl is at least willing to accept use of a personal God or higher power by patients, we see that his thinking tends in that direction, as does his insistence that self-denial for the love of another is of great importance in the healing process. That is, Frankl does not directly support such a notion, but from my vantage point his discussion implies such an aspect of the cosmos.
Notice that the very term "logotherapy" is evocative of the "logos" of John's gospel -- tho John was expanding on Heraclitus, who saw the logos as the eternal, unifying law governing all change and opposition, like a hidden harmony within the flux. "All become one" thru logos; i.e. divine reason implicit in the cosmos. [Heraclitus however does not see love as a fundamental.]
Dr. Frankl's most important insight was that those who survive very harsh conditions are those who hang onto a meaningful hope of some kind. Those who give up hope are very unlikely to survive.
As a result, he developed a form of psychiatric treatment he called logotherapy, which was meant to alleviate depression and neurosis by encouraging the patient to see something really meaningful about his or her life and perhaps about life in general. That hope was then to be used as a therapeutic lodestar, making the therapy more likely to succeed.
Frankl sharply contrasted his method with the psychoanalytic method developed by fellow Austrian Sigmund Freud and his followers.
According to Gemini AI,
Logotherapy remains a vital, active branch of existential psychotherapy, often cited as the "Third Viennese School" alongside Freud’s psychoanalysis and Adler’s individual psychology.Following are my notes on Man's Search for Meaning (2006 edition). They address small and large points important to me for sometimes obscure reasons. They may in future be used for some essay or essays, assuming I get around to writing them. They are for my personal purposes and should not be read as a summary of Frankl's book.
Today, it is primarily used as a supplemental or preventative framework rather than a standalone clinical treatment for severe disorders.Current Clinical StatusTarget Areas: It is most frequently applied to existential crises, PTSD, depression, and anxiety, particularly where a "loss of meaning" is a primary factor.
Empirical Support: Modern reviews of over 130 studies show that logotherapy is effective in reducing suicide ideation, job burnout, and depression while increasing resilience.
Specialized Applications: It is widely used in palliative and cancer care to help patients navigate death anxiety and find purpose despite physical suffering. It is also gaining ground in supporting caregivers, immigrants, and those recovering from substance abuse.
These notes are not necessarily straightforward transcriptions. I have felt at liberty to rewrite and supplement the originals as I go along.
The code F.MSM denotes the specific book (Man's Search for Meaning) to which notes apply. The numbers at the left represent the page numbers for the particular edition. A page number may be followed by a letter, which indicates the paragraph. Even when a paragraph continues from the preceding page, it is marked as a. When a negative sign precedes the letter, the reader is expected to count paragraphs from the bottom of the page. That is, -a and -b mean the first and second paragraphs upward from the bottom.
Occasionally will appear a random three-letter string plus number. This tells me that some note extends over several pages. If necessary I can refer back to the paper trail.
An arrow near a number, as in 32<-- says the note refers back before and including the page number. A double arrow, as in 51<-->, says the note refers to a block of text beginning and ending around the page number.
Exclamation points next to the page number or label indicate my assessment of the note's importance, rated from 1 to 5 bang marks. Question marks indicate the possibility of error on my part.
F.MSM
No page
Ironically, Frankl's decision to honor the fourth commandment by staying in Austria after the Nazi takeover for the sake of his aging parents did not save his parents, and resulted in the loss of his beloved wife, all of whom perished in the death camps.
6-7. Frankl observes that the most vicious and amoral prisoners were the most likely to survive. [I have just finished reading Will Durant's account of the final period of the Thirty Years War, which reduced the population of Europe by half, and note that the cruel barbaric fate of survivors, and what happened to their civilized values, is highly reminiscent of Frankl's account of camp conditions.]
6a. "The best of us did not return."
10b and 11-a. Condemned prisoners may suffer from "a delusion of [last-minute] reprieve." Think of Ambrose Bierce story.
FFN1
20 <--> . What strikes me is the question: How could the Nazis have reached such a level of bestiality? One can give all sorts of correct proximate causes, and even a chain of proximate causes. But how do people become inured to such depravity, whether as witnesses or participants? The atrocities are very similar to what the Stalinists did to political undesirables. [I have yet to read Arendt's Totalitarianism thru. But I wonder about her view of the "banality of evil." Evil can appear bureaucratic and hence banal, but there seems to be something more going on in at least some hearts of darkness than banality. I will have to see how she copes with the concept of evil (and good) in general.]
One thing that is often overlooked about the Nazis is their populist socialism. In the aftermath of the First World War socialism had terrific mass appeal. Recall that in its early period, the Nazi party began life as the National Socialist Workers Party, in competition with the communists, who preached international socialism under worker directorates. The arrival of the Great Depression propelled the average German toward a socialist solution in 1933 just as it hurled America toward socialist methods when FDR took over in that same year.
In other words, the demand of the people for direct economic action in line with the charismatic rhetoric of both Hitler and Roosevelt, gave both regimes enormous, unprecedented popularity and power. But Roosevelt's targets were the industrial and financial magnates whom he blamed for obstructing reform. And tho he was a typical white racist of the period, he was not antisemitic, at least not in his choice of advisers.
So the rage of impoverished America was not channeled against a particular ethnic minority. Plainly, Germany followed the route of antisemitism, which had mass appeal. But Hitler and the Nazi true believers were not mere race baiters. They believed strongly in the "Aryan religion," a form of paganism concocted by people overly influenced by Nietzsche (who would have scoffed at such fantasies). The Nazis veiled this archaic religion from the people, portraying Hitler as a good Catholic.
FFN2
The thing to be noted is that when socialism is on the rise, many among the common people identify with the notion, "Now it's our turn" with the subtext, "You people who have it good will now pay dearly! Out of our way!"
Because true socialism always aims for one-party rule, the coordinating committees become very powerful, and thence the power-hungry gravitate to those committees.
Now since what we have is a cultural-social revolution, the rule of law is viewed as a means of oppression by the elite and by those who are forced to play scapegoat. Hence the committee and its supreme leader (one such almost always emerges) claim that their policies are for the best interests of the worker: ie., the committe's word has now become law. That's the modern road to tyranny. Totalitarianism occurs both from the ideology of tyranny (individual rights are overridden for the "collective good") and the overwhelming surveillance powers of the modern era.
FFN3
But why do such regimes sink to such depths of cruelty?
1. The ideology of collective good blinds many to the rights of minorities and individuals.
2. In politics, it is often the case that the most amoral rise to the higher levels. But in democracies, balances of power tend to check such excesses. In regimes headed toward tyranny, only the most cunning and ruthless excercise true power in the control committees. Because modern tyrannies require a de facto one-party structure, the bureaucratic apparatus falls into the hands of the party, which in turn is controlled by committee. Who controls that "central committee" most effectively is generally the most ruthless.
3. The leaders of such tyrannies spur their peoples to excesses because those leaders truly believe in their blood-spilling causes. Stalin believed in socialism. Hitler believed in his strange Aryan religion (which, in fact, was a spiritual throwback to the beliefs and behavior of the Aryan wild men of ancient Central Asia).
We may also observe that Stalin was a standard-issue atheist who had no moral compass other than the expansion of communism. Hitler was a de facto atheist. That is, he had no known regard for God or man. He did however know about the power of belief. He had found that if he practiced intensive belief before undertaking a major, daring act, he often succeeded against expectations. In a power-mad man, this was a bizarre spectacle for the world to see but it certainly impressed the German citizenry.
In addition, and importantly, the Communist and Nazi ideologies filled the gap left by what Nietzsche and others called nihilism: a world in which Christianity was under siege and Christian verities were dead. These socialist, man-based value systems replaced, to disastrous effect, the traditional value system of Christian Europe, flawed as that was.
Further, we must acknowledge that it is well known that demagoguery can convert civilized group psychology into primitive and violent mob psychology. From my vantage point, mob psychology represents a regression to a lower, herd-like, communal state of consciousness. One sees relatively harmless versions on dance floors, in rock concerts and in sport arenas.
The work of maintaining the defensive individual ego and self is halted for the relief of an alternate form of consciousness dating to an animalistic period of humanity. The individual becomes one with the crowd, and will be caught up in irrational actions much as a single steer will rush along madly with a stampeded herd. Its sense of self is merged into the singular consciousness.
Demagogs prey on this hunger for simple answers to life in a complex world. They use modern media to switch off the rather weak rational mind in many people, who are glad for the relief of submerging into the primitive mass mind.
FFN4
Such leaders are skilled at unleashing the sadistic impulses found in the "lower" mind, which comes to the fore when the cultivated mind is switched off for the sake of the exhilirating effect of mob consciousness.
Those who are able to resist such pressures require a character that goes beyond externalities. They must be able to examine themselves and to seek meaning in life (not only lip service).
+++++++++++++
28b. After recounting the hellish existence of the working prisoners (those not deemed fit to work perished immediately on entry to the camps), Frankl brings up the situation of apathy, which was the main symptom of the second phase as a necessary mechanism of self-defense. We note that this is also a symptom seen among abused children in "normal" society. Sufficient emotional trauma engenders both apathy and the related passive aggressive response. In this light, we observe that Frankl's account shows that he was passive aggressive toward the guards.
77a. !!!! It was necessary to have a goal, a positive vision of the future, in order to have a faith to keep enduring.
"We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of our selves as those who were being questioned by life -- daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk or meditation, but in right action [italics mine]. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find a right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual."
79-b. !!! Frankl talked two men out of suicide by persuading them to see valid goals they had: one, the desire to see a living child waiting in a foreign land; the other, scientific work that still needed to be completed.
85-a; Footnote. The story of a merciful SS commander.
88. !!!! When liberation came, the joy and restoration of normalcy had to soak in slowly for most prisoners. One can see a similar effect among other groups, such as recovering alcoholics. Relation to the world on relatively normal terms can take a fair degree of time. That is, the word of liberation is often not grasped immediately, and may in fact unfold quite slowly.
99. Frankl terms the survival outlook in desperate and degraded situations as "the will to meaning" which he contrasts with Freud's "will to pleasure" and also with the "will to power" in the Adlerian sense. (Tho his logotherapy also contasts with the Nietzschean sense of will to power, even so the psychiatrist quotes the 19th Century German iconoclast with approval, closely paraphrasing Nietzsche's aphorism in Twilight of the Idols: "One who has a why to live for can bear almost any how. Man does not strive for happiness; only the English do." (Frankl did not include the witticism.)
105a. "I consider it a dangerous misconception of mental hygiene to assume that what man needs in the first place is equilibrium or, as it is called in biology, "homeostasis," i.e. a tensionless state. What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not a discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him."
We must agree with Frankl that a source of the plague of mental depression afflicting moderns is rooted in the belief that worthy goals are unattainable or uninteresting.
105a. "If architects want to strengthen a decrepit arch, they increase the load which is laid on it, for thereby the parts are joined more firmly together." We note that it is very important to select the right point for boosting the load, both in architecture and in psychotherapy. A good example of what Frankl means can be found among recovering alcoholics, who gently but firmly encourage each other to face certain critical character traits.
107. By "existential vacuum," Frankl means what is colloquially known as the "hole in the soul."
-b. "Moreover, there are various masks and guises under which the existential vacuum appears. Sometimes the frustrated will to meaning is vicariously compensated for by a will to power, including the most primitive form of the will to power, the will to money..."
Another substitute is the will to pleasure [hedonism].
"We can observe in such cases that the sexual libido becomes rampant in the existential vacuum."
110 a. !!!! Logotherapy says the true meaning of life is to be discovered outside self.
"The more one forgoes himself -- by giving himself to a cause or to another person to love -- the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself."
This may sound like typical self-help book drivel, but it should be understand that Frankl saw many prisoners grotesquely stripped of their human virtues, their essential humanity, as contrasted with the minority who somehow clung to a shred of their humanity. He saw these things in stark relief, which is why his message remains important.
112. "In logotherapy, life is not interpreted as a mere epiphenomenon of sexual drives and instincts in the sense of a so-called sublimation. Life is as primary a phenomenon as sex."
Sex must be a vehicle for life.
124. Frankl relates his mental trick used to help some patients with phobias to break the "vicious circles" of negativity that bring on panic reactions that result in problematic responses. He terms the trick "paradoxical intention" whereby the patient is encouraged to intend to do exactly what she or he fears, keeping a light-hearted attitude.
Frankl tells of a young physician who would, when faced with a new social situation, begin to sweat copiously, much to his extreme embarrassment. Acting on Frankl's instruction, the next time such a situation confronted him, he said to himself: "I only sweated out a quart before. But now I'm going to sweat out 10 quarts!" Within a week the sweat reaction was gone.
Yet I caution that the mental trick used to relieve a person of such an affliction may not always be sufficient. One therapist told of a fellow cured of constant backache by such a method, only to commit suicide once his "cure" disclosed to him his fundamental depression. The backache had been masking that awareness. [I don't have a reference for this paragraph, but many such instances have been reported.]
130 a. Frankl faults psychoanalysis (Freud) as excessively deterministic. "Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives into conditions or stands up to them. In other words, man is ultimately self-determining. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment."
This belief is at the core of his psychotherapy. That is, "Take responsibility for your course of action!" Frankl arrived at this point of view apparently even before he survived four concentration camps, but his observations in those hell holes deepened his conviction.
Even so, as a philosopher he has only personal conviction to go on. No one has yet resolved the mind-body problem, or related problems. And I don't necessarily agree with him. I do agree that urging someone to face himself and seek meaningfulness is a good initial method. Beyond that, there is another factor not directly addressed in this book (tho he speaks of it in another book) and that is the subject of God, which I am not going to discuss in this set of notes.
130 b. Talks about free will from moment to moment.
Paragraphs a and b really reflect his personal creed, the sort of creed that many support but which is difficult if not impossible to prove in the so-called scientific sense. The issue for us is that Frankl is pointing to a greater reality, one based on love as fundamental to the cosmos insofar as humans are concerned.
My take: This fundamental of love, how is it to be viewed, other than as an unfoldment on behalf of man? What is this unfoldment other than an embracing salvation, i.e. a "universal christological principle"?
132 a,b.
"Tho your sins be as scarlet..."
See Perplexity.ai for background on mass murderer Dr. J (sent to the Eastern front for daring to become engaged to Hitler's sister).
This tale of redemption accords with the principle of which Frankl speaks: turning toward a meaningful existence.
(The claim that Dr J had been held at an isolation cell at Steinhof is said to be unlikely. Probably a PoW snared from German army ??)
133. "...a residue of freedom, no matter how limited it might be, is left to man in neurotic and even psychotic cases. Indeed, the innermost core of the patient's personality is not even touched by a psychosis." Here Frankl appears to be suggesting some sort of soul or spirit that is not affected by conditioning.
133. Psychiatric credo:
"An incurable psychotic patient may lose his usefulness but yet retain the dignity of a human being. This is my psychiatric credo. Without it I should not think it worthwhile to be a psychiatrist. For whose sake? Just for the sake of a damaged brain machine which cannot be repaired? If the patient were not definitely more, euthanasia would be justified."
The Nazis did indeed justify euthanasia on such grounds, as do modern liberal nations, with the trend creeping into U.S. states.
Without saying so, Frankl is referring to what is traditionally termed the "divine spark" in the human being.
Advocates a rehumanization of psychiatry and society, while rejecting strict physicalism.
BELOW ARE NOTES FOR F.MSM THAT ARE
NOT ASSOCIATED WITH PAGE NUMBERS
RLL1
One must examine oneself to be sure one is not projecting one's own internal difficulties onto the external world. It is routine to find "the other" to blame rather than looking within and perhaps being forced to concede deficiencies. If people don't examine their lives, how are they to avoid grave mistakes in their advocacies?
RLL2
Re making life meaningful.
It should be noticed that a number of persons come up with incomplete modes of life that ultimately fail if those modes are not backed up by something even more spiritual. A most common modal shortfall occurs when a parent lives her or his life thru the child. Tho it is laudable to want the best for one's child, but so often the result is a parental ego trip that is less about the child and more about parental pride -- which the offspring is eventually forced to repudiate, or suffer debilitating emotional problems.
The problem here is that the parent is unwilling to give way to a higher power, tho the adult may well be blind to that wayward willfulness. The answer is to develop a God-oriented sense of humility, including toward one's children.
Another common life mode is social activism. Again, it is laudable to try to help correct social problems. But one must beware intellectual arrogance. How often, for example, do we see very wealthy people promoting on large scales causes which they are sure are correct, and yet one must wonder whether they really have the competence they think they do. A capacity to pile up riches does not necessarily imply sufficient spirital development to avoid doing more harm than good -- as has been shown many times over by the "law" of unintended consequences.
Now such persons are trying to add meaning to their lives beyond the display of riches. Some want really nothing more than to make a name for themselves outside the business world, to flatter their egos. Others may sincerely desire to make the world a better place. But, do they have sufficient spiritual insight to do so without mucking things up?
Of course one needn't be wealthy to make such a blunder. Activists and joiners who don't look within are liable to choose causes which resonate with some inner conflict or resentment.
The comments in this RLL section are my cautions on Frankl's thesis. I agree that many people lack a sense of meaning for their lives. But it is important to recognize the many vain efforts to gain that meaning on the cheap -- that is, without examining oneself as honestly as possible.
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UNMARKED NOTE
Observe the difference in philosophical intensity between this man, Viktor Frankl, and those who got thru the war with relatively little deep suffering. I am thinking specifically of Martin Heidegger. Heidegger may well have been far more brilliant than Frankl in philosophical matters, but which had the character of the true helper and lover of humanity? It wasn't Heidegger.
And we have Karl Jaspers whom the Nazis oppressed, not only because his wife was Jewish, but because his book Nietzsche challenged the whole Nazi line on that philosopher. (Much has been written on Nietzsche; a good first read is the essay by Bertrand Russell in his History of Western Philosophy [1945].)
UNMARKED NOTE
!?
Much of Jaspers' fighting spirit stems from his lifelong struggle against a disease that struck him in youth that could have taken him out at any time. For him, the purpose of philosophy was to get at the core of human existence (he was an existentialist before existentialism was cool). Jaspers, who began his career as a psychiatrist, surely would have agreed with Frankl's emphasis on finding meaning for life, tho I don't believe the two had any postwar communication. THIS OBSCURE PAPER may be of interest.
Both Frankl and Jaspers were concerned with the intense core of personal existence, as opposed to thinkers like Heidegger who are more interested in metaphysical abstractions. (That remark should not be taken as a putdown of the subject of metaphysics.)
F.MSM/General/Axial
As a non-Christian, Frankl would not be expected to use a term such as universal christological principle (a principle, we may say, that clearly dates at least to Zoroaster or soon after his lifetime). Yet, as Frankl is at least willing to accept use of a personal God or higher power by patients, we see that his thinking tends in that direction, as does his insistence that self-denial for the love of another is of great importance in the healing process. That is, Frankl does not directly support such a notion, but from my vantage point his discussion implies such an aspect of the cosmos.
Notice that the very term "logotherapy" is evocative of the "logos" of John's gospel -- tho John was expanding on Heraclitus, who saw the logos as the eternal, unifying law governing all change and opposition, like a hidden harmony within the flux. "All become one" thru logos; i.e. divine reason implicit in the cosmos. [Heraclitus however does not see love as a fundamental.]
