Americans love freedom, and rightfully so. Freedom is a very American concept. Today I want to talk a little about freedom but do so from the perspective of an Austrian bloke. The man's name was Viktor Frankl. You may have heard of Dr. Frankl but I still think a short bio is in order.
Viktor
was Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at the University of Vienna
Medical School. He also happened to be Jewish. It was the Jewish part
which caused him, during World War II, to spend 3 years in various
concentration camps, including Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, and Dachau.
In
1946 Frankl wrote a book that eventually became known as Man's
Search for Meaning.
In the book, Viktor chronicles his experiences living in
concentration camps. The reading is profound and tragic. I won't get
into the specifics because they are heart-breaking. What I want to
discuss are a couple Frankl's findings. However, I do encourage you to read
Man's
Search for Meaning
because it is very interesting to hear about life, under the Nazis, from the perspective of a trained professional.
Viktor
eventually founded a school of psychotherapy called Logotherapy. From
the book, “Logotherapy focuses on the meaning of human existence as
well as on man's search for such a meaning … Man's search for
meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a 'secondary
rationalization' of instinctual drives. This meaning is unique and
specific in that it must and can be fulfilled by him alone; only then
does it achieve a significance which will satisfy his own will to
meaning.” Frankl says, “The categorical imperative of logotherapy
is, '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!'”
But
the thing I really wanted to draw your attention to is what Frankl
called, “The
Last of the Human Freedoms.” The last of the human freedoms is the
ability to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances. Now, mind you, this is coming from a man who was stripped naked, both literally and
figuratively, chained and forced into hard labor, and confronted with
the very real prospect that he would soon die. Frankl writes, “In
the final analysis it became clear that the sort of person the
prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the
result of camp influences alone.”
This
last quote is truly earth-shattering. For me, one of the messages is
to live a life of responsibility, no matter what. If these prisoners
couldn't blame the concentration camp for their attitude, what excuse
could you or I possibly have?
