Quotes from Viktor E. Frankl

the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.

If architects want to strengthen a decrepit arch, they increase the load which is laid upon it, for thereby the parts are joined more firmly together. So if therapists wish to foster their patients' mental health, they should not be afraid to create a sound amount of tension through a reorientation toward the meaning of one's life.

homeostasis»: un estado sin tensiones, en equilibrio biológico interno. Lo que el hombre necesita no es vivir sin tensión, sino esforzarse y luchar por una meta que merezca la pena.

Times of transition are difficult times, times of crisis. But in these times of crisis, with their woes, a new time is already being born.

there is something in it, inasmuch as logotherapy, in comparison with psychoanalysis, is a method less retrospective and less introspective. Logotherapy focuses rather on the future, that is to say, on the meanings to be fulfilled by the patient in his future. (Logotherapy, indeed, is a meaning-centered psychotherapy.) At the same time, logotherapy defocuses all the vicious-circle formations and feedback mechanisms which play such a great role in the development of neuroses.

And so we should not only remember the dead, but also forgive the living. Just as we reach out our hand to the dead, across all graves, so we reach out to the living--across all hatred. And when we say: Honored be the dead, so we should add: And peace to all the living who are of goodwill.

thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

E de-a dreptul ciudat ca, uneori, o lovitura care nici macar nu lasa vreo urma poate durea mai tare decat una care lasa urme.

Thus the illusions some of us still held were destroyed one by one, and then, quite unexpectedly, most of us were overcome by a grim sense of humor. We knew that we had nothing to lose except our so ridiculously naked lives.

Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker." (That which does not kill me, makes me stronger.)

Most important, he realized that, no matter what happened, he retained the freedom to choose how to respond to his suffering.

todos los aspectos de la vida son significativos; también el sufrimiento. Si hay un sentido en la vida, entonces debe haber un sentido en el sufrimiento.

One may howl with the wolves, if need be, but when doing so, one should be, I would urge, a sheep in wolf's clothing.

one of his key ideas: 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.

Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'." ? Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

I could not change his fate; I could not revive his wife. But in that moment I did succeed in changing his attitude toward his unalterable fate inasmuch as from that time on he could at least see a meaning in his suffering.

Hay cosas que pueden hacerte perder la razón, a no ser que no tengas ninguna razón que perder».

But the prisoner who had passed into the second stage of his psychological reactions did not avert his eyes any more. By then his feelings were blunted, and he watched unmoved.

But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer. Only very few realized that. Shamefacedly some confessed occasionally that they had wept, like the comrade who answered my question of how he had gotten over his edema, by confessing, I have wept it out of my system.

It is one of the basic tenets of logotherapy that man's main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life. That is why man is even ready to suffer, on the condition, to be sure, that his suffering has a meaning.

The only exceptions to this were those who had lost the will to live and wanted to "enjoy" their last days. Thus, when we saw a comrade smoking his own cigarettes, we knew he had given up faith in his strength to carry on, and, once lost, the will to live seldom returned.

My mind still clung to the image of my wife. A thought crossed my mind: I didn't even know if she were still alive. I knew only one thing—which I have learned well by now: 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.

The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved.

let me make it perfectly clear that in no way is suffering necessary to find meaning.