Quotes from Viktor E. Frankl

Como quien se agarra a un clavo ardiendo, dado mi innato optimismo (que tantas veces me ha ayudado a controlar mis sentimientos, incluso en las situaciones más desesperadas)

happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to "be happy.

La libertad es la cara negativa de cualquier fenómeno humano, cuya cara positiva es la responsabilidad

From this one may see that there is no reason to pity old people. Instead, young people should envy them. It is true that old have no opportunities, no possibilities in the future. But they have more than that. Instead of possibilities in the future, they have realities in the past—the potentialities they have actualized, the meanings they have fulfilled, the values they have realized—and nothing and nobody can ever remove these assets from the past.

el amor es la meta última y más alta a la que puede aspirar el hombre. Percibí entonces, en toda su profundidad, el significado del mayor secreto que la poesía, el pensamiento y las creencias intentan comunicar: la salvación del hombre consiste en el amor y pasa por el amor. Comprendí

Frankl's doctrine of logotherapy, curing the soul by leading it to find meaning in life, gains credibility against the background of his anguish in Auschwitz.

In particular, it is the challenge of youth to question the meaning of life. However, the courage to question should be matched by patience. People should be patient until, sooner or later, meaning dawns on them. This is what they should do, rather than taking their lives— or taking refuge in drugs.

Affectus, qui passio est, desinit esse passio simulatque eius claram et distinctam formamus ideam." Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.

the words of Nietzsche: "He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How.

We have rescued it into the past wherein it has been safely delivered and deposited. In the past, nothing is irretrievably lost, but rather, on the contrary, everything is irrevocably stored and treasured.

Then I pushed forward with the following question: "And what about man? Are you sure that the human world is a terminal point in the evolution of the cosmos? Is it not conceivable that there is still another dimension, a world beyond man's world; a world in which the question of an ultimate meaning of human suffering would find an answer?

And what about man? Are you sure that the human world is a terminal point in the evolution of the cosmos? Is it not conceivable that there is still another dimension, a world beyond man's world; a world in which the question of an ultimate meaning of human suffering would find an answer?

Nietzsche: "He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How." He

So, let us be alert—alert in a twofold sense: Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.

It is apparent that the mere knowledge that a man was either a camp guard or a prisoner tells us almost nothing. Human kindness can be found in all groups, even those which as a whole it would be easy to condemn. The boundaries between groups overlapped, and we must not try to simplify matters by saying that these men were angels and those were devils.

would say, reification has become the original sin of psychotherapy. But a human being is no thing. This no-thingness, rather than nothingness, is the lesson to learn from existentialism.

I became intensely conscious of the fact that no dream, no matter how horrible, could be as bad as the reality of the camp which surrounded us

anticipatory anxiety has to be counteracted by paradoxical intention; hyper-intention as well as hyper-reflection have to be counteracted by dereflection; dereflection, however, ultimately is not possible except by the patient's orientation toward his specific vocation and mission in life.16 It is not the neurotic's self-concern, whether pity or contempt, which breaks the circle formation; the cue to cure is self-transcendence!

La salvación del hombre está en el amor y a través del amor

that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire.

It did not really matter what we expected from life but rather what life expected from us.

This is the story of Dr. J., the mass murderer of Steinhof. How can we dare to predict the behavior of man? We may predict the movements of a machine, of an automaton; more than this, we may even try to predict the mechanisms or dynamisms of the human psyche as well. But man is more than psyche.

In the past, nothing is irretrievably lost but everything irrevocably stored.

We had literally lost the ability to feel pleased and had to relearn it slowly.