Quotes from Viktor E. Frankl

A statement once made by Edith Weisskopf-Joelson: Although traditional psychotherapy has insisted that therapeutic practices have to be based on findings on etiology, it is possible that certain factors might cause neuroses during early childhood and that entirely different factors might relieve neuroses during adulthood.

Thus it can be seen that mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should become. Such

Not every conflict is necessarily neurotic; some amount of conflict is normal and healthy.

Et lux in tenebris lucet

We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.

At other times it is more advantageous for him to make use of an opportunity for contemplation and to realize assets in this way.

As each situation in life represents a challenge to man and presents a problem for him to solve, the question of the meaning of life may actually be reversed. Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.

for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer. Only

I think it was Lessing who said, There are things which must cause you to lose your reason or you have none to lose. An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behaviour.

Doesn't the final meaning of life, too, reveal itself, if at all, only at its end, on the verge of death? And doesn't this final meaning, too, depend on whether or not the potential meaning of each single situation has been actualized to the best of the respective individual's knowledge and belief?

Disgust, horror and pity are emotions that our spectator could not really feel anymore. The sufferers, the dying and the dead, became such common place sights to him after a few weeks of camp life that they could not move him anymore.

We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.

everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

Life" does not mean something vague, but something very real and concrete, just as life's tasks are also very real and concrete. They form man's destiny, which is different and unique for each individual. No man and no destiny can be compared with any other man or any other destiny. No situation repeats itself, and each situation calls for a different response.

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

Hayat?n anlam? insandan insana, günden güne ve hatta saatler içinde deÄŸiÅŸebilir. O yüzden de önemli olan genel olarak hayat?n anlam? deÄŸil, insan?n hayat?n?n verili bir andaki özel anlam?d?r.

Logotherapy is neither teaching nor preaching. It is as far removed from logical reasoning as it is from moral exhortation. To put it figuratively, the role played by a logotherapist is that of an eye specialist rather than that of a painter. A painter tries to convey to us a picture of the world as he sees it; an ophthalmologist tries to enable us to see the world as it really is.

It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future—sub specie aeternitatis. And this is his salvation in the most difficult moments of his existence, although he sometimes has to force his mind to the task.

Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized.

The existential vacuum manifests itself mainly in a state of boredom.

However, we cannot understand the whole film without having first understood each of its components, each of the individual pictures. Isn't it the same with life? Doesn't the final meaning of life, too, reveal itself, if at all, only at its end, on the verge of death? And doesn't this final meaning, too, depend on whether or not the potential meaning of each single situation has been actualized to the best of the respective individual's knowledge and belief?

Considero una concepción errónea y peligrosa para la psicohigiene dar por supuesto que el hombre precisa ante todo equilibrio interior, o como se denomina en biología «homeostasis»: un estado sin tensiones, en equilibrio biológico interno. El hombre no necesita realmente vivir sin tensiones, sino esforzarse y luchar por una meta o una misión que le merezca la pena.

Every situation is distinguished by its uniqueness, and there is always only one right answer to the problem posed by the situation at hand.

fear brings about that which one is afraid of, and that hyper-intention makes impossible what one wishes.