Quotes from Viktor E. Frankl

Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.

But if I had to die there might at least be some sense in my death.

All psychotherapy is ultimately something of an art. There is always an irrational element in psychotherapy. The doctor's artistic intuition and sensitivity is of considerable importance. The patient, too, brings an irrational element into the relationship: his individuality.

I said that someone looks down on each us in difficult hours—a friend, a wife, somebody alive or dead, or a God—and he would not expect us to disappoint him. He would hope to find us suffering proudly—not miserably—knowing how to die.

A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth - that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.

But Frankl's concern is less with the question of why most died than it is with the question of why anyone at all survived.

the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.

All this came to my mind when I saw the photographs in the magazine. When I explained, my listeners understood why I did not find the photograph so terrible: the people shown on it might not have been so unhappy after all.

Tiempo después un prisionero me contó que el primer día de su internamiento tuvo la sensación, al marchar desde la estación del tren al campo en la larga columna de reclusos, de estar asistiendo a su propio funeral.

YaÅŸamak ac? çekmektir; yaÅŸam? sürdürmek, çekilen bu ac?da bir anlam bulmaktad?r. EÄŸer yaÅŸamda bir amaç varsa, ac?da ve ölümde de bir amaç olmal?d?r. Ama hiç kimse bir baÅŸkas?na bu amac?n ne olduÄŸunu söyleyemez. Herkes bunu kendi ba??na bulmak ve bulduÄŸu yan?t?n öngördüÄŸü sorumluluÄŸu üstlenmek zorundad?r.

No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden.

According to logotherapy, we can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.

It was, therefore, in an attempt to save one's own skin that one literally tried to submerge into the crowd.

los autores coinciden en señalar que el número de no-judíos muertos es superior al de los judíos

There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one's life.

Dejo a otros autores la tarea de despersonalizar este texto para poder obtener teorías objetivas a partir de experiencias subjetivas. Estas teorías supondrían una aportación a la psicología o la psicopatología de la vida en cautiverio, cuya investigación se inició en la Primera Guerra Mundial con la descripción del «síndrome de la alambrada de púas».

This was enough to incapacitate the patient for the peak experience of sexual pleasure, since the orgasm was made an object of intention, and an object of attention as well, instead of remaining an unintended effect of unreflected dedication and surrender to the partner.

Nothing can be undone, and nothing can be done away with. I should say having been is the surest kind of being.

Only slowly could these men be guided back to the commonplace truth that no one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them. We had to strive to lead them back to this truth, or the consequences would have been much worse than the loss of a few thousand

distinguen tres fases psicológicas en la reacción de los reclusos a la vida en el campo: la fase inmediata al internamiento, la fase de adaptación y la fase que sigue a la liberación. ESTACIÓN DE FERROCARRIL DE AUSCHWITZ El síntoma característico de la primera fase es el shock. En

The Latin word finis has two meanings: the end or the finish, and a goal to reach. A man who could not see the end of his "provisional existence" was not able to aim at an ultimate goal in life. He ceased living for the future, in contrast to a man in normal life. Therefore the whole structure of his inner life changed; signs of decay set in which we know from other areas of life.

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 beyond man's world; a world in which the question of an ultimate meaning of human suffering would find an answer?

Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the "size" of human suffering is absolutely relative.

Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them. In other words, man is ultimately self-determining.