Viktor E. Frankl and Normal

Viktor E. Frankl and Normal Behavior In this book review, the author will deal with Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl. The 1946 tome deals with Dr. Frankl's World War II experiences as a concentration camp inmate and his psychotherapeutic method of finding a reason to go on living. For Dr. Frankl, a simple (but certainly profound issue) issue is how the typical camp prisoner processed the living hell around him in his own mind.

In his words, "How was everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the mind of the average prisoner (Frankl 1984, 17)?" Certainly, Dr. Frankl's approach has important advantages. We are limited by our own self-perception of outside reality. Certainly, if we were in such a situation and cut off from the outside world, we would analyze and process the data through our own mental filters. The self-analysis is basically what constitutes part one of the book.

In Part One, Frankl identifies three psychological reactions that he feels were experienced by all inmates to one degree or another: (1) shock experienced during the admission phase to prison (2) apathy after the victim became accustomed to camp existence where the inmate values only that which helps himself and his friends survive (3) in the case of survival and liberation, personal reactions of depersonalization, moral deformity, bitterness, and disillusionment In this, he concludes that meaning in life is found in every precious moment of living.

He did not feel that life ceases to have meaning, even in suffering and death. Why this type of approach? Frankl in his philosophical vein quotes 'Lessing who once 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 behavior (ibid, 32).' In Part Two of the book, he introduces the ideas of what he believes constitutes meaning and his theory of logotherapy.

Here, if one can wax ironically, he engages in the Freudian slip (or more like a psychological dissertation) on how individuals go about finding meaning. Due to the brevity of this review, the author will focus in on Part One and some reactions to Frankl which they find ironic. In quoting Lessing, he obviously feels that his behavior was normal. Unfortunately, it was too depressingly normal in our "civilized" world.

In Orwellian fashion, the proletarians have been trained to sit there, quo up and receive whatever garbage (or gas) is dumped on our heads. He even waxes poetically on gas in which he draws "an analogy: a man's suffering is similar to the behavior of a gas. The "size" of the human suffering is absolutely relative (ibid, 55)." After losing his entire family in the gas chambers, this response is mind numbing.

The basic human instinct for human survival is to fight hard as a group to overthrow oppression and hit back at the enemy. To this author, "normal" behavior looks more like camp revolts such as in Sobibor or in Auschwitz. Outside of the camps, normal behavior was constituted in the Warsaw ghetto or other uprisings or in Jewish activity.