Viktor Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl  (1905-1997) Man’s Search for Meaning.

(This article and the quotes in it were largely taken from past Wikipedia articles on Viktor Frankl. I consider him one of the giants of the 20th century. If you are looking for insight into the human condition and the meaning of life I know of none better to start with than Viktor Frankl.)

  “The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance.”

― Viktor E. Frankl

In 1940, Frankl was made head of the neurological department of Rothschild Hospital, the only hospital for Jews in Vienna during the Nazi regime.  He made many false diagnoses of his patients in order to circumvent the new policies requiring euthanasia of the mentally ill.  It was during this period that he began his manuscript, The Doctor and the Soul.

Frankl married in 1942, but in September of that year, he, his wife, his father, mother, and brother, were all arrested and brought to the concentration camp at Theresienstadt in Bohemia.  His father died there of starvation.  His mother and brother were killed at Auschwitz in 1944.  His wife died at Bergen-Belsen in 1945.  Only his sister Stella would survive, having managed to emigrate to Australia a short while earlier.

When he was moved to Auschwitz, his manuscript for The Doctor and the Soul was discovered and destroyed.  His desire to complete his work, and his hopes that he would be reunited with his wife and family someday, kept him from losing hope in what seemed otherwise a hopeless situation.

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are      

      challenged to change ourselves.”

― Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

“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.”

― Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

“Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run—in the long-run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it”

― Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

“Our greatest freedom is the freedom to choose our attitude.”