From this autobiographical
fragment the reader learns much.
He learns what a human being
does when he suddenly realizes
he has "nothing to lose except his
so ridiculously naked life."
Frankl's description of the mixed
flow of emotion and apathy is
arresting. First to the rescue
comes a cold detached curiosity
concerning one's fate. Swiftly,
too, come strategies to preserve
the remnants of one's life,
though the chances of surviving
are slight. Hunger, humiliation,
fear and deep anger at injustice
are rendered tolerable by closely
guarded images of beloved
persons, by religion, by a grim
sense of humor, and even by
glimpses of the healing beauties of
nature—a tree or a sunset.
But these moments of comfort
do not establish the will to live
unless they help the prisoner
make larger sense out of his
apparently senseless suffering. It
is here that we encounter the
central theme of existentialism:
to live is to suffer, to survive is to
find meaning in the suffering. If
there is a purpose in life at all,
there must be a purpose in suffer
ing and in dying. But no man can
tell another what this purpose is.
Each must find out for himself,
and must accept t he responsibility
that his answer prescribes. If he
succeeds he will continue to grow
in spite of all indignities. Frankl is
fond of quoting Nietzsche, "He
who has a why to live can bear
with almost any how."
In the concentration camp
every circumstance conspires to
make the prisoner lose his hold.
All the familiar goals in life are
snatched away. What alone
remains is "the last of human
freedoms"—the ability to
"choose one's attitude in a given
set of circumstances." This
ultimate freedom, recognized by
the ancient Stoics as well as by
modern existentialists, takes on
vivid significance in Frankl's
story. The prisoners were only
average men, but some, at least,
by choosing to be "worthy of their
suffering" proved man's capacity
to rise above his outward fate.
As a psychotherapist, the
author, of course, wants to
10
Preface
know how men can be helped to achieve this distinctively
human capacity. How can one awaken in a patient the
feeling that he is responsible to life for something, however
grim his circumstances may be? Frankl gives us a moving
account of one collective therapeutic session he held with
his fellow prisoners.
At the publisher's request Dr. Frankl has added a state
ment of the basic tenets of logotherapy as well as a bibliog
raphy. Up to now most of the publications of this "Third
Viennese School of Psychotherapy" (the predecessors being
the Freudian and Adlerian Schools) have been chiefly in
German. The reader will therefore welcome Dr. Frankl's
supplement to his personal narrative.
Unlike many European existentialists, Frankl is neither
pessimistic nor antireligious. On the contrary, for a writer
who faces fully the ubiquity of suffering and the forces of
evil, he takes a surprisingly hopeful view of man's capacity
to transcend his predicament and discover an adequate
guiding truth.
I recommend this little book heartily, for it is a gem of
dramatic narrative, focused upon the deepest of human
problems. It has literary and philosophical merit and pro
vides a compelling introduction to the most significant
psychological movement of our day.
G
ORDON
W. A
LLPORT
Gordon W. Allport, formerly a professor of psychology at Harvard
University, was one of the foremost writers and teachers in the field in
this hemisphere. He was author of a large number of original works on
psychology and was the editor of the Journal of Abnormal and Social
Psychology. It is chiefly through the pioneering work of Professor All
port that Dr. Frankl's momentous theory was introduced to this
country; moreover, it is to his credit that the interest shown here in
logotherapy is growing by leaps and bounds.
Preface to the 1992
Edition
This book has now lived to see nearly one hundred print
ings in English—in addition to having been published in
twenty-one other languages. And the English editions alone
have sold more than three million copies.
These are the dry facts, and they may well be the reason
why reporters of American newspapers and particularly of
American TV stations more often than not start their in
terviews, after listing these facts, by exclaiming: "Dr. Frankl,
your book has become a true bestseller—how do you feel
about such a success?" Whereupon I react by reporting that
in the first place I do not at all see in the bestseller status
of my book an achievement and accomplishment on my part
but rather an expression of the misery of our time: if hun
dreds of thousands of people reach out for a book whose very
title promises to deal with the question of a meaning to life,
it must be a question that burns under their fingernails.
To be sure, something else may have contributed to the
impact of the book: its second, theoretical part ("Logother
apy in a Nutshell") boils down, as it were, to the lesson one
may distill from the first part, the autobiographical account
("Experiences in a Concentration Camp"), whereas Part One
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