98 Man's Search
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about not treading down the young crops. He became an
noyed, gave me an angry look and shouted, "You don't say!
And hasn't enough been taken from us? My wife and child
have been gassed—not to mention everything else—and you
would forbid me to tread on a few stalks of oats!"
Only slowly could these men be guided back to the com
monplace 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 stalks
of oats. I can still see the prisoner who rolled up his shirt
sleeves, thrust his right hand under my nose and shouted,
"May this hand be cut off if I don't stain it with blood
on the day when I get home!" I want to emphasize that the
man who said these words was not a bad fellow. He had
been the best of comrades in camp and afterwards.
Apart from the moral deformity resulting from the sud
den release of mental pressure, there were two other
fundamental experiences which threatened to damage the
character of the liberated prisoner: bitterness and disillu
sionment when he returned to his former life.
Bitterness was caused by a number of things he came up
against in his former home town. When, on his return, a
man found that in many places he was met only with a
shrug of the shoulders and with hackneyed phrases, he
tended to become bitter and to ask himself why he had
gone through all that he had. When he heard the same
phrases nearly everywhere—"We did not know about it,"
and "We, too, have suffered," then he asked himself, have
they really nothing better to say to me?
The experience of disillusionment is different. Here it
was not one's fellow man (whose superficiality and lack of
feeling was so disgusting that one finally felt like creeping
into a hole and neither hearing nor seeing human beings
any more) but fate itself which seemed so cruel. A man who
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 99
for years had thought he had reached the absolute limit of
all possible suffering now found that suffering has no limits,
and that he could suffer still more, and still more intensely.
When we spoke about attempts to give a man in camp
mental courage, we said that he had to be shown something
to look forward to in the future. He had to be reminded
that life still waited for him, that a human being waited for
his return. But after liberation? There were some men who
found that no one awaited them. Woe to him who found
that the person whose memory alone had given him courage
in camp did not exist any more! Woe to him who, when the
day of his dreams finally came, found it so different from all
he had longed for! Perhaps he boarded a trolley, traveled
out to the home which he had seen for years in his mind,
and only in his mind, and pressed the bell, just as he has
longed to do in thousands of dreams, only to find that the
person who should open the door was not there, and would
never be there again.
We all said to each other in camp that there could be no
earthly happiness which could compensate for all we had
suffered. We were not hoping for happiness—it was not
that which gave us courage and gave meaning to our suffer
ing, our sacrifices and our dying. And yet we were not
prepared for unhappiness. This disillusionment, which
awaited not a small number of prisoners, was an experience
which these men have found very hard to get over and
which, for a psychiatrist, is also very difficult to help them
overcome. But this must not be a discouragement to him;
on the contrary, it should provide an added stimulus.
But for every one of the liberated prisoners, the day
comes when, looking back on his camp experiences, he can
no longer understand how he endured it all. As the day of
his liberation eventually came, when everything seemed to
100 Man's Search for Meaning
him like a beautiful dream, so also the day comes when all
his camp experiences seem to him nothing but a nightmare.
The crowning experience of all, for the homecoming
man, is the wonderful feeling that, after all he has suffered,
there is nothing he need fear any more—except his God.
PART TWO
Logotherapy in
a Nutshell*
READERS OF MY SHORT AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL STORY usually ask
for a fuller and more direct explanation of my therapeutic
doctrine. Accordingly I added a brief section on logother-
apy to the original edition of From Death-Camp to Exis
tentialism. But that was not enough, and I have been
besieged by requests for a more extended treatment. There
fore in the present edition I have completely rewritten and
considerably expanded my account.
The assignment was not easy. To convey to the reader
within a short space all the material which required twenty
volumes in German is an almost hopeless task. I am re
minded of the American doctor who once turned up in my
office in Vienna and asked me, "Now, Doctor, are you a
psychoanalyst?" Whereupon I replied, "Not exactly a psy
choanalyst; let's say a psychotherapist." Then he continued
questioning me: "What school do you stand for?" I an
swered, "It is my own theory; it is called logotherapy."
"Can you tell me in one sentence what is meant by logo-
therapy?" he asked. "At least, what is the difference be
tween psychoanalysis and logotherapy?" "Yes," I said, "but
in the first place, can you tell me in one sentence what you
think the essence of psychoanalysis is?" This was his answer:
"During psychoanalysis, the patient must lie down on a
couch and tell you things which sometimes are very dis
agreeable to tell." Whereupon I immediately retorted with
* This part, which has been revised and updated, first appeared as
"Basic Concepts of Logotherapy" in the 1968 edition of Man's Search for
Meaning.
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