A few days ago, I found in one of those ubiquitous “little libraries” scattered through the city, a copy of A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. I had first read this when I taught high school in Oregon, when I had considered using it for my sophomore English class. I am reading it again, and it is striking how much it reminds me of the story of Viktor Frankl.
In one scene of Solzhenitsyn’s novel, the prisoners, sentenced to hard labor in a gulag, are working in subzero temperatures to mix mortar and build a wall. What is incredible is that, though they are in some respects starving, they work to their utmost. The main character works with pride. They are not only surviving in the moment, but actually accomplishing something they value. The reason they can do this is that they find meaning in the job.
They may well have been echoing what Nietzsche famously said: “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”
For our purposes, in determining what, in the twenty-first century, might help us find meaning in our own daily lives, we can turn to someone who frequently quoted this Nietzschean aphorism: Viktor Frankl.
Viktor Frankl was born in 1905 in Vienna. While a high school student, he began attending public lectures on Applied Psychology, and he began a correspondence with Sigmund Freud—he even sent Freud a manuscript which was eventually published in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. Frankl gave his first public lecture, On the Meaning of Life, at the age of 15.
By 1924, he was studying medicine at the University of Vienna Medical School, and he was increasingly drawn to Alfred Adler’s “Individual Psychology”—in fact, the term inferiority complex comes from Adler’s theories. Frankl, for his part, was bridging psychotherapy and philosophy, and in 1926, as he lectured throughout Germany, he introduced his idea of logotherapy, a psychological treatment based on finding meaning in one’s life. In a few years, his reputation would spread, and his professional life would find momentum. He began his work at several hospitals in Vienna, where he could interact directly with patients to build his understanding.
These details are important to understanding Frankl, but what is most foundational for an understanding of his ideas lies in his persecution by the Nazis. In 1938, Austria was annexed into Germany, and Frankl was forced to adopt the name Israel as his middle name, which now appeared on documents. He resisted what Nazi procedures he could, including indoctrination of mentally-ill patients to the ideology of German Socialism and also the euthanasia of such patients. Frankl risked his life in doing so.
In 1941, he began to write his life’s work. The next year, he was arrested by the Nazis and deported to the Terezin Ghetto, where his father died of exhaustion. In 1944, he was taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where his manuscript was confiscated and destroyed. His mother, wife, and brother all died in the concentration camps. Frankl survived several camps associated with Dachau, not only surviving hard labor and near starvation but typhoid fever which nearly killed him.
How he survived is detailed in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, first published in the U.S. in 1959. His ideas, laboriously reconstructed on scraps of paper in the camps, become the foundation of logotherapy, and it is this therapeutic model we turn our attention to.
Whether it is Solzhenitsyn describing the gulag or Frankl describing the brutal realities of the concentration camp, their experiences were extreme. For Frankl, the only way to survive was to find a why that would allow him to survive the how of his existence. He gave himself a reason to live: for one, to be reunited with his wife, which was not ultimately to happen; but secondly, to bring his idea of logotherapy—which you yourself can read and understand—to the world.
Imagine suffering from edema in frigid winters, one’s feet swelling so that one’s shoes barely fit, digging ditches under the guard of soldiers armed with machine guns. This was Frankl’s life. While he did this, he imagined himself giving lectures on logotherapy to audiences. He would absorb himself in this imagination. What is striking, and what I found inspiring when I first read the book—the first of several times—was how often I myself had done this, imagining myself giving talks while I washed the dishes, drove my car, or walked through my neighborhood. Imagining such things drives you forward.
One of the most important ideas of Frankl’s, therefore, concerned motivation. Think about it: what motivates you? What, to quote a tired old saw, gets you out of bed in the morning? To Frankl, there was a progression, each piece learned from, and built upon, the ideas of Freud and Adler.
To Freud, what motivated people was what he called the “pleasure principle.” We are motivated, simply, to seek pleasure. When you find yourself stressed, unhappy, what do you do? The reaching for something that provides comfort, however temporary, is what Frankl called the will to pleasure. Whether it’s sugar, cigarettes, alcohol, gambling, or sex, the lowest form of motivation is simply to feel good. Such pleasure is, as the Buddhists have long known, temporary, even illusory. Frankl said the “will to pleasure” was the motivation of the child.
The second level is what Adler called the will to power. Children, Adler, proposed, were dwarfed by adults and therefore felt powerless—the “inferiority complex.” To compensate, they were motivated to accumulate power. In our culture, we see this: the drive for political power, money, social status, property. Frankl agreed this was a very real form of motivation, but he said this was the motivation of adolescents.
Frankl’s question is, then, what is the motivation of grown men and women? His answer was the will to meaning. We are motivated, that is, to find meaning and purpose in our lives. He said there were three main ways to do this, and each has but two requirements: one is that the task involves taking responsibility—because it is responsibility that lends one the meaning to carry on—and the second is that the task is transcendental, which is to say, it lifts one out of their self-concern, their self-interest and instead work towards something larger than oneself.
The first way is to produce a great work. For Frankl this was his book. For me, as well, it is a book I’d like to write—several in fact. I also want to make photographs. For any artist, what they are working with is a tradition, and this is the transcendental aspect: the tradition of photography, of art in general, is far larger than me. I add to it, making photographs or writing—even a blog like this—to give people meaning.
The second way is to devote oneself to the well-being of another: a child, a spouse, a neighbor stricken with illness, an aging parent, even an animal, or a houseplant. This is especially transcendental—and it is the core of much of Buddhism, especially Tibetan Buddhism, which is about cultivating compassion, empathy, and then acting on it. Caring for another rather than stooping to please or power yourself has a direct benefit and gives you the why to live. For me, of course, it is caring for my daughter; when I learned that what she most wanted to do was to travel the world and learn about other cultures, I immediately set to work. I got her a passport and planned out a trip to tour England—and I find my motivation and compassion both blossom.
The third way is what one does in dying. When one has no choice but to die—as much by cancer as by persecution—then one mindfully dies with dignity. This is an act of utmost importance to Frankl because to die with dignity—to not give in to pain, fear, any of it—demonstrates to everyone around you, the world in fact, that one can be strong until the end. It is a demonstration of the resilience and moral character of humankind.
What does this mean for you? You might begin by reading Man’s Search for Meaning, and you might even continue on, if you are comfortable with more clinical prose, to Frankl’s The Will to Meaning. Then ask yourself: where do I seek comfort and pleasure? Where do I seek to compensate my lack of meaning for power and prestige? Then turn your attention to where you do find meaning and emphasize them: where do I help others? What is it I create to aid people in their journey? What is it I endure that I might turn to a deeper power, a more gratifying pleasure?
Which brings us to the final question here: what is Happiness? Frankl has an answer to this fundamental question. I will offer this answer in light of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s idea of “Flow,” which fits nicely with Frankl’s philosophy, in my next writing.