foliumnondefluet (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
foliumnondefluet) wrote2012-03-17 01:01 pm
foliumnondefluet) wrote2012-03-17 01:01 pm
Search for meaning
The prisoner who had lost faith in the future--his future--was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and became the subject to mental and physical decay...
Regarding our "provisional existence" as unreal was in itself an important factor in causing the prisoners to lose their hold on life; everything in a way became pointless. Such people forgot that often it is just such an exceptionally difficult external situation which gives man the opportunity to grow spiritually beyond himself. Instead of taking the camp's difficulties as a test of their inner strength, they did not take their life seriously and despised it as something of no consequence...
Yet in reality, there was an opportunity and a challenge.
One could make a victory of those experiences, turning life into an inner triumph, or one could ignore the challenge and simply vegetate, as did a majority of the prisoners.
Any attempt at fighting the camp's psychopathological influence on the prisoner... had to aim at giving him a future goal to which he could look forward.
(Viktor Frankl)
Regarding our "provisional existence" as unreal was in itself an important factor in causing the prisoners to lose their hold on life; everything in a way became pointless. Such people forgot that often it is just such an exceptionally difficult external situation which gives man the opportunity to grow spiritually beyond himself. Instead of taking the camp's difficulties as a test of their inner strength, they did not take their life seriously and despised it as something of no consequence...
Yet in reality, there was an opportunity and a challenge.
One could make a victory of those experiences, turning life into an inner triumph, or one could ignore the challenge and simply vegetate, as did a majority of the prisoners.
Any attempt at fighting the camp's psychopathological influence on the prisoner... had to aim at giving him a future goal to which he could look forward.
(Viktor Frankl)