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moving. If this crisis was brought about by an illness, he refused to be taken to the sick-bay or to do anything to help himself. He simply gave up. There he remained, lying in his own excreta, and nothing bothered him any more.
I once had a dramatic demonstration of the close
link
between the loss of faith in the future and this
dangerous giving up. F , my senior block warden, a fairly
known composer and librettist, confided in me
one
day: "I would like to tell you something, Doctor. I have
had a strange dream. A voice told me that I could wish
for some
thing, that I should only say what I wanted to
know,
and all my questions would be answered. What do you
think
I asked? That I would like to know when the war
would be over for me. You know what I mean, Doctor —for
me! I wanted to know when we, when our camp, would
be liber
ated and our sufferings come to an end." "And when did you have this dream?" I asked. "In February, 1945," he answered. It was then the beginning of March. "What did your dream voice answer?" Furtively he whispered to me, "March thirtieth." When F
told me about his dream, he was still full of hope and convinced that the voice of his dream
would
be right. But as the promised day drew nearer, the
war news
which reached our camp made it appear very unlikely
that
we would be free on the promised date. On March
twenty-
ninth, F suddenly became ill and ran a high
ture. On March thirtieth, the day his prophecy
had
told
him that the war and suffering would be over for
him,
he became delirious and lost consciousness. On March
thirty- first, he was dead. To all outward appearances,
he
had
died of typhus. 84 Man's Search for Meaning Those who know how close the connection is between the state of mind of a man—his courage and hope, or lack of them—and the state of immunity of his body will under stand that the sudden loss of hope and courage can have a deadly effect. The ultimate cause of my friend's death was that the expected liberation did not come and he was se verely disappointed. This suddenly lowered his body's resis tance against the latent typhus infection. His faith in the future and his will to live had become paralyzed and his body fell victim to illness—and thus the voice of his dream was right after all. The observations of this one case and the conclusion drawn from them are in accordance with something that was drawn to my attention by the chief doctor of our con centration camp. The death rate in the week between Christmas, 1944, and New Year's, 1945, increased in camp beyond all previous experience. In his opinion, the ex planation for this increase did not lie in the harder working conditions or the deterioration of our food supplies or a change of weather or new epidemics. It was simply that the majority of the prisoners had lived in the naive hope that they would be home again by Christmas. As the time drew near and there was no encouraging news, the prisoners lost courage and disappointment overcame them. This had a dangerous influence on their powers of resistance and a great number of them died. As we said before, any attempt to restore a man's inner strength in the camp had first to succeed in showing him some future goal. Nietzsche's words, "He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how," could be the guid ing motto for all psychotherapeutic and psychohygienic efforts regarding prisoners. Whenever there was an oppor tunity for it, one had to give them a why—an aim—for their lives, in order to strengthen them to bear the terrible Experiences in a Concentration Camp 85 how of their existence. Woe to him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on. He was soon lost. The typical reply with which such a man rejected all encouraging arguments was, "I have nothing to expect from life any more." What sort of answer can one give to that? What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it
the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual. These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life, differ from man to man, and from moment to moment. Thus it is impossible to define the meaning of life in a general way. Questions about the meaning of life can never be answered by sweeping statements. "Life" does not mean something vague, but something very real and concrete, just as life's tasks are also very real and concrete. They form man's des tiny, which is different and unique for each individual. No man and no destiny can be compared with any other man or any other destiny. No situation repeats itself, and each situation calls for a different response. Sometimes the situa tion in which a man finds himself may require him to shape his own fate by action. At other times it is more advan tageous for him to make use of an opportunity for contem plation and to realize assets in this way. Sometimes man may be required simply to accept fate, to bear his cross. Yüklə 1,04 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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