neither a physical nor a mental child of my
own! So I found myself confronted with the
question whether under such circumstances
my life was ultimately void of any meaning.
Not yet did I notice that an answer to this
question with which I was wrestling so
passionately was already in store for me, and
that soon thereafter this answer would be
given to me. This was the case when I had
to surrender my clothes and in turn
inherited the worn-out rags of an inmate
who had already been sent to the gas chamber
immediately after his arrival at the
Auschwitz railway station. Instead of the
many pages of my manuscript, I found in a
pocket of the newly acquired coat one single
page torn out of a Hebrew prayer book,
containing the most important Jewish prayer,
Shema Yisrael. How should I have inter
preted such a "coincidence" other than as a
challenge to live my thoughts instead of
merely putting them on paper?
A bit later, I remember, it seemed to me
that I would die in the near future. In this
critical situation, however, my concern was
different from that of most of my comrades.
Their question was, "Will we survive the
camp? For, if not, all this suffering has no
meaning." The question which beset me
was, "Has all this suffering, this dying around
us, a meaning? For, if not, then ultimately
there is no meaning to survival; for a life
whose meaning depends upon such a
happenstance—as whether one escapes or not
—ultimately would not be worth living at all."
META-CLINICAL PROBLEMS
More and more, a psychiatrist is
approached today by patients who confront
him with human problems rather than
neurotic symptoms. Some of the people who
nowadays call on a psychiatrist would have
seen a pastor, priest or rabbi in former days.
Now they often refuse to be handed
120 Man's Search for Meaning
Logotherapy in a Nutshell 121
over to a clergyman and instead confront
the doctor with questions such as, "What is
the meaning of my life?"
A LOGODRAMA
I should like to cite the following instance:
Once, the mother of a boy who had died at the
age of eleven years was admitted to my
hospital department after a suicide attempt.
Dr. Kurt Kocourek invited her to join a
therapeutic group, and it happened that I
stepped into the room where he was
conducting a psychodrama. She was telling her
story. At the death of her boy she was left
alone with another, older son, who was
crippled, suffering from the effects of infantile
paralysis. The poor boy had to be moved
around in a wheelchair. His mother, however,
rebelled against her fate. But when she tried
to commit suicide together with him, it was
the crippled son who prevented her from
doing so; he liked living! For him, life had
remained meaningful. Why was it not so for
his mother? How could her life still have a
meaning? And how could we help her to
become aware of it?
Improvising, I participated in the
discussion, and questioned another woman
in the group. I asked her how old she was
and she answered, "Thirty." I replied, "No,
you are not thirty but instead eighty and
lying on your deathbed. And now you are
looking back on your life, a life which was
childless but full of financial success and
social prestige." And then I invited her to
imagine what she would feel in this
situation. "What will you think of it? What
will you say to yourself?" Let me quote what
she actually said from a tape which was
recorded during that session. "Oh, I married
a millionaire, I had an easy life full of
wealth, and I lived it up! I flirted with men; I
teased them! But now I am eighty; I have no
children of my own. Looking back as an
old woman, I cannot see what all that was
for; actually, I must say, my life was a
failure!"
I then invited the mother of the
handicapped son to imagine herself similarly
looking back over her life. Let us listen to
what she had to say as recorded on the tape:
"I wished to have children and this wish has
been granted to me; one boy died; the other,
however, the crippled one, would have been
sent to an institution if I had not taken over
his care. Though he is crippled and helpless,
he is after all my boy. And so I have made a
fuller life possible for him; I have made a
better human being out of my son." At this
moment, there was an outburst of tears and,
crying, she continued: "As for myself, I can
look back peacefully on my life; for I can say
my life was full of meaning, and I have tried
hard to fulfill it; I have done my best—I
have done the best for my son. My life was
no failure!" Viewing her life as if from her
deathbed, she had suddenly been able to see
a meaning in it, a meaning which even
included all of her sufferings. By the same
token, however, it had become clear as well
that a life of short duration, like that, for
example, of her dead boy, could be so rich in
joy and love that it could contain more
meaning than a life lasting eighty years.
After a while I proceeded to another
question, this time addressing myself to the
whole group. The question was whether an
ape which was being used to develop
poliomyelitis serum, and for this reason
punctured again and again, would ever be able
to grasp the meaning of its suffering.
Unanimously, the group replied that of
course it would not; with its limited
intelligence, it could not enter into the world
of man, i.e., the only world in which the
meaning of its suffering would be
understandable. Then I pushed forward
with the following question: "And what
about man? Are you sure that the human
world is a terminal point
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