The Meaning of Life Victor Frank

Imagine you are a young up and coming psychologist working in Vienna in the middle of the 20th century. You're bright and can boast of having attended many lectures by Sigmund Freud. You have been working with many suicidal cases, and have formulated a theory which challenges the different approaches to psychoanalysis that have been developed so far. The only problem is that you try to hide your manuscript as you are processed on arrival at Auschwitz,but it is taken from you. Nothing in your life has any meaning: you are only a number, a sourced of biological energywhile you are able to do manual laborand a source of raw material when you are dead. What doesn't get used will be incerated or buried in a unmarked grave. "Arbeit macht frei" proclaims the gates of Auschwitz- will make you free.

Against the odds, you survive. While in the death camp system, you find yoursel continuing to act the part of the psychiatric analyst, observing all human behavior around you. And you begin to notice that physical strength and stamina are not indicators of who will survive. Some of the fittest physical specimens are the quickest to die. No, there is some other factor that makes a person a candidate for survival (if the disease, work , undernourishment and lack of sleep don't ultimately kill you): and, oddly enough you already knew what it was. Your manuscript applied to the life in the camps, predicted who will survive and who would succumb. The Meaning of Life described by victor frankl.

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