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Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl explains in his book Saying Yes to Life. What is the meaning of human life? Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl explains in Say Yes to Life book What is this book about?

Viktor Frankl

Say “Yes!” to life: a psychologist in a concentration camp

Editor D. Leontiev

Project Manager I. Seryogina

Technical editor N. Lisitsyna

Concealer O . Galkin

Typesetter E. Sentsova

Cover designer S. Prokofieva

All rights reserved. No part of the electronic copy of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including posting on the Internet and corporate networks, for private and public use, without the written permission of the copyright owner.

Stubbornness of spirit

This book is one of the few greatest human creations.

Karl Jaspers

Blessed is he who has visited this world

In his fatal moments,

He was called by all the good

Like an interlocutor at a feast.

F.I. Tyutchev

Before you is a great book by a great man.

Its author is not just an outstanding scientist, although this is true: in terms of the number of honorary degrees awarded to him by various universities of the world, he has no equal among psychologists and psychiatrists. He is not just a world celebrity, although it is difficult to argue with this: 31 of his books have been translated into several dozen languages, he has traveled all over the world, and many prominent people and the powers that be were looking for meetings with him - from such prominent philosophers as Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger, and to political and religious leaders, including Pope Paul VI and Hillary Clinton. Less than a decade after Viktor Frankl's death, few would dispute that he turned out to be one of humanity's greatest spiritual teachers of the 20th century. He not only built a psychological theory of meaning and a philosophy of man based on it, he opened the eyes of millions of people to the possibility of discovering meaning in their own lives.

The relevance of Viktor Frankl's ideas is determined by the unique encounter of a large-scale personality with the circumstances of place, time and mode of action that gave these ideas such a loud resonance. He managed to live a lot, and the dates of his life are 1905–1997. - absorbed the 20th century almost without a trace. He has lived almost his entire life in Vienna, in the heart of Europe, almost at the epicenter of several revolutions and two world wars, and close to the front lines of forty years of the Cold War. He lived through them all, he lived through them in both senses of the word, not only by staying alive, but also by translating his experiences into books and public lectures. Viktor Frankl experienced the full tragedy of the century.

Almost in the middle of his life there is a fault marked with the dates 1942-1945. These are the years of Frankl's stay in Nazi concentration camps, non-human existence with a meager probability of staying alive. Almost anyone who was lucky enough to survive would consider it the highest happiness to erase these years from life and forget them like a bad dream. But on the eve of the war, Frankl basically completed the development of his theory of the desire for meaning as the main driving force of behavior and personality development. And in the concentration camp, this theory received an unprecedented test of life and confirmation - according to Frankl's observations, the greatest chances to survive were not those who were distinguished by the strongest health, but those who were distinguished by the strongest spirit, who had a reason to live for. Few people in the history of mankind can be remembered who paid such a high price for their beliefs and whose views were subjected to such a cruel test. Viktor Frankl is on a par with Socrates and Giordano Bruno, who accepted death for truth. He, too, had the opportunity to avoid such a fate. Shortly before his arrest, he managed, like some other high-class professionals, to obtain a visa to enter the United States, but after much hesitation, he decided to stay in order to support his elderly parents, who did not have a chance to leave with him.

Frankl himself had something to live for: he took with him to the concentration camp the manuscript of the book with the first version of the doctrine of meaning, and his concern was first to try to save it, and then, when this failed, to restore the lost text. In addition, until his release, he hoped to see his wife alive, from whom he was separated in the camp, but this hope was not destined to come true - his wife died, like almost all of his relatives. In the fact that he himself survived, both chance and regularity agreed. It was a coincidence that he didn't get on any of the death teams, not for any particular reason, but simply because the death machine had to be powered by someone. The pattern is that he went through all this, preserving himself, his personality, his “stubbornness of spirit”, as he calls a person’s ability not to succumb, not to break under the blows that fall on the body and soul.

When he was released in 1945 and learned that his entire family had died in the crucible of the world war, he did not break down and did not harden. Over the course of five years, he published a dozen books in which he outlined his unique philosophical doctrine, psychological theory of personality and psychotherapeutic methodology based on the idea of a person's desire for meaning. The desire for meaning helps a person to survive, and it also leads to the decision to die, it helps to endure the inhuman conditions of the concentration camp and endure the ordeal of fame, wealth and honor. Viktor Frankl passed both those and other tests and remained a Man with a capital letter, having tested the effectiveness of his own theory on himself and proving that a person is worth believing in. “Each time needs its own psychotherapy,” he wrote. He managed to find that nerve of time, that request of people that could not find an answer - the problem of meaning - and, based on his life experience, find simple, but at the same time tough and convincing words about the main thing. This man is rare! – and there is a desire, and there is something to learn in our time of universal relativity, disrespect for knowledge and indifference to authorities.

"Stubbornness of spirit" is his proprietary formula. The spirit is stubborn, despite the suffering that the body may experience, despite the discord that the soul may experience. Frankl is palpably religious, but he avoids talking about it directly, because he is convinced that a psychologist and psychotherapist should be able to understand any person and help him, regardless of his faith or lack thereof. Spirituality is not limited to religiosity. “After all,” he said in his Moscow lecture, “to God, if he exists, it is more important whether you are a good person than whether you believe in him or not.”

The first version of the book "A Psychologist in a Concentration Camp", which formed the basis of this publication, was dictated by him in 9 days, shortly after his release, and was published in 1946 anonymously, without attribution. The first 3,000 copies were sold out, but the second edition sold very slowly. This book was much more successful in the United States; its first English edition appeared in 1959 with a preface by the most authoritative Gordon Allport, whose role in Frankl's international recognition is extremely great. This book proved insensitive to the vagaries of intellectual fashion. Five times it was declared the "book of the year" in the United States. For more than 30 years, it has gone through dozens of editions with a total circulation of over 9 million copies. When in the early 1990s a nationwide survey commissioned by the Library of Congress was conducted in the United States to find out which books had the most impact on people's lives, the American edition of Frankl's book that you hold in your hands entered the top ten!

A new, most complete German edition of Frankl's main book, Still Saying Yes to Life, was published in 1977 and has been constantly reprinted ever since. It also included Frankl's philosophical play Synchronization at Birkenwald, which had only been published once, in 1948, in a literary magazine under the pseudonym Gabriel Lyon. In this play, Frankl finds a different, artistic form for expressing his main, philosophical ideas - and not only in the words spoken by the prisoner Franz, Frankl's alter ego, but also in the structure of the stage action. This edition is from this edition. In Russian, shortened versions of Frankl's story about the concentration camp, made according to other publications, were previously published. Its full version is published in Russian for the first time.

History has remembered Viktor Frankl as a famous philosopher and psychologist who, throughout his life, managed to show the real qualities of a fighter fighting an unfair reality. Frankl had to endure the loss of his family and the concentration camp life, but he never for a moment lost faith in himself and did not stop experiencing an irresistible thirst for life. After being released from the concentration camp, Viktor Frankl actively began to develop scientific and literary activities. One of his most famous and useful works, people recognized the book "Say Yes to Life!", in which he collected answers to the most popular questions about the meaning of life and the essence of being.

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What is this book about?

In the book Say Yes to Life, Viktor Frankl summed up his entire life experience and interpreted it for the reader's mind. In his life, Frankl managed to find the answer to a question that has been worrying entire generations of people for hundreds of years. The author offers his own version on the topic “What is the meaning of life?”, which he managed to find, having gone through a path strewn with failures and suffering.

The author, by his own example, tries to excite the minds of mankind and make them look at their lives from a different angle. The main principle of Viktor Frankl, which he adheres to in his book “Say yes to life!”, is that no matter what happens, you should never give up. The thirst for life is the only need that should not be quenched, because as long as a person wants to live, he will be able to overcome everything and climb to the very top.

What does this book teach?

In Say Yes to Life, Viktor Frankl masterfully combines the scientific foundation of philosophical teachings and the psychological aspects of human and mundane knowledge, along with his own acquired skills. As a result, his book becomes a universal practical guide for every person, which makes you reevaluate your life and guides you along the right path.

The author teaches to endure any blows of fate, and to rise in case of defeat. His advice and recommendations are a kind of training program for willpower and one's own spirit, which, like the body, need to be prepared to overcome obstacles.

Who is this book for?

The book “Say Yes to Life!” will amaze the reader with its informativeness and practicality. What Frankl is talking about has no temporal or spatial limitation, because its ubiquitous and effective advice there is an application in the life of every person.

23.11.2015 11:58

Live with even superiority over life - do not be afraid of trouble and do not yearn for happiness. It is enough for you if you do not freeze and if thirst and hunger do not tear your insides with claws ... If your spine is not broken, both legs walk, both arms bend, both eyes see and both ears hear - who else do you envy?

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

After reading the very first pages of the great, without exaggeration, book “To Say Yes to Life” by the great scientist, psychologist, philosopher Viktor Frankl, I realized that my alleged problems are not problems at all. I suddenly realized how far from an objective perception of my life. I didn't see before how much I have. Now I clearly realized that I am a happy person!

Want to know what the book is about?

But it would not be logical to start disclosing the contents of the book without first mentioning its author. Viktor Frankl (1905-1997) is an outstanding Austrian scientist of world renown. He has been awarded a huge number of degrees by various universities around the world. He wrote more than 30 books devoted to the disclosure of the psychological theory of the meaning of life, the philosophy of man. He showed millions of people - including myself - the opportunity to understand what the meaning of their lives is.

He spent 1942-1945 years of his life in Nazi concentration camps. Moreover, shortly before his arrest, he, as a high-class professional, had the opportunity to travel to the United States. However, he decided to stay, because. could not leave his elderly parents. Perhaps this feat, like many of his other feats accomplished in concentration camps, mysteriously saved his life. The fact that he survived is a combination of chance and regularity. It can also be called an accident that he never got into the teams that were formed for destruction every day. It can be called a regularity that he survived in the hell of hunger, torture, cold, humiliation, while retaining his principles of humanity.

Even before the war, he wrote a book - the doctrine of the meaning of life. The manuscript of the book was with him when he was sent to the concentration camp. He tried to save her, but was certainly unsuccessful. To pass such trials and preserve his personality and human face, he was helped by the hope of seeing his wife among the living.

Having experienced the effectiveness of his theory in the death camps, the scientist realized that the strongest in spirit, and not physically strong people, had the greatest chance of survival in such inhuman conditions.

The author's main goal was to write as complete a story as possible about the experiences of people in concentration camps, and not about events. However, for the completeness of the transfer of experiences, it was impossible to do without a detailed description of events in some places in the book. In the book, the author tried to convey both his own reactions and experiences, and the experiences of millions of people who have passed this ordeal.

He calls the first phase the shock phase.
The 2nd phase is the phase of apathy, when after a few days the person's reactions begin to change, when something seems to die in the person's soul, the body's defenses turn on.
And phase 3 is release. There are paradoxical reactions of lack of joy in it. The prisoner needs serious psychological support.

The body's defenses

The author was struck by the perfection of the human body, in which unimaginable reserves and possibilities are hidden. They manifested immediately upon arrival at the death camp. For six months they wore a single shirt and did not bathe. Always dirty from constant excavation, where wounds are indispensable. But they did not have infections or inflammations. They worked in the cold, half-bare, in decrepit clothes. But for some reason no one even caught a cold. How is it possible, at what point does the body turn on such defenses? When there is such a tragedy of the situation, a constant threat to life?

Hunger

The book is not about the global horrors of the death camps, but about the daily "small" torments of prisoners that people in the camps experienced daily. For example, I was struck by a detailed narrative about how the author struggled with hunger every day, what he experienced at the same time. For a moment, I thought I felt the same state.

Together with everyone, he suffered from hunger and exhaustion. The food that the prisoners received consisted of a bowl of empty, watery soup and a tiny piece of bread. There was also a so-called additive: either a small piece of terrible sausage, or a spoonful of jam, or a small piece of cheese. Given that the prisoners worked hard physically and were constantly in the cold with little or no clothing, this food was completely insufficient.

How can a person who has never starved himself understand this state?

How to imagine that you are standing in the mud, in the cold. In this case, you need to hollow out the stubborn earth with a pickaxe. And you listen every minute when the siren will call for the only half-hour lunch break in this and every day. Do you constantly think about whether they will give you bread? Do you constantly ask yourself what time it is? With fingers stiff and swollen from the cold, you feel a piece of bread in your pocket, break off a crumb, bring it to your mouth, convulsively put it back.

A very serious topic of debate among the prisoners was the question of how to properly use the meager ration of bread. Even two parties were created. In one, it was believed that the daily portion should be eaten immediately. They put forward two arguments. First: at least once a day for a short time you can muffle unbearable hunger; second: with this approach, bread will not be stolen. In the second, they believed that it was not necessary to eat all the bread at once. They also had convincing arguments in favor of this opinion. The author himself eventually joined group 2. But he had his own motives. He says that the most unbearable of all 24 hours of the day was the moment of awakening. Shrill whistles at night pulled everyone out of sleep. There came a moment of struggle with dampness, when it was necessary to get swollen feet into wet boots. At the same time, to see the crying of men with wounded legs ... That's when he clutched at such, albeit weak, but consolation - a piece of bread kept from the evening!

Suicide

You ask, how is it possible to fight for life in such conditions, who can do it at all? Death, compared with such a life, may seem like a reward. The author says that indeed almost every prisoner, even if only briefly, had the idea of committing suicide. But he himself, being a deeply religious person, immediately upon arrival at the camp, vowed "not to throw himself on the wire." Although knowing the numbers, he knew that he would hardly be able to elude the multiple selections of destruction.

Apathy

The author tells about the state of apathy that appeared in all the prisoners after the state of shock. At the very beginning, the prisoners could not bear the sadistic pictures. They could not watch their comrades being forced to squat in the cold, in the mud, under the blows of the whip. But days passed, and then weeks, and they already began to react differently to the cry of pain heard nearby. Indifferent and detached. For several months in the camp, they had already seen so many sick, suffering, dying and dead that such pictures no longer touched them.

The author, as a doctor and scientist, was then struck by his own insensitivity. In fact, apathy is a special mechanism for protecting the body. The whole reality seems to shrink. All feelings and thoughts are concentrated on only one task: how to survive!

When it really hurt

Everyone got used to the kicks and blows that everyone received in the camp all the time. But the bodily pain inflicted on the prisoners was not the most unbearable pain. It was harder to endure mental pain and restrain indignation at injustice. This, despite the apathy, tormented me very much.

The question of the meaning of life

Initially, we are asking this question incorrectly. It is necessary to first understand for ourselves, and then explain to everyone: it's not about our expectations from life, it's about what life expects from us. To put it philosophically, a Copernican revolution is needed: every minute and every day life poses questions to us, but we must answer. And not by reasoning, but by correct actions and behavior. It is on how we acted in this particular case that it will depend on how the circumstances will develop further and what next question life (or God) will ask us.

Love

In conclusion, I would like to quote the author's testament, which he gave to his friend on the day, which, as he thought, was the last day of his life: “Listen, Otto! If I do not return home to my wife, and if you see her, you will tell her then - listen carefully! First, we talked about her every day, remember? Second: I loved no one more than her. Third: the short time that we were together with her remained for me such happiness that outweighs all the bad, even what is to be experienced now.

Viktor Frankl

STABILITY OF THE SPIRIT

This book belongs

among the few greatest

human creations.

Karl Jaspers

Foreword

Before you is a great book by a great man.

The relevance of Viktor Frankl's ideas is determined by the unique encounter of a large-scale personality with the circumstances of place, time and mode of action that gave these ideas such a loud resonance. He managed to live a lot, and the dates of his life - 1905-1997 - absorbed the 20th century almost without a trace. Almost all his life he lived in Vienna - in the very center of Europe, almost at the epicenter of several revolutions and two world wars and close to the front line of forty years of the Cold War. He lived through them all, he lived through them in both senses of the word - not only by staying alive, but also by translating his experiences into books and public lectures. Viktor Frankl experienced the full tragedy of the century.

Almost in the middle, a fault passes through his life, marked with the dates 1942-1945. These are the years of Frankl's stay in Nazi concentration camps, inhuman existence with a meager probability of surviving. Almost anyone who was lucky enough to survive would consider it the highest happiness to erase these years from life and forget them like a bad dream. But on the eve of the war, Frankl basically completed the development of his theory of the desire for meaning as the main driving force of behavior and personality development. And in the concentration camp, this theory received an unprecedented test of life and confirmation - according to Frankl's observations, the greatest chances to survive were not those who were distinguished by the strongest health, but those who were distinguished by the strongest spirit, who had a reason to live for. Few people in the history of mankind can be remembered who paid such a high price for their beliefs and whose views were subjected to such a cruel test. Viktor Frankl is on a par with Socrates and Giordano Bruno, who accepted death for truth. He, too, had the opportunity to avoid such a fate. Shortly before his arrest, he managed, like some other high-class professionals, to obtain a visa to enter the United States, but after much hesitation, he decided to stay in order to support his elderly parents, who did not have a chance to leave with him.

Frankl himself had something to live for; to the concentration camp he took with him the manuscript of the book with the first version of the doctrine of meaning, and his concern was first to try to save it, and then, when this failed, to restore the lost text. In addition, until his release, he hoped to see his wife alive, from whom he was separated in the camp, but this hope was not destined to come true - his wife died, like almost all of his relatives. In the fact that he himself survived, both chance and regularity agreed. It was an accident that he didn't get on any of the death teams, not for any particular reason, but simply because the death machine had to be powered by someone. The pattern is that he went through all this, preserving himself, his personality, his “stubbornness of spirit”, as he calls a person’s ability not to succumb, not to break under the blows that fall on the body and soul.

When he was released in 1945 and learned that his entire family had died in the crucible of the world war, he did not break down and did not harden. Over the course of five years, he published a dozen books in which he outlined his unique philosophical doctrine, psychological theory of personality and psychotherapeutic methodology based on the idea of a person's desire for meaning. The desire for meaning helps a person to survive, and it also leads to the decision to die, it helps to endure the inhuman conditions of the concentration camp and endure the ordeal of fame, wealth and honor. Viktor Frankl passed both those and other tests and remained a Man with a capital letter, having tested the effectiveness of his own theory on himself and proving that a person is worth believing in. “Each age requires its own psychotherapy,” he wrote. He managed to find that nerve of time, that request of people that could not find an answer - the problem of meaning - and, based on his life experience, find simple, but at the same time tough and convincing words about the main thing. This man is rare! - and there is a desire, and there is something to learn in our time of universal relativity, disrespect for knowledge and indifference to authorities.

"Stubbornness of Spirit" is his own formula. The spirit is stubborn, despite the suffering that the body may experience, despite the discord that the soul may experience. Frankl is palpably religious, but he avoids talking about it directly, because he is convinced that a psychologist and psychotherapist should be able to understand any person and help him, regardless of his faith or lack thereof. Spirituality is not limited to religiosity. “After all,” he said in his Moscow lecture, “to God, if he exists, it is more important whether you are a good person than whether you believe in him or not.”

A new, most complete German edition of Frankl's main book, Still Saying Yes to Life, was published in 1977 and has been constantly reprinted ever since. It also included Frankl's philosophical play "Synchronization at Birkenwald" - previously published only once, in 1948, in a literary magazine under the pseudonym "Gabriel Lyon". In this play, Frankl finds a different, artistic form to express his main, philosophical ideas - and not only in the words spoken by the prisoner Franz, Frankl's alter ego, but also in the structure of the stage action. This edition is from this edition. In Russian, shortened versions of Frankl's story about the concentration camp, made according to other publications, were previously published. Its full version is published in Russian for the first time.

At the end of his life, Frankl visited Moscow twice and spoke at Moscow University. He met with an extremely warm welcome. His thoughts fell on fertile ground, and today Frankl is perceived in Russia rather as one of his own, and not as a stranger. Frankl's books, which had come out earlier, received an equally warm welcome. There is every reason to hope that this publication will have a long life.

Dmitry Leontiev, Doctor of Psychology

PSYCHOLOGIST IN A CONCENTRATION CAMP

Memory of the deceased mother

Unknown prisoner

"A psychologist in a concentration camp" is the subtitle of this book. This story is more about experiences than real events. The purpose of the book is to reveal, to show the experiences of millions of people. This is a concentration camp, seen "from the inside", from the position of a person who personally experienced everything that will be discussed here. Moreover, we will not talk about those global horrors of concentration camps, which have already been talked about a lot (the horrors are so incredible that not everyone and not everywhere believed in them), but about those endless “small” torments that the prisoner experienced every day. About how this painful camp everyday life was reflected in the state of mind of an ordinary, average prisoner.

It should be said in advance that what will be discussed here took place mainly not in large, widely known camps, but in their branches, departments. However, it is known that these small camps were the extermination camps. Here it will be told not about the suffering and death of heroes and martyrs, but rather about the invisible, unknown victims of concentration camps, about the masses of quiet, invisible deaths.

We will not touch upon what some prisoner suffered and talked about, who worked for years in the role of the so-called "kapo", that is, something like a camp policeman, overseer, or other privileged prisoner. No, we are talking about an ordinary, unknown inhabitant of the camp, whom the same capo looked down on with contempt. While this unknown man was severely starving and dying of exhaustion, the capo was doing well with food, sometimes even better than during his entire previous life. Psychologically, characterologically, such a kapo can rather be equated not with a prisoner, but with the SS, with the camp guard. This is the type of person who managed to assimilate, psychologically merge with the SS. Very often, the kapos were even tougher than the camp guards, inflicted more suffering on ordinary prisoners than the SS men themselves, beat them more often. However, only those prisoners who were suitable for this were appointed to the role of kapo; if by chance a more decent person came across, he was immediately discarded.

Active and passive selection

A stranger and uninitiated person, who himself was not in the camp, as a rule, is not at all able to imagine the true picture of camp life. She can be seen by him in some sentimental tones, in a veil of quiet sorrow. He does not suggest that this was a fierce struggle for existence - even between the prisoners themselves. A merciless struggle for a daily piece of bread, for self-preservation, for oneself or for the closest people.

For example: a train is being formed that is supposed to transport a certain number of prisoners to some other camp. But everyone fears, and not without reason, that this is another “selection”, that is, the destruction of those who are too weak and incapacitated, and, therefore, this composition will go straight to the gas chambers and crematoria arranged in the central camps. And then the struggle of all against all begins. Everyone is desperately fighting not to get into this echelon, to protect their loved ones from it, by any means trying to manage to disappear from the lists of those sent at least at the last moment. And it is absolutely clear to everyone that if he is saved this time, then someone else will have to be in his place in the echelon. After all, a certain number of doomed people are required, each of whom is only a number, just a number! Only numbers are on the shipping list.

Indeed, immediately upon arrival, for example, in Auschwitz, literally everything is taken away from the prisoner, and he, left not only without the slightest property, but even without a single document, can now call himself any name, assign himself any specialty - an opportunity that, under certain conditions, managed to use. The only thing that was invariable was the number, usually tattooed on the skin, and only the number was of interest to the camp authorities. No escort or overseer who wished to take note of the "lazy" prisoner would have thought to inquire about his name - he only looked at the number that everyone was obliged to sew on also in a certain place of trousers, jackets, coats, - and wrote down this number. (By the way, it was not safe to get on the note this way.)

But back to the next echelon. In such a situation, the prisoner has neither the time nor the desire to engage in abstract reflections on moral norms. He thinks only about those closest to him - about those who are waiting for him at home and for whose sake he must try to survive, or, perhaps, only about those few comrades in misfortune with whom he is somehow connected. In order to save himself and them, he, without hesitation, will try to push some other “number” into the echelon.

From what has been said above, it is already clear that the kapos were an example of a kind of negative selection: only the most cruel people were suitable for such positions, although, of course, it cannot be argued that here, as elsewhere, there were no happy exceptions. Along with this "active selection" carried out by the SS, there was also a "passive" one. Among the prisoners who spent many years behind barbed wire, who were sent from camp to camp, who changed almost a dozen camps, as a rule, those who, in the struggle for existence, completely discarded any concept of conscience, who did not stop at violence, or even before stealing the latter from his own comrade.

And someone managed to survive simply thanks to a thousand or thousands of happy accidents or simply by the grace of God - you can call it differently. But we who have returned know and can say with full confidence: the best did not return!

Prisoner Report #119104 (Psychological Experience)

Since “number 119104” here attempts to describe what he experienced and changed his mind in the camp precisely “as a psychologist”, it should be noted first of all that he was there, of course, not as a psychologist, and even - with the exception of the last weeks - not as doctor. It will be not so much about his own experiences, not about how he lived, but about the image, or rather, about the way of life of an ordinary prisoner. And I proudly declare that I was nothing more than an ordinary prisoner, number 119104.

I worked primarily in earthworks and railroad construction. While some of my colleagues (albeit a few) had the incredible fortune of working in somewhat heated makeshift infirmaries, tying bundles of unnecessary paper waste there, I somehow happened - alone - to dig a tunnel under the street for water pipes. And I was very happy about this, because by Christmas 1944, as a recognition of my labor successes, I received two so-called bonus coupons from a construction company, where we worked literally in the position of slaves (the company paid a certain amount for us to the camp authorities daily - depending on number of employees). This coupon cost the company 50 pfennigs, and returned to me a few weeks later in the form of 6 cigarettes. When I became the owner of 12 cigarettes, I felt like a rich man. After all, 12 cigarettes is 12 servings of soup, this is almost a salvation from starvation, postponing it for at least two weeks! Only a capo who had two guaranteed bonus coupons a week, or a prisoner who worked at some workshop or warehouse, could afford the luxury of smoking cigarettes - where special zeal was sometimes rewarded with a cigarette. All the rest incredibly valued cigarettes, took care of them and literally strained with all their might to get a bonus coupon, because it promised food, and therefore extended life. When we saw that our comrade suddenly lit up a cigarette he had so carefully kept, we knew that he was already completely desperate, he did not believe that he would survive, and he had no chance of doing so. And that usually happened. People who felt the closeness of their death hour decided to finally get a drop of at least some joy ...

Why am I talking about all this? What is the point of this book anyway? After all, enough facts have already been published that paint a picture of a concentration camp. But here the facts will be used only to the extent that they affected the mental life of the prisoner; the psychological aspect of the book is devoted to experiences as such, the author's attention is directed to them. The book has a double meaning depending on who its reader will be. He who himself was in the camp and experienced what is at stake will find in it an attempt scientific explanation and interpretation of those experiences and reactions. Others, the majority, do not require explanation, but understanding; the book should help to understand what the prisoners experienced, what happened to them. Although the percentage of survivors in the camps is negligible, it is important that their psychology, their peculiar, often completely changed life attitudes, be understood by others. After all, such an understanding does not arise by itself. We often heard from former prisoners: “We are reluctant to talk about our experiences. There is no need to tell anyone who was in the camp himself. And those who have not been will still not be able to understand what all this was for us and what else is left.

Of course, such psychological experience encounters certain methodological difficulties. Psychological analysis requires a certain distance from the researcher. But did the psychologist-prisoner have the necessary distance, say, in relation to the experience that he was supposed to observe, does he have this distance at all? An external observer could have such a distance, but it would be too large to draw reliable conclusions. For those who are "inside", the distance, on the contrary, is too small to judge objectively, but still he has the advantage that he is - and only he! - knows the severity of the experiences in question. It is quite possible, even probable, and in any case it is not excluded that the scale may be somewhat distorted in his view. Well, let's try wherever possible to renounce everything personal, but where necessary, let's have the courage to present personal experiences. After all, the main danger for such psychological research is, after all, not its personal coloring, but the tendentiousness of this coloring. However, I will calmly give someone else the opportunity to once again filter the proposed text until it is completely impersonal and crystallize objective theoretical conclusions from this extract of experiences. They will be an addition to the psychology and, accordingly, the pathopsychology of the prisoner, which took shape in the previous decades. Huge material for it has already been created by the First World War, introducing us to the "barbed wire disease" - an acute psychological reaction that was observed in prisoners in prisoner of war camps. The Second World War expanded our understanding of the “psychopathology of the masses” (playing on the title of Le Bon’s book*, if I may say so), for it not only drew huge masses of people into a “war of nerves”, but also provided psychologists with that terrible human material that can be briefly to designate as "experiences of the prisoners of concentration camps".

I must say that initially I wanted to publish this book not under my own name, but only under my camp number. The reason for this was my reluctance to expose my experiences. And so it was done; but they began to convince me that anonymity devalues the publication, and open authorship, on the contrary, increases its cognitive value. And I, overcoming the fear of self-disclosure, plucked up the courage to sign my own name for the cause.

Phase one: arrival at the camp

If we try, at least as a first approximation, to streamline the vast material of our own and other people's observations made in concentration camps, to bring it into some kind of system, then three phases can be distinguished in the psychological reactions of prisoners: arrival at the camp, stay in it and release.

Viktor Frankl. Say "Yes" to life. Book. Read online. 16 Sep 2017 KS

Viktor Frankl

Say "Yes" to life

STABILITY OF THE SPIRIT

This book belongs

among the few greatest

human creations.

Karl Jaspers

Blessed is he who has visited this world

In his fatal moments,

He was called by all the good

Like an interlocutor at a feast.

F.I. Tyutchev

Foreword

Before you is a great book by a great man.

Its author is not just an outstanding scientist, although this is true: in terms of the number of honorary degrees awarded to him by various universities of the world, he has no equal among psychologists and psychiatrists. He is not just a world celebrity, although it is difficult to argue with this: 31 of his books have been translated into several dozen languages, he has traveled all over the world, and many prominent people and powers that be were looking for meetings with him - from such prominent philosophers as Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger, and to political and religious leaders, including Pope Paul VI and Hillary Clinton. Less than a decade after Viktor Frankl's death, few would dispute that he turned out to be one of humanity's greatest spiritual teachers of the 20th century. He not only built a psychological theory of meaning and a philosophy of man based on it, he opened the eyes of millions of people to the possibility of discovering meaning in their own lives.

The relevance of Viktor Frankl's ideas is determined by the unique encounter of a large-scale personality with the circumstances of place, time and mode of action that gave these ideas such a loud resonance. He managed to live a lot, and the dates of his life - 1905-1997 - absorbed the 20th century almost without a trace. Almost all his life he lived in Vienna - in the very center of Europe, almost at the epicenter of several revolutions and two world wars and close to the front line of forty years of the Cold War. He lived through them all, he lived through them in both senses of the word - not only by staying alive, but also by translating his experiences into books and public lectures. Viktor Frankl experienced the full tragedy of the century.

When he was released in 1945 and learned that his entire family had died in the crucible of the world war, he did not break down and did not harden. Over the course of five years, he published a dozen books in which he outlined his unique philosophical doctrine, psychological theory of personality and psychotherapeutic methodology based on the idea of a person's desire for meaning. The desire for meaning helps a person to survive, and it also leads to the decision to die, it helps to endure the inhuman conditions of the concentration camp and endure the ordeal of fame, wealth and honor. Viktor Frankl passed both those and other tests and remained a Man with a capital letter, having tested the effectiveness of his own theory on himself and proving that a person is worth believing in. “Each age requires its own psychotherapy,” he wrote. He managed to find that nerve of time, that request of people that could not find an answer - the problem of meaning - and, based on his life experience, find simple, but at the same time tough and convincing words about the main thing. This man is rare! - and there is a desire, and there is something to learn in our time of universal relativity, disrespect for knowledge and indifference to authorities.

A new, most complete German edition of Frankl's main book, Still Saying Yes to Life, was published in 1977 and has been constantly reprinted ever since. It also included Frankl's philosophical play "Synchronization at Birkenwald" - previously published only once, in 1948, in a literary magazine under the pseudonym "Gabriel Lyon". In this play, Frankl finds a different, artistic form to express his main, philosophical ideas - and not only in the words spoken by the prisoner Franz, Frankl's alter ego, but also in the structure of the stage action. This edition is from this edition. In Russian, shortened versions of Frankl's story about the concentration camp, made according to other publications, were previously published. Its full version is published in Russian for the first time.

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