Say yes to life Viktor Frankl 30 minutes. Conclusions: who wins and who loses and why? The body's defenses

tells how we can endure the worst suffering. A world-famous scientist talks about how concentration camp prisoners survived - and how to find the answer to the question “What is the meaning of life.”

Viktor Frankl, Austrian psychologist and physician, 1905-1997.

There aren't many things these days that make us say, " I have no words…" These undoubtedly include photographs from concentration camps. What happened there is so inhumane and cruel that we can barely understand it. Every day the people there were subjected to incredible suffering. The prisoners' lives were determined by fear, hunger, disease, forced labor, contempt and torture.

One of them was an Austrian psychologist Victor Frankl. He was first placed in the Theresienstadt concentration camp, then in Auschwitz and Dachau. He spent two and a half years in Nazi concentration camps. His parents, his brother and his wife did not survive the horrors of “KZ” [as the Germans briefly call the concentration camp - approx. POLEZNER]. Since Frankl was a psychologist by training, he was able to look at his surroundings from the outside: the scientist observed how his fellow sufferers reacted to incredible suffering and how it changed their psyche.

As it turns out, even in extreme situations like this, we find ways to give meaning to our lives. Later, from his experience and observations, Frankl created his own therapy, logotherapy, recognized by modern scientific communication. With her help, he helped his patients overcome depression and panic attacks.

From this summary you will also learn:

Why do many people have “Sunday neurosis”;
What did the concentration camp prisoners rejoice about?
What is the meaning of life after all?

People heard terrible stories about concentration camps - and more often than not, the reality turned out to be even worse. The next train brought them, deprived of water and food, herded into cattle cars or trucks, into a future full of fears and horrors.

In the first days after arriving at the camp, most of the prisoners were in a state of shock. Many were looking for even the tiniest reason for hope - like a drowning man clutching at a straw. People found all kinds of confirmation that all this was just an unfortunate misunderstanding, and that they would soon return home to their families.

The camp routine included a rule according to which prisoners were divided into groups. One group could be called to the parade ground, the other was ordered not to leave the barracks. Why such selection was practiced, and what happened to the other group, the prisoners were not told. In most cases, people from the first group were hanged, and the second were sent to forced labor. But the prisoners nevertheless believed that their fellow sufferers from the first group had been pardoned and sent home. They had no reason to think so, but... such is the psychology of a person who hopes.

In addition, in the first days, many prisoners thought about suicide. They could not bear the incredible humiliation, cruel treatment by the guards and the sight of other prisoners being punished and tortured. Many thought about throwing themselves on the electrified wire that surrounded the camp - to finally get rid of their suffering.

Surrender and apathy

For most prisoners who survived the first days in a concentration camp, the shock passed after some time. It was most often replaced by painful apathy. Just yesterday, things that seemed important suddenly stopped playing any meaning for people. Everyday horror and omnipresent death became a daily occurrence, so that they could pass by a dead fellow without even blinking an eye.

The only thing that remained significant was one’s own survival and the survival of loved ones - family members, old friends. All their emotions concerned only basic human needs. They constantly dreamed of food and dishes that they could eat again after their release.

The difference between prisoners who suffered from initial shock and those who fell into apathy became especially noticeable when an epidemic (for example, an outbreak of typhus) began. The first ones cried in despair and hoped that at least now something would change for the better. The latter, meanwhile, took off the clothes and shoes of the dead and took their food for themselves.

Apathy is a defensive reaction of the human psyche. Only thanks to a certain spiritual hardness did the prisoners not become victims of their emotions, did not lose the ability to act, but were able to focus on survival.

What was especially difficult for many prisoners was that they did not know when their suffering would end. The harsh reality dictated that they would live in the camp for some time, and then they would be killed. But plans for the future are vital for us - we live for our future. Since the camp robbed people of their future, in a sense they stopped living - they simply existed and tried to maintain themselves (at least) in this state for as long as possible.

Go inside yourself

How is it that many of the concentration camp survivors retained their mental health and were able to lead normal lives again in the future? Shouldn't a person be a victim of such terrible ordeals? Special mental strategies allowed some prisoners to cope with incredible suffering.

One of the most important strategies is to focus on your inner life. The Nazis could take everything away from people, but they could not stop them from thinking about beauty.

Many prisoners were able to survive hard, long hours of work in the icy cold because they retained a little joy inside themselves. They carried sacks, carried logs - and at the same time spent hours communicating in their fantasies with spouses, children or friends. Any, even the smallest memory already meant a departure from reality. One prisoner said that what helped him was the memory of how at home he would go to his bedroom and, unlike in the camp, turn on the light himself.

Many prisoners fell in love with observing nature. A beautiful sunset or a small, colorful bird could make an entire crew happy—even if the happiness only lasted a few moments.

Another way to escape from the hateful reality was humor. Of course, all the prisoners were at the limit of their physical capabilities, intimidated and exhausted by suffering. And it was all the more valuable when someone found the strength to say something that made them smile. The theme of many jokes was camp life. For example, prisoners imagined that after the war they were sitting with their families at dinner and asked to scoop up soup from the bottom of the pan - since there were very few peas in the camp soup, and the ones that were there sank to the very bottom of the pot. This joke does not seem funny to us, but for the prisoners such humor was a relief and was received with laughter.

Decide

It would seem a trivial thing to make this or that decision. We are used to deciding everything ourselves. Anyone who prevents us from doing this takes away part of our personality. Life in the camp was hard, incl. and because the ability to decide something was extremely limited. The pleasant memory described above “I enter the bedroom and turn on the light myself” was impossible in the conditions of the barracks - the lights there were turned on and off centrally.

The camp also had some decision-making powers that were left to the prisoners, and two mutually exclusive strategies on what to do with those freedoms. Strategy one: avoid any situation in which a decision must be made. After all, a wrong choice could lead to death. For example, in concentration camps, prisoners were often offered transfer to another camp. It could have been better or worse - or they could have shot him. Therefore, many prisoners tried to behave as quietly as possible and not decide anything. They saw no point in fighting to improve their situation, and left themselves to the will of fate.

The second strategy was the opposite of the first. The prisoners who adhered to it considered the ability to make even small decisions as a symbol of their remaining freedom and autonomy. They agreed to be transferred to other camps and took on additional shifts. They took advantage of every opportunity their overseers gave them to make and implement decisions. Some chose to maintain high moral standards even in the face of the brutality around them. Such people donated part of their diet to sick comrades - even though they themselves suffered from hunger.

Life after camp

It doesn’t matter how exactly a person managed to survive imprisonment in a concentration camp - the terrible experiences from this time left deep marks on the psyche. The prisoners also had to get used to life “in freedom” again.

Immediately after the liberation, many could not believe that all THIS was left behind. They had to suppress their emotions for so long that it was not so easy to just “turn on” them (the emotions). It sounds strange, but in reality most prisoners did not rejoice at their release - they did not feel anything. They imagined their liberation so often in every detail that this event in real life seemed to them just a bad movie. Psychologists in such cases talk about depersonalization.

Returning home was also a disappointment for many. They dreamed about this so often, imagined the long-awaited moment in every detail... But when they finally got to the house, they saw: it was no longer there, or their entire family had died during the war.

If relatives and friends survived, then they did not have the opportunity to experience the horrors of concentration camps - and therefore they did not show enough sympathy for the traumatic experiences of the prisoners. Many listened to stories about what happened in the camp and answered that life in freedom, with its night bombings and difficulties with food, was not easy.

However, most former concentration camp prisoners eventually managed to find the meaning of life again.

Logotherapy

After his liberation, based on his experiences in various concentration camps, Viktor Frankl developed the psychological theory of logotherapy. It was based on an observation he had encountered many times: prisoners who found meaning in their lives were able to cope with the misfortune that befell them much better than those who had already “given up.” Why? The meaning of life gives a person the strength to rejoice at something, hope for something and believe in the future. Therefore, such prisoners had more strength, they were more resilient than those who no longer saw meaning in life.

Frankl concluded that the meaning of life is our most important motivation. This thesis is also proven by later research. For example, when asked what was most important in their lives, 78% of Johns Hopkins University students said they felt they were living a life that had meaning and purpose.

People who consider their life to be unimportant are in the so-called. "existential vacuum". The reason most often is that such a person cannot live in a way that would be correct according to his value system. Most people suffer from this disorder from time to time. An example of such a condition is “Sunday neurosis”. What is meant? We worked the whole week, got things done, gave it our all. On Sunday we can finally relax - and suddenly we ask ourselves: why am I doing all this? If there is no answer, but the thought is strengthened in the mind, this condition can result in depression and other psychological problems.

The goal of logotherapy is to help people find the meaning of life and save them from the “existential vacuum” and its consequences.

There are more answers than you might think

To become strong and happy, we must understand what the meaning of our life is. Not the easiest task!

Most people believe that we must understand the meaning of life before we begin to make decisions. But logotherapy turns everything upside down:

Depending on what decisions we make, we deny influence on the meaning of our lives.

It's like in chess: if we ask a grandmaster what the best move is, he will answer that it all depends on the specific situation. The same thing applies to the meaning of life. The “correct meaning of life” is different for each person in each life situation. For all other people, this meaning of life may be completely inappropriate.

Prisoners in concentration camps often found their meaning in life in the few decisions they could still make. Some decided to find it in a small songbird, others - in selfless help to sick comrades. Thanks to these small decisions, they were able to be independent people with their own values and give meaning to their lives.

This is the very path we must take if we want to be mentally stable and strong: we must look at our actions and understand what the meaning of life is. However, there are no clear boundaries. For example, if we are looking for a job, our goal may be to become the head of this organization. Or we will prefer to get a job in a company where there is no special career growth in sight, but work there fully corresponds to our ideas about life. For example, working at Greenpeace, you won’t become a top manager with a “golden parachute,” but you will serve the noble goal of saving the environment.

This is how logotherapy helps prevent mental problems. But it can also help those who already suffer from mental illness.

Facing Fear

Logotherapy has many techniques that can help a patient overcome their mental health problem. In this case, therapy concentrates not on the world around the patient, but on his inner life.

The usual psychotherapeutic approach tries to explain fears and neuroses through some external circumstances. But for a person who went through the horrors of concentration camps, such an attempt to understand what was happening to him is pointless - after all, if you look at the “external circumstances”, all survivors should have suffered from severe mental illness (which in fact did not happen).

Psychologists working according to the Frankl method proceed from the fact that everyone can make decisions for themselves and determine the meaning of their lives - no matter how terrible external factors may be. We are not victims of our environment. We will always have the strength to find another way. Once the patient understands this maxim (“You are the master of your destiny”), he will also understand that he himself can do something to deal with his fears and problems.

To combat your fears you can use technique of paradoxical intention. For example, you are afraid that you constantly blush in public. Well... try to become the blushing world champion! As soon as you arrive in the classroom, immediately, with all your might, try to become as red as a tomato. What's the result? There's no way you'll blush :). This little trick works with various neurological symptoms: poor memory for names or constant nervousness.

Summary

Key idea of the book:

It doesn't matter how bad life is. There is always the opportunity to find meaning in it.

What can you do specifically?

Find the meaning of your life!

You are not a small ball that the world around you plays with at its discretion. You yourself can decide what your life will be like. Based on these decisions, you will understand what the meaning of life is for you. When you find it, you will become a mentally stable and resilient person.

Use the method of paradoxical intention!

If you notice a little psychological discomfort in yourself, such as increased nervousness, do a simple thing: try to become a world champion in your problem. Imagine that you suffer from it more than anyone else. It is human nature to be contradictory - so you will get rid of your “problem”.

Let's change the topic? Here is another very valuable summary. A former Apple employee and famous investor talks about starting your own business:

More useful news - here!

Victor Frankl

STABILITY OF SPIRIT

This book belongs

among the few greatest

human creations.

Karl Jaspers

Preface

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 different universities around 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 outstanding people and powerful people have sought meetings with him - from such outstanding philosophers as Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger, and to political and religious leaders including Pope Paul VI and Hillary Clinton. Less than a decade has passed since Viktor Frankl's death, but few would dispute that he proved 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 possibilities of discovering meaning in their own lives.

The relevance of Viktor Frankl's ideas is determined by the unique meeting 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 long time, and the dates of his life - 1905-1997 - absorbed the 20th century almost without a trace. He lived almost his entire life 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 the forty-year Cold War. He survived them all, survived them in both senses of the word - not only by remaining alive, but also by translating his experiences into books and public lectures. Viktor Frankl experienced the entire tragedy of the century.

Almost in the middle, a fault runs through his life, marked by the dates 1942-1945. These are the years of Frankl's stay in Nazi concentration camps, inhuman existence with a scanty probability of surviving. Almost anyone who was lucky enough to survive would consider it the greatest happiness to erase these years from their lives and forget them like a bad dream. But Frankl, even on the eve of the war, had largely 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 - the greatest chances of survival, according to Frankl’s observations, were not those who were distinguished by the strongest health, but those who were distinguished by the strongest spirit, who had a meaning for which to live. Few people can be remembered in the history of mankind who paid such a high price for their beliefs and whose views were subjected to such severe testing. Viktor Frankl is on a par with Socrates and Giordano Bruno, who accepted death as truth. He, too, had the opportunity to avoid such a fate. Shortly before his arrest, he, like several other high-profile professionals, managed to obtain a visa to enter the United States, but after much hesitation, he decided to stay 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 a book with the first version of the doctrine of meaning, and his concern was first to try to preserve it, and then, when this failed, to restore the lost text. In addition, until his liberation, he hoped to see his wife alive, with 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. The fact that he himself survived was both an accident and a pattern. It was an accident that he was not included in any of the teams heading to death, heading not for any specific reason, but simply because the death machine needed 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 give in, not to break under the blows falling on the body and soul.

Having been released in 1945 and learning that his entire family had died in the crucible of the World War, he did not break down or become bitter. Over the course of five years, he published a dozen books in which he outlined his unique philosophical teaching, 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 a concentration camp and withstand the ordeal of fame, wealth and honor. Viktor Frankl passed both tests and remained a Man with a capital M, testing the effectiveness of his own theory on himself and proving that a person is worth believing in. “Each time requires its own psychotherapy,” he wrote. He managed to find that nerve of time, that request of people that did 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 has a rare case! - I want and have 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 and help any person, regardless of his faith or lack thereof. Spirituality is not limited to religiosity. “In the end,” 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 “Psychologist in a Concentration Camp,” which formed the basis of this publication, was dictated by him in 9 days, shortly after liberation, and was published in 1946 anonymously, without attribution. The first edition of three thousand 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 foreword by the most authoritative Gordon Allport, whose role in Frankl’s international recognition is extremely great. This book turned out to be insensitive to the whims of intellectual fashion. Five times it was declared “book of the year” in the United States. For more than 30 years, it has gone through several dozen publications with a total circulation of over 9 million copies. When, in the early 1990s, a national survey was conducted in the United States, commissioned by the Library of Congress, to find out which books had the greatest impact on people's lives, the American edition of Frankl's book, which you are holding in your hands, entered the top ten!

The new, most complete German edition of Frankl's main book, entitled “And Still Say Yes to Life,” was published in 1977 and has been constantly republished since then. It also included Frankl's philosophical play "Synchronization at Birkenwald" - it had previously been published only 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 uttered by the prisoner Franz, Frankl’s alter ego, but also in the structure of the stage action. This translation was made from this edition. Abridged versions of Frankl's story about the concentration camp, based on other publications, were previously published in Russian. 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 received an extremely warm welcome. His thoughts fell on fertile soil, and today Frankl is perceived in Russia more as one of his own, and not as a stranger. Frankl's previously published books received an equally warm reception. There is every reason to hope that this publication is destined for a long life.

Dmitry Leontyev, Doctor of Psychology

PSYCHOLOGIST IN A CONCENTRATION CAMP

In memory of the late mother

Unknown prisoner

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

It should be said in advance that what will be discussed here happened primarily not in large, well-known camps, but in their branches and departments. However, it is known that these small camps were extermination camps. Here we will not talk about the suffering and death of heroes and martyrs, but rather about the unnoticed, unknown victims of concentration camps, about the masses of quiet, unnoticed deaths.

We will not touch on what some prisoner suffered and talked about, who spent years working in the role of the so-called “capo,” that is, something like a camp policeman, overseer, or other privileged prisoner. No, we're talking about 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’s food situation was not bad, sometimes even better than during his entire previous life. Psychologically and characterologically, such a capo can be equated not to a prisoner, but to the SS, to the camp guard. This is the type of person who managed to assimilate, psychologically merge with the SS men. Very often, the capos were even tougher than the camp guards, they caused more suffering to ordinary prisoners than the SS men themselves, and beat them more often. However, only those prisoners who were suitable for this were appointed to the role of capo; if by chance a more decent person came across, he was immediately rejected.

Active and passive selection

An outsider and uninitiated person who has not been to the camp himself, as a rule, is generally unable to imagine the true picture of camp life. He may see her in some sentimental tones, in a flair of quiet sorrow. He does not suggest that this was a brutal struggle for existence - even between the prisoners themselves. A merciless struggle for a daily piece of bread, for self-preservation, for oneself or for those closest to you.

For example: a train is 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 this means that this train will go straight to the gas chambers and crematoria set up in the central camps. And then the struggle of all against all begins. Everyone desperately fights to avoid getting into this echelon, to protect their loved ones from it, and tries by any means 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 take his place in the echelon. After all, a certain number of doomed people are required, each of whom is just a number, just a number! Only numbers are on the shipping list.

After all, immediately upon arrival, for example, in Auschwitz, literally everything is taken away from a prisoner, and he, left not only without the slightest property, but even without a single document, can now call himself by any name, assign to himself any specialty - an opportunity that, under certain conditions managed to use it. The only thing that was constant was the number, usually tattooed on the skin, and only the number was of interest to the camp authorities. No guard or warden who wanted to take note of a “lazy” prisoner would have thought to inquire about his name - he looked only at the number, which everyone was also obliged to sew on a certain place on his trousers, jacket, coat - and wrote down this number. (By the way, it was unsafe to get noticed in this way.)

But let's return to the upcoming echelon. In such a situation, the prisoner has neither the time nor the desire to engage in abstract thoughts about moral standards. He thinks only about those closest to him - about those who are waiting for him at home and for whom 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 will, without hesitation, try to push some other “number” into the echelon.

From what has been said above, it is already clear that the capos 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 said that here, as elsewhere, there were no happy exceptions. Along with this “active selection” carried out by the SS men, 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 abandoned any concept of conscience, had the greatest chance of staying alive, who did not stop either before 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 different things. But we, who have returned, know and can say with complete confidence: the best have not returned!

Prisoner Report No. 119104 (Psychological Experience)

Since “number 119104” is making an attempt here to describe what he experienced and changed his mind in the camp precisely “as a psychologist,” first of all it should be noted that he was there, of course, not as a psychologist and even - with the exception of the last weeks - not as doctor We will talk not so much about his own experiences, not about how he lived, but about the image, or rather, the way of life of an ordinary prisoner. And I declare, not without pride, that I was nothing more than an ordinary prisoner, number 119104.

I worked mainly in earthworks and railway construction. While some of my colleagues (albeit a few) had the incredible luck of working in somewhat heated makeshift infirmaries, tying up bundles of unnecessary paper waste there, I once happened - alone - to dig a tunnel under the street for water pipes. And I was very happy about this, because as recognition of my labor successes, by Christmas 1944 I received two so-called bonus coupons from a construction company, where we literally worked as slaves (the company paid the camp authorities a certain amount daily for us - depending on number of employees). This coupon cost the company 50 pfennigs, and came back 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 are 12 servings of soup, this is almost salvation from starvation, postponing it for at least two weeks! Only a capo, who had two guaranteed bonus coupons every week, or a prisoner who worked in some workshop or warehouse could afford the luxury of smoking cigarettes - where special diligence was sometimes rewarded with a cigarette. All the others valued cigarettes incredibly, treasured them and literally strained themselves with all their might to get a bonus coupon, because it promised food, and therefore prolonged life. When we saw that our comrade suddenly lit a cigarette that he had previously carefully kept, we knew that he was completely desperate, he did not believe that he would survive, and he had no chance of it. And that's usually what happened. People who felt the approach of their death hour decided to finally get a drop of at least some joy...

Why am I telling you about all this? What is the point of this book anyway? After all, enough facts have already been published that paint a picture of the 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 is. Anyone who himself was in the camp and experienced what is being discussed will find in it an attempt at a scientific explanation and interpretation of those experiences and reactions. Others, the majority, require not an explanation, but an 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 unique, often completely changed life attitudes, are understandable to others. After all, such an understanding does not arise by itself. I often heard from former prisoners: “We are reluctant to talk about our experiences. Anyone who was in the camp himself does not need to tell anything. And those who were not there will still not be able to understand what all this was for us and what still remains.”

Of course, such a psychological experiment encounters certain methodological difficulties. Psychological analysis requires some 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 great to draw reliable conclusions. For someone who is “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 not excluded, that in his view the scale may be somewhat distorted. Well, we will try, wherever possible, to renounce everything personal, but where necessary, we will have the courage to present personal experiences. After all, the main danger for such psychological research is not its personal coloring, but the bias 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 developed in previous decades. The First World War already created enormous material for it, introducing us to the “barbed wire disease” - an acute psychological reaction that was observed among prisoners in prisoner of war camps. The Second World War expanded our understanding of the “psychopathology of the masses” (if one may say so, playing on the title of Le Bon’s book *), for it not only drew huge masses of people into the “war of nerves”, but also provided psychologists with that terrible human material that can be briefly designated as “the experiences of concentration camp prisoners.”

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 educational value. And I, overcoming the fear of self-disclosure, plucked up the courage to sign my own name for the sake of the cause.

Phase One: Arrival at Camp

If we try, at least to a first approximation, to organize the enormous 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 liberation.

Victor Frankl. Say “Yes” to life. Book. Read online. 16 Sep 2017 admin

By reading life-affirming books, you can understand a lot and take something useful for yourself. The topic of psychology has always been interesting and fascinating even for those who have not previously read such works, preferring only fiction. Why? Everything is very simple, such works provide an opportunity to radically change your life and worldview.

Viktor Frankl is a modern writer of psychological works. As he states in his book “Saying “Yes!” to Life: A Psychologist in a Concentration Camp,” there are periods in human life when everything literally falls out of hand, problems come one after another. What to do in this case, how to restore psychological and mental balance? A person begins to convince himself that everything will be fine, but other people have much worse problems and it is impossible to solve them. Is it correct? Is it worth doing this?

According to Viktor Frankl, such therapy does not last very long and ends when a person’s patience “bursts.” The worse the situation, the more a person stops believing in the best and sets himself up for the worst, and therefore soon the situation can only get worse. Is it worth paying attention to the fact that others have it worse if the problem itself will not go away? Probably not.

The main character of the book “Saying “Yes!” to Life: A Psychologist in a Concentration Camp” is not just a person, he is a Psychologist who acts as a widower, a small child, a neighbor and just a good friend. His story is quite sad and requires compassion, but the hero himself does not require this compassion for himself. He is ready to endure all his experiences and rethink his life. This article is far from scientific, it does not tell one story, it covers everyone.

Reading the book “Saying “Yes!” to Life: A Psychologist in a Concentration Camp” is quite easy, and thanks to it, the reader gets to see human destinies thrown into a whirlpool of cruelty. Reading the book is quite difficult, since it causes pain and suffering, and not because it shows a person’s stay in a concentration camp. It’s just that from a psychological point of view, all this is quite difficult.

To some extent, this work is autobiographical, since Viktor Frankl himself survived the concentration camp, went through it and felt all the horrors himself. At the same time, the writer does not tell how difficult and unbearable it was for him there; the author pays more attention to the psychological side of the coin, analyzing his stay in the camp. The book “Saying “Yes!” to Life: A Psychologist in a Concentration Camp” is quite easy to read and understand, it does not have a heavy load, but at the same time it is cruel.

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Victor Frankl

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

Editor D. Leontyev

Project Manager I. Seregina

Technical editor N. Lisitsyna

Corrector O . Galkin

layout designer E. Sentsova

Cover designer S. Prokofiev

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 or corporate networks, for private or 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 the all-good

As a companion at a feast.

F.I. Tyutchev

Before you is a great book by a great man.

The relevance of Viktor Frankl's ideas is determined by the unique meeting 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 long life, and the dates of his life are 1905–1997. – absorbed the 20th century almost completely. He lived almost his entire life in Vienna - in the very center of Europe, almost at the epicenter of several revolutions and two world wars and close to the front lines of the forty-year Cold War. He survived them all, survived in both senses of the word - not only by remaining alive, but also by translating his experiences into books and public lectures. Viktor Frankl experienced the entire tragedy of the century.

Almost in the middle, a fault runs through his life, marked by the dates 1942–1945. These are the years of Frankl's stay in Nazi concentration camps, inhuman existence with a scanty probability of surviving. Almost anyone who was lucky enough to survive would consider it the greatest happiness to erase these years from their lives and forget them like a bad dream. But Frankl, even on the eve of the war, had largely 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 - the greatest chances of survival, according to Frankl’s observations, were not those who were distinguished by the strongest health, but those who were distinguished by the strongest spirit, who had a meaning for which to live. Few people can be remembered in the history of mankind who paid such a high price for their beliefs and whose views were subjected to such severe testing. Viktor Frankl is on a par with Socrates and Giordano Bruno, who accepted death as truth. He, too, had the opportunity to avoid such a fate. Shortly before his arrest, he, like several other high-profile professionals, managed to obtain a visa to enter the United States, but after much hesitation, he decided to stay 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 preserve it, and then, when this failed, to restore the lost text. In addition, until his liberation, he hoped to see his wife alive, with 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. The fact that he himself survived was both an accident and a pattern. It was an accident that he was not included in any of the teams heading to death, heading not for any specific reason, but simply because the death machine needed 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 give in, not to break under the blows falling on the body and soul.

Having been released in 1945 and learning that his entire family had died in the crucible of the World War, he did not break down or become bitter. Over the course of five years, he published a dozen books in which he outlined his unique philosophical teaching, 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 a concentration camp and withstand the ordeal of fame, wealth and honor. Viktor Frankl passed both tests and remained a Man with a capital M, testing the effectiveness of his own theory on himself and proving that a person is worth believing in. “Each time requires its own psychotherapy,” he wrote. He managed to find that nerve of time, that request of people that did 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 has a rare case! – and I want and have something to learn in our time of universal relativity, disrespect for knowledge and indifference to authorities.

The new, most complete German edition of Frankl's main book, entitled “And Still Say Yes to Life,” was published in 1977 and has been constantly republished since then. It also included Frankl's philosophical play Synchronization at Birkenwald, which had only been published once before, 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 translation was made from this edition. Abridged versions of Frankl's story about the concentration camp, based on other publications, were previously published in Russian. Its full version is published in Russian for the first time.

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

Editor D. Leontyev

Project Manager I. Seregina

Technical editor N. Lisitsyna

Corrector O . Galkin

layout designer E. Sentsova

Cover designer S. Prokofiev

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 the all-good

As a companion at a feast.

F.I. Tyutchev

Before you is a great book by a great man.

The relevance of Viktor Frankl's ideas is determined by the unique meeting 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 long life, and the dates of his life are 1905–1997. – absorbed the 20th century almost completely. He lived almost his entire life in Vienna - in the very center of Europe, almost at the epicenter of several revolutions and two world wars and close to the front lines of the forty-year Cold War. He survived them all, survived in both senses of the word - not only by remaining alive, but also by translating his experiences into books and public lectures. Viktor Frankl experienced the entire tragedy of the century.

Having been released in 1945 and learning that his entire family had died in the crucible of the World War, he did not break down or become bitter. Over the course of five years, he published a dozen books in which he outlined his unique philosophical teaching, 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 a concentration camp and withstand the ordeal of fame, wealth and honor. Viktor Frankl passed both tests and remained a Man with a capital M, testing the effectiveness of his own theory on himself and proving that a person is worth believing in. “Each time requires its own psychotherapy,” he wrote. He managed to find that nerve of time, that request of people that did 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 has a rare case! – and I want and have something to learn in our time of universal relativity, disrespect for knowledge and indifference to authorities.

The new, most complete German edition of Frankl's main book, entitled “And Still Say Yes to Life,” was published in 1977 and has been constantly republished since then. It also included Frankl's philosophical play Synchronization at Birkenwald, which had only been published once before, 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 translation was made from this edition. Abridged versions of Frankl's story about the concentration camp, based on other publications, were previously published in Russian. Its full version is published in Russian for the first time.

Dmitry Leontyev,

Doctor of Psychology

Psychologist in a concentration camp

In memory of the late mother

Unknown prisoner

We will not touch on what some prisoner suffered and talked about, who spent years working in the role of the so-called “capo,” 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’s food situation was not bad, sometimes even better than during his entire previous life. Psychologically and characterologically, such a capo can be equated not to a prisoner, but to the SS, to the camp guard. This is the type of person who managed to assimilate, psychologically merge with the SS men. Very often, the capos were even tougher than the camp guards, they caused more suffering to ordinary prisoners than the SS men themselves, and beat them more often. However, only those prisoners who were suitable for this were appointed to the role of capo; if by chance a more decent person came across, he was immediately rejected.

Active and passive selection

After all, immediately upon arrival, for example, in Auschwitz 1
In literature in Russian, the Polish name for this camp is more often found - Auschwitz. – Note lane

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 by any name, assign to himself any specialty - an opportunity that, under certain conditions, was possible to use. The only thing that was constant was the number, usually tattooed on the skin, and only the number was of interest to the camp authorities. No guard or warden who wanted to take note of a “lazy” prisoner would have thought to inquire about his name - he looked only at the number, which everyone was also obliged to sew on a certain place on his trousers, jacket, coat, and wrote down this number . (By the way, it was unsafe to get noticed in this way.)

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 complete confidence: the best have not returned!

Prisoner Report No. 119104 (Psychological Experience)

Since “number 119104” is making an attempt here to describe what he experienced and changed his mind in the camp precisely “as a psychologist,” it should first of all be noted that he was there, of course, not as a psychologist and even - with the exception of the last weeks - not as doctor We will talk not so much about his own experiences, not about how he lived, but about the image, or rather, the way of life of an ordinary prisoner. And I declare, not without pride, that I was nothing more than an ordinary prisoner, number 119104.

I worked mainly in earthworks and railway construction. While some of my colleagues (albeit a few) had the incredible luck of working in somewhat heated makeshift infirmaries, tying up bundles of unnecessary paper waste there, I once happened - alone - to dig a tunnel under the street for water pipes. And I was very happy about this, because as recognition of my labor successes, by Christmas 1944 I received two so-called bonus coupons from a construction company, where we literally worked as slaves (the company paid the camp authorities a certain amount daily for us - depending on number of employees). This coupon cost the company 50 pfennigs, and came back 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 equal 12 servings of soup, this is almost salvation from starvation, postponing it for at least two weeks! Only a capo, who had two guaranteed bonus coupons every week, or a prisoner who worked in some workshop or warehouse, where special diligence was sometimes rewarded with a cigarette, could afford the luxury of smoking cigarettes. All the others valued cigarettes incredibly, treasured them and literally strained themselves with all their might to get a bonus coupon, because it promised food, and therefore prolonged life. When we saw that our comrade suddenly lit a cigarette that he had so carefully kept, we knew that he was completely desperate, he did not believe that he would survive, and he had no chance of it. And that's usually what happened. People who felt the approach of their death hour decided to finally get a drop of at least some joy...

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 developed in previous decades. The First World War created enormous material for it, introducing us to the “barbed wire disease” - an acute psychological reaction that was observed among prisoners in prisoner of war camps. The Second World War expanded our understanding of the “psychopathology of the masses” (so to speak, playing on the title of Le Bon’s book 2
This refers to the book by the French sociologist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Gustave Le Bon, “Psychology of the Masses” or “Psychology of Crowds” (1895).

), because it not only drew huge masses of people into the “war of nerves,” but also provided psychologists with that terrible human material that can be briefly described as “the experiences of concentration camp prisoners.”