Embracing Hope, page 9
Now, we know that not only a mental but also a moral and spiritual conflict, for example, a crisis of conscience, can lead to neurosis. We define this as a noogenic neurosis. It is conceivable that for as long as a person is capable of having any conflict of conscience at all, he will be immune to fanaticism or even to collective neurosis. Conversely, for someone who suffers from a collective neurosis—for example, a political fanatic—if he becomes capable of hearing the voice of his conscience again to any degree, even to the extent that he suffers as a result of it, he will become capable of overcoming his collective neurosis to the same degree.
A few years ago, I spoke on this topic at a medical conference, and in the audience were a number of professional colleagues who live under a totalitarian regime. After my lecture, they came over to me and said, “We know exactly what you’re talking about, Dr. Frankl; where we come from, it’s called ‘officials’ disease.’” Over time, a number of party officials suffer nervous breakdowns due to the growing burden on their conscience; however, they are then cured of their political fanaticism. So, while the coexistence of collective neurosis and clinical health is possible, the relationship between collective neurosis and noogenic neurosis is inversely proportional.
I recently had the opportunity to speak about all this while overseas, and people kept asking me, “Do you think that what you’re saying is maybe only true of Europe?” When I was asked this question for the first time, I improvised the following answer: It’s possible that the problem of collective neurosis is more topical in Europe and that Europeans are under a more acute threat from collective neurosis, but the real danger—the danger of nihilism—is global and is not in any way confined to a single continent. All four symptoms of collective neurosis—the provisional attitude to existence and the fatalistic attitude to life, the collectivist thinking and the fanaticism—can be traced back to a reluctance to take responsibility and flight from freedom. However, freedom and responsibility make up the spirituality of the human being. But the average person today is spiritually weary, and this spiritual weariness forms the essence of contemporary nihilism. Europe may be a kind of seismograph regarding this nihilistic danger. Upon it, a little earlier than elsewhere, we can read the threat of a spiritual earthquake, spiritual shocks and upheavals; it’s possible that the European has a sixth sense for the spiritual miasma of nihilism. But it is precisely because of this that he may be able to produce the antidote sooner and more successfully than the non-European.
* V. E. Frankl, “Collective Neuroses,” Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift 38/39 (1955): 772–76. Courtesy of the Viktor Frankl Archive.
* Blüher (1888–1955) was a writer and philosopher.
** V. E. Frankl, Homo patiens (Vienna: Deuticke, 1950), 45.
*** J. Hirschmann, “Umweltstabilität der Neurosehäufigkeit,” Archiv für Psychiatrie und Nervenkrankheiten 189 (1952): 192.
* H. Kranz, “Fortschritte der Neurologie,” Psychiatrie 23 (1955): 58.
** A.V. Orelli, “Der Wandel des Inhaltes der depressiven Ideen bei der reinen Melancholie,” Schweizer Archiv für Neurologie und Psychiatrie [Swiss Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry] 73 (1954).
* Hirschmann, “Umweltstabilität der Neurosehäufigkeit,” 189.
* H. Schulte, Gesundheit und Wohlfahrt [Health and Welfare] (1952): 78.
** E. Menninger-Lerchenthal, Das europäische Selbstmordproblem [The European Suicide Problem] (Vienna: Deuticke, 1947), 37.
* H. R. Farmer, Wort und Wahrheit [The Word and the Truth] 9 (1954): 929.
* Cf. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, Book VIII, Chapter 1: “Pierre no longer suffered moments of despair, hypochondria, and disgust with life, but the malady that had formerly found expression in such acute attacks was driven inwards and never left him for a moment. ‘What for? Why? What is going on in the world?’ he would ask himself in perplexity several times a day, involuntarily beginning to reflect anew on the meaning of the phenomenon of life [the will to meaning]; but knowing by experience that there were no answers to these questions [existential frustration], he made haste to turn away from them . . . It was too dreadful to be under the burden of these insoluble problems, so he abandoned himself to any distraction in order to forget them . . . To Pierre all men seemed like those soldiers, seeking refuge from life: some in ambition [striving for validity], some in cards, some in framing laws, some in women [pleasure principle!], some in toys, some in horses . . . some in sport, some in wine, and some in governmental affairs.”
* P. Polak, Psychotherapie und Wissenschaft [Psychotherapy and Science] (Vienna: Verein für Individualpsychologie [Association for Individual Psychology], 1947).
* J. Bodamer, Zeitwende 24 (1952): 21.
* Polak, Psychotherapie und Wissenschaft.
* Aufbau, New York (December 25, 1953): 19.
** E. A. Gutheil, “Aktive Psychoanalyse,” [“Active Psychoanalysis”] in Handbuch der Neurosenlehre und Psychotherapie [Handbook of the Study of Neurosis and Psychotherapy] (Munich: published by V. E. Frankl, V. E. v. Gebsattel and J. H. Schultz, 1959), 159–70.
* G. R. Forrer, The Psychiatric Quarterly 28 (1954): 126.
** W. G. Eliasberg, Schweizer Archiv für Neurologie und Psychiatrie [Swiss Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry] 62 (1948): 113.
* H. Schulte, Gesundheit und Wohlfahrt [Health and Wellbeing] 73 (1952).
4
Freedom and Responsibility
“Existential Analysis and the Problems of Our Times” unfolds the connection between the search for meaning and human freedom and responsibility. Frankl gave this lecture on December 28, 1946, at the Franco-Austrian university meeting in St. Christoph am Arlberg, Austria.* Influenced by his experiences during the Second World War and his time in several concentration camps, it is remarkable how Frankl emphasizes the unconditional nature of human freedom.
EXISTENTIAL ANALYSIS AND THE PROBLEMS OF OUR TIMES
The beginning of our modern era brought with it the birth of the natural sciences and their application: technology. In the nineteenth century, they matured. We now have to accept the legacy of that century. The mature natural sciences led to naturalism, and technology led to a utilitarian attitude. Both were passed down, instilled and cultivated in flesh and blood so that they became completely natural to human beings—but, at the same time, they made our understanding of ourselves and the world significantly more difficult. If a human being understands himself as only a creature of nature in accordance with a naturalistic attitude, and understands the world only as a mere means to an end in accordance with the technological-utilitarian attitude, this is how he subjugates the world to himself through technology. However, at the same time, while he sub-jects [i.e., throws under] the world to himself, he himself becomes an ob-ject [i.e., is thrown up against the world]. So we arrive at the paradox that when a human being is “naturalized,” he becomes denatured, i.e., when seeing himself as a pure creature of nature, he does not see his own true nature, his true being. Meanwhile, on the other hand, by degrading the world into a mere technical means to an end, the human being actually overlooks the possible and necessary final end or purpose. It is no wonder that now, in our century, we have come to a major turning point, to a consciousness of the immediate! And this inevitably in the double sense: a self-awareness of one’s own being (the reaction to the loss of awareness about one’s nature) as well as a recollection of the actual meaning (the reaction to the loss of awareness about the ultimate purpose of all technology). What are these but existential questions? Because what is now in question is existence and meaning.
It was Kierkegaard who first raised the existential question in its modern form, in other words the “problem of modern man.” What he postulated in the nineteenth century was made possible and realized in the twentieth. Bergson’s philosophy of life and the phenomenology of Husserl (and his student [Max] Scheler) did the preparatory work and therefore made contemporary existential philosophy possible.
After the First World War, Heidegger and Jaspers actualized it. It was the Second World War’s role to promote its spread, to update its reasoning and, furthermore, to hugely radicalize it. But if we ask ourselves why, we have to remind ourselves that, from the outset, the Second World War meant more than just the experience of the soldiers on the frontline. To the “hinterland” (which no longer really existed), it brought the experience of the bomb shelter and the experience of the concentration camp. We had long ago left behind the Kantian claim that every thing has its value but man alone has his dignity. Because it was in the nature of the capitalist system to degrade the human being, the worker, to such an extent that he became little more than a machine component in the production process. But this was far from being the triumph of the technological utilitarianism that we spoke of earlier because, for a time, it was only that a person’s work had become a mere means. However, the war turned his whole life into such a means. The war degraded the human being even further—it turned him into cannon fodder. The peak of this advancing process of degradation was finally reached in the concentration camp. For here, it was no longer merely labor or even life itself that had become a means, it was also death. For in the concentration camps, the human being was a guinea pig. Thus, in this process of degradation, an element of progress became apparent—namely, technological progress. And, in fact, is there any other kind of progress? And is not all progress only technological progress, which only impresses us as progress per se because we live in a technological age?
So, what does this existential questioning mean? With this existential question, the questioner is putting himself in question—existential questioning means questioning the nature of being human. To what extent can we now state that such questioning has advanced in recent times? Well, during these times, absolutely everything had become questionable: money, power, fame, happiness—all of this had been molten away from the human being. But simultaneously, the person himself had melted down, burned up by pain and seared through with suffering; melted right down to his very being. What had melted away was the having. One has money, one has power, one has fame, one has happiness; but one is a human being. Therefore, what remained was the human being himself—the essence of his humanity. So, these times led to the stark exposure of what it is to be human. In the tumult of the encirclement battles, in the air-raid shelters and in the concentration camps, man discovered the truth: the most crucial element in anything and everything is the human being. But what is a human being? He is the being who constantly makes decisions. And he is continually deciding what he is, what he will be in the next moment. Within him, he has the possibility to be both angel and devil. For the human being as we have got to know him—and we have got to know him perhaps better than any previous generation—the human being is the creature that invented the gas chambers, but he is also the person who went into those gas chambers with his head held high, singing “The Marseillaise” or with a prayer on his lips.
And yet, if we assume that man is a being who makes decisions for himself, then the human being begins precisely where naturalism says he should end. If we take biologism as one of the forms of naturalism, then from the biologist, we hear that a person is either a “typical” pyknic type or a “typical” asthenic type, or a “typical” athletic type. In any case, he must be the way he is; he cannot be any different. Or let’s take sociologism. According to this theory, a human being is a typical capitalist, or a typical proletarian or a typical petit bourgeois; and, in any case, he must have a particular mentality in accordance with his sociological classification—this has been explicitly allocated to him. And it seems unthinkable that he could escape this definite classification as the “type” to which he belongs. Or let’s take that amalgam of biologism and sociologism, that “collective” biologism, so to speak, that reveals itself in racism. According to that theory, I am either a “Nordic achievement type” or a “Mediterranean representational type” or a “desert revelation type.” In any case, I am held captive by and chained to this type, and all my decisions, including those concerning my view of the world, are fatalistically determined in accordance with this type.
But it’s not true that a person who is a “typical . . .” can only behave in that particular way and can’t be any different. In a concentration camp, I got to know the camp commandant, an SS man, and he was by no means a “typical SS man” but, in fact, secretly bought medicines for the concentration camp prisoners, using his own money. And on the other hand, in the same camp, I got to know the camp elder, who was himself a prisoner, and beat up his fellow prisoners. And finally I got to know a senior Gestapo official who, every evening in a state of shock and sadness, would tell his family of the deportations while his wife broke down in tears. He begged some of the Jews that he dealt with to rant and curse him as much as they could, because as soon as his superiors no longer heard them cursing him, they would get suspicious and remove him from his post, and with it the possibility that he could now and again help relieve their suffering. All these people had the opportunity to be “typical” representatives of their “race” or their social function, and yet they did not do so, and instead decided to be “atypical.” So we can say: there aren’t any types that categorically determine a person’s behavior. Thus, in this sense there are also no races, or else just two “races”—the race of decent people and the race of indecent people. This division cuts right across all the types—the biological, psychological and sociological. And we would hope that humanity would come to the realization that all decent people share a common bond, transcending all races and types, and that, just as Judaism once gave monotheism to the world, the doctrine of the one God, someday monanthropism will be given to the world, the doctrine of the one human race.
But we know now, more than ever, that decent people are in the minority. Perhaps in an eternal minority, a forever faltering minority. However, this pessimism need not make us fatalistic at all. In the past, activism was connected with optimism, with a belief in progress. However, in our modern age, it’s precisely the belief in a self-propelling, ever-advancing progress, in an automatically increasing level of human development, which paralyzes our activity and allays our conscience. We are now a long way away from such a belief in progress. We have become pessimists because we know what man is capable of. But when we said earlier that it all comes down to the individual, then we must add: it comes down to every single individual. And particularly because when it comes to decent human beings we are talking about a minority, every single human being matters. And it will come down to his personal determination to fight—his personal willingness to make sacrifices—if he is not to be complicit in repeating the sacrifice of entire masses of people. So he will not shy away from sacrificing his own life. Because what would this life be if it held a value in itself and its whole value did not consist precisely in the fact that it can be relinquished in exchange for something else? It was precisely in the concentration camp that this essential transcendence of life, this intentional act of going beyond oneself, arose. And even if the question for most of the camp inmates was, “Will I survive? Because if I don’t, then all this suffering would have no meaning,” there were others for whom the question was different: “Does this suffering, even this dying, have a meaning? Because if not, then survival would also have no meaning.” A life that depends on the mercy of a chance occurrence, namely the chance of whether or not you will “get out of there alive,” such a life cannot be meaningful and worth living, even if you do “get away with your life.” Thus, behind all the meaninglessness of the suffering and sacrifice in the concentration camps there was such a palpable and unconditional “meaningfulness” that it also encompassed the meaning of suffering, sacrifice and death.
We spoke about the individual, on whom everything depends. As such he evades any attempt to fit him into an organization. And yet narrow bridges lead from one person to another, and these bridges carry the spirit of our times, and on these bridges, this spirit moves—and it’s the spirit of the future. It was bridges such as these that brought us together here from many different countries. In this way, decent people from all over the world find themselves together, transcending all borders. And I would like to add one more wish that, insofar as it is true that people are politicized these days, they should not just be politicized in terms of party politics, but they should be “cosmo-politicized.” And this is becoming more important, as everywhere we can observe that decency and humanity are withdrawing from public and political life into private life. Decent people are becoming disgusted with politics and are displaying a shameful tendency to hide their decency by only moving in their own narrow sphere. In a time where the word “idealist” has almost become a dirty word, people are tending to retreat within their own four walls—along with their goodness. And so we won’t be surprised when we encounter the “type” of the young illegal trader who, with a lack of social responsibility, hawks his black-market goods in order to enable a better life for his family (and certainly not just for himself). The main reason for this general aversion to politics is that party politics today is completely governed by utilitarianism in the way that it sticks to the party program and to its battle tactics. Its position is that the end justifies the means, a point of view that manifests itself in the opportunism of the party leaders as well as the “conjuncturism” of the party members. Above all, the aversion of many decent people to the machinations of party politics is grounded in total propaganda fatigue. All propaganda has been discredited by the events of recent years. Consequently, what remains can only be one thing: the propaganda of the role model! That lies in the hands of the educators. And something else: the propaganda of the conversation—a conversation between two people in camera caritatis—whether it’s a conversation between a priest and a believer—or in view of the “migration of the Western population from the pastor to the psychotherapist” (Viktor Emil von Gebsattel)—a conversation between the neurologist and his patient.
