Psychologically, what was happening to the liberated prisoners could be called “depersonalization.” Everything appeared unreal, unlikely, as in a dream. We could not believe it was true.
To be sure, the term, will to power, was coined by Nietzsche rather than Adler, and the term, will to pleasure – standing for Freud’s pleasure principle – is my own and not Freud’s.
Los hombres ilustres siempre recomienzan, y eso los convierte en admirables e imitables.
Every age has its own collective neurosis, and every age needs its own psychotherapy to cope with it.
A positive attitude enables a person to endure suffering and disappointment as well as enhance enjoyment and satisfaction.
To be sure, a human being is a finite thing, and his freedom is restricted. It is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand toward the conditions.
Apathy, the main symptom of the second phase, was a necessary mechanism of self-defense. Reality dimmed, and all efforts and all emotions were centered on one task: preserving one’s own life and that of the other fellow. It was typical to hear the prisoners, while they were being herded back to camp from their work sites in the evening, sigh with relief and say, “Well, another day is over.
Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness. In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness.
A man who for years had thought he had reached the absolute limit of all possible suffering now found that suffering had no limits, and that he could suffer still more, and more intensely.
It is one of the basic tenets of logotherapy that man’s main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life.
For in every case man retains the freedom and the possibility of deciding for or against the influence of his surroundings.
Man’s search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a “secondary rationalization” of instinctual drives.
Logos is deeper than logic.
He also believed strongly in reconciliation rather than revenge; he once remarked, “I do not forget any good deed done to me, and I do not carry a grudge for a bad one.
We who have come back, by the aid of many lucky chances or miracles – whatever one may choose to call them – we know: the best of us did not return.
If someone now asked of us the truth of Dostoevski’s statement that flatly defines man as a being who can get used to anything, we would reply, “Yes, a man can get used to anything, but do not ask us how.
A man who could not see the end of his “provisional existence” was not able to aim at an ultimate goal in life. He ceased living for the future, in contrast to a man in normal life.
The rift dividing good from evil, which goes through all human beings, reaches into the lowest depths and becomes apparent even on the bottom of the abyss which is laid open by the concentration camp.
The fear is mother of the event.
A man’s character became involved to the point that he was caught in a mental turmoil which threatened all the values he held and threw them into doubt.