Say yes to life, a psychologist in a concentration camp. What is the meaning of human life? Holocaust survivor psychologist Viktor Frankl explains in his book “Say Yes to Life”

History remembers Viktor Frankl as a famous philosopher and psychologist, who throughout his life managed to demonstrate the true qualities of a fighter fighting an unfair reality. Frankl had to endure the loss of his family and concentration camp life, but he never for a moment lost faith in himself and did not stop experiencing an irresistible thirst for life. Having been freed from a concentration camp, Viktor Frankl actively began to develop scientific and literary activity. People recognized the book “Say Yes to Life!” as one of his most famous and useful works, in which he collected answers to the most popular questions about the meaning of life and the essence of existence.

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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 consciousness. 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 after walking a path strewn with failures and suffering.

The author, by his own example, tries to excite the minds of humanity and force them to 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 his book Say Yes to Life, Viktor Frankl masterfully combines a scientific framework consisting of philosophical teachings and psychological aspect knowledge of human and worldly essence, together with their 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 us to withstand 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, just like the body, need preparation 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 talks about has no time or spatial limitations, because his universal and effective advice can be applied in the life of every person.

This amazing book made its author one of the greatest spiritual teachers of humanity in the 20th century. In it, the philosopher and psychologist Viktor Frankl, who went through Nazi death camps, opened the path to understanding the meaning of life for millions of people around the world. In the terrible, murderous conditions of the concentration camps, he showed the extraordinary strength of the human spirit. The spirit is stubborn, despite the weakness of the body and the discord of the soul. A person has something to live for! An additional gift for the reader of this publication is the play "Synchronization at Birkenwald", where an outstanding scientist reveals his philosophy artistic means.

Why the book is worth reading. The book sold millions of copies in dozens of countries, major philosophers considered it one of the greatest works of mankind, and millions ordinary people she helped change my life. According to a survey by the National Library of Congress, the book was included in the ten books that most influenced the lives of people around the world.

Who is this book for? For those who explore themselves and their inner world. Who knows the meaning and who has lost it. For those who have everything in order, and for those who are tired of life. This great book will teach you the ability to find meaning in any situation.

Who is author. Viktor Frankl (1905-1997) - famous Austrian psychotherapist, psychologist and philosopher. During World War II, he had a terrible opportunity to test his own concept. Having gone through Nazi death camps, he saw that the greatest chance of surviving in inhuman conditions was not the strong in body, but the strong in spirit. Those who knew what they lived for. Frankl himself had something to live for: he took with him to the concentration camp a manuscript that was to become a great book.

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 have sought meetings with him outstanding people And the mighty of the world from prominent philosophers such as Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger 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 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 line of the forty-year Cold War. He survived them all, survived them in both senses of the word - not only by surviving, 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 theories of the pursuit of 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 - best chance to survive, according to Frankl’s observations, were not those who were in 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.

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, which had only been published once before, in 1948, in a literary magazine under the pseudonym Gabriel Lyon. In this play Frankl finds another, art form to express his main, philosophical ideas - and not only in the words spoken by the prisoner Franz, the alter ego of Frankl himself, 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.

Quotes from the book Viktor Frankl - Psychologist in a Concentration Camp:

Returning to apathy as the main symptom of the second phase, it should be said that this is a special psychological defense mechanism. Reality is shrinking. All thoughts and feelings are concentrated on one single task: to survive!

And suddenly a thought pierces me: after all, now for the first time in my life I understood the truth of what so many thinkers and sages considered their final conclusion, what so many poets sang: I understood, I accepted the truth - only love is that final and highest thing that justifies our existence here, that can elevate and strengthen us! Yes, I comprehend the meaning of the result that has been achieved by human thought, poetry, faith: liberation - through love, in love! I now know that a person who no longer has anything in this world can spiritually - even for a moment - possess the most precious thing to himself - in the image of the one he loves. In the most difficult of all imaginably difficult situations, when it is no longer possible to express oneself in any action, when the only thing left is suffering, in such a situation a person can realize himself through recreating and contemplating the image of the one he loves. For the first time in my life I was able to understand what is meant when they say that the angels are happy with the loving contemplation of the infinite Lord.

We haven't warmed up yet, everyone is still silent. And my spirit again hovers around my beloved. I still talk to her, she still answers me. And suddenly a thought strikes me: I don’t even know if she’s alive! But now I know something else: the less love is focused on a person’s physical nature, the deeper it penetrates into his spiritual essence, the less significant becomes his “so-being” (as philosophers call it), his “here-being”, “here-with-me-presence”, his bodily existence in general. In order to evoke the spiritual image of my beloved now, I do not need to know whether she is alive or not. If I had known at that moment that she had died, I am sure that, despite this knowledge, I would still have evoked her spiritual image, and my spiritual dialogue with it would have been just as intense and just as filled all of me. For I felt at that moment the truth of the words of the Song of Songs: “Put me as a seal on your heart... for love is strong as death” (8:6).

Humor, like nothing else, is capable of creating for a person a certain distance between himself and his situation, putting him above the situation, even if, as already mentioned, not for long.

Happiness is when the worst has passed by.

A person lost his sense of himself as a subject not only because he completely became the object of the arbitrariness of the camp guards, but also because he felt dependent on pure chance and became a plaything of fate. I have always thought and argued that a person begins to understand why this or that happened in his life and what was for the best for him only after some time, after five or ten years.

And how can one not recall the famous parable about Death in Tehran? One noble Persian was once walking through the garden, accompanied by a servant. And so the servant, assuring him that he had now seen Death, which threatened him, began to beg to give him the fastest horse so that he could rush away from here like a whirlwind and be in Tehran in the evening. The owner gave him such a horse, and the servant rode off. Returning home, the owner himself saw Death and asked: “Why did you frighten my servant so much and threaten him?” “Not at all,” answered Death, “I didn’t scare him, I myself was surprised that he was still here, because I am supposed to meet him this evening in Tehran.”

In a concentration camp, everything can be taken away from a person except the last thing - human freedom, freedom to treat circumstances one way or another. And they had this “one way or another.” And every day, every hour in the camp gave a thousand opportunities to make this choice, to renounce or not to renounce that very innermost thing that the surrounding reality threatened to take away - from inner freedom. And to renounce freedom and dignity meant turning into an object of influence of external conditions, allowing them to mold you into a “typical” camp inmate. No, experience confirms that the prisoner’s mental reactions were not just a natural imprint of physical, mental and social conditions, calorie deficit, lack of sleep and various psychological “complexes”. Ultimately, it becomes clear: what happens inside a person, what the camp supposedly “makes” of him - the result of an internal decision of the person himself. In principle, it depends on each person what, even under the pressure of such terrible circumstances, will happen to him in the camp, with his spiritual, inner essence: whether he will turn into a “typical” camp inmate or whether he remains a person here and retains his human dignity. Dostoevsky once said: I am afraid of only one thing - to be unworthy of my torment. You remember these words when thinking about those martyrs whose behavior in the camp, whose suffering and death itself became evidence of the ability to preserve the last thing to the end - inner freedom. They might well say that they were “worthy of their torment.” They showed evidence that suffering contains achievement, inner strength. Spiritual freedom of man, which cannot be taken away from him until his last breath, gives him the opportunity until his last breath fill your life with meaning. After all, not only an active life, which gives a person the opportunity to realize the values of creativity, has meaning, and not only a life full of experiences, a life that gives the opportunity to realize oneself in the experience of beauty, in enjoying art or nature. It retains its meaning and life - as it was in the concentration camp - which leaves no chance for the realization of values in creativity or experience. There remains the last opportunity to fill life with meaning: to take a position in relation to this form of extreme compulsory limitation of one’s existence. Creative life, like sensual life, has long been closed to him. But this is not all. If life has any meaning at all, then suffering has meaning. Suffering is a part of life, just like fate and death. Suffering and death give wholeness to existence.

Internally a person can be stronger than his external circumstances. And not only in the concentration camp. Man always and everywhere confronts fate, and this confrontation gives him the opportunity to turn his suffering into inner achievement.

The one who no longer had any internal support left sank.

Depreciation of the present surrounding reality is also fraught with a certain danger - a person ceases to see at least some, even the slightest, possibilities of influencing this reality. But individual heroic examples indicate that even in the camp such opportunities sometimes existed. The depreciation of reality that accompanies the “temporary existence” of prisoners deprived a person of support, forcing him to finally lose heart, because “it’s all in vain anyway.” Such people forget that the most difficult situation is precisely what gives a person the opportunity to internally rise above himself. Instead of looking at external hardships camp life as a test of their spiritual fortitude, they treated their present existence as something from which it was best to turn away, and, withdrawing, completely immersed themselves in their past. And their life went into decline. Of course, few are able to reach inner heights amid the horrors of a concentration camp. But there were such people. They managed, in the face of external collapse and even in death itself, to reach a peak that was unattainable for them before, in their everyday existence.

It can be said that most people in the camp believed that all their opportunities for self-realization were already behind them, and yet they were just opening up. For it depended on the person himself what he would turn his camp life into - into vegetation, like that of thousands, or into moral victory, like that of a few.

Any attempt at psychotherapeutic or even preventive correction of psychological deviations that arose in a prisoner should have been aimed primarily at ensuring that, contrary to camp reality, again turn it towards the future , to some meaningful goal for him in this future. Some people instinctively tried to support themselves with this. Most had something to keep them going, and in most cases this “something” was in the future. In general, it is common for a person to focus on the future, to exist in its light, as if sub specie aeternitatis (from the point of view of eternity (lat.)), using the Latin expression. He resorts to this glimpse into the future, to an attempt to look into the future, in his most difficult moments.

For anyone who knows what connection exists between a person’s mental state and the body’s immunity, it is quite clear what fatal consequences the loss of the will to live and hope can have.

We have already said that every attempt to spiritually restore, to “straighten” a person convinced us again and again that this can only be done orienting it towards some goal in the future. The motto of all psychotherapeutic and psychohygienic efforts can be the thought most clearly expressed, perhaps, in the words of Nietzsche: “ He who has a “Why” can withstand almost any “How” " It was necessary to help the prisoner to the extent that circumstances allowed realize your “Why” , your life goal , and this would give him the strength to endure our nightmarish “How,” all the horrors of camp life, to strengthen himself internally, to resist camp reality. And vice versa: woe to the one who no longer sees life goal, whose soul is devastated, who has lost the meaning of life, and with it the meaning to resist. Such a person, who has lost his inner fortitude, quickly collapses. The phrase with which he rejects all attempts to cheer him up is typical: “I have nothing more to expect from life.” What can I say? How do you object?

The whole difficulty is that the question of the meaning of life must be posed differently. We must learn it ourselves and explain to those who doubt that It's not about what we expect from life, but about what does she expect from us? Philosophically speaking, a kind of Copernican revolution is needed here: we should not ask about the meaning of life, but understand that this question is addressed to us- daily and hourly life poses questions, and we must answer them - not with conversations or reflections, but action , correct behavior. After all to live ultimately means to be responsible for the correct fulfillment of the tasks that life sets for everyone, for fulfilling the demands of the day and hour. These requirements, and with them the meaning of existence, different people and different at different moments of life. This means that the question about the meaning of life cannot have a general answer. Life, as we understand it here, is not something vague, vague - it is concrete, just as its demands on us at every moment are also very specific. This specificity is characteristic of human destiny: for everyone it is unique and inimitable. Not a single person can be equated to another, just as no fate can be compared to another, and not a single situation is exactly repeated - each calls a person to a different course of action. Specific situation requires him to either act and try to actively shape his destiny, then take the chance to realize value opportunities in experience (for example, pleasure), or simply accept his fate. And each situation remains unique, unique and in this uniqueness and specificity allows for one answer to the question - the correct one. And since fate has placed suffering on a person, he must see in this suffering, in the ability to endure it, his unique task. He must realize the uniqueness of your suffering - after all, there is nothing like it in the entire Universe; no one can deprive him of this suffering, no one can experience it instead of him. However, how the one who is given this fate endures his suffering lies a unique opportunity for a unique feat.

After the meaning of suffering was revealed to us, we stopped minimizing and embellishing them, that is, “repressing” them and hiding them from ourselves, for example, through cheap, obsessive optimism. The meaning of suffering was revealed to us, it became a task, the veils were removed from it, and we saw that suffering can become moral labor, a feat in the sense that was heard in Rilke’s exclamation: “How much more we must suffer!” Rilke said here “to suffer,” just as they say: how many things still need to be redone.

Life expects something from himself, something important awaits him in the future .

The uniqueness inherent in every person determines the meaning of each individual life. He himself is unique, it's unique , what exactly he can and should do - in your work, in creativity, in love. Awareness of such indispensability creates a sense of responsibility for one’s own life , in order to live it all, to the end, to highlight it in its entirety. A person who realizes his responsibility to another person or to a task entrusted to him will never give up life. He knows why he exists and therefore will find the strength to endure almost any situation.

No one knows their future, no one knows what the next hour may bring.

I quoted the words of the poet: “What you are experiencing cannot be taken away from you by any strength in the world.” What we have accomplished to our fullest past life and her experience is our inner wealth which no one and nothing can take away from us. This applies not only to what we have experienced, but also to what we have done, to all the sublime things we have thought, to what we have suffered - we will keep all this in reality once and for all. And even if it has passed, it is preserved for eternity! After all, being in the past is also a kind of being, and the most reliable one at that. And then I started talking about a variety of opportunities to fill my life with meaning. (My comrades lay quietly, without moving, only occasional sighs were heard.) About the fact that human life always and under all circumstances has meaning and that this meaning also includes suffering, want and death. And I asked these poor fellows, who listened attentively to me in the pitch darkness of the barracks, to face the most terrible situation - and yet do not despair, still realize What even with all the hopelessness of our struggle, it still has its own meaning, carries its own dignity !

If we say about a person that he is from the camp guard or, conversely, from the prisoners, this does not say everything. kind person can be found everywhere, even in a group that, of course, rightly deserves general condemnation. There are no clear boundaries here! You should not convince yourself that everything is simple: some are angels, others are devils. On the contrary, being a guard or overseer of prisoners and remaining human despite all the pressures of camp life was a personal and moral feat. On the other hand, the baseness of prisoners who harmed their own comrades was especially intolerable. It is clear that we perceived the spinelessness of such people especially painfully, and the manifestation of humanity on the part of the camp guards was literally shocking. I remember how one day the overseer of our work (not a prisoner) quietly handed me a piece of bread that he had saved from his own breakfast. This almost moved me to tears. And it was not so much the bread itself that made me happy, but the humanity of this gift, the kind word, the sympathetic look. From all this we can conclude that There are two “races” of people in the world, only two! - decent people and dishonest people. Both of these "races" are widespread everywhere, and no human group consists exclusively of the decent or exclusively of the dishonest; in this sense, no group has “racial purity!” First one, then the other worthy man came across even among the camp guards. Camp life provided an opportunity to look into the very depths human soul. And is it any wonder that in these depths everything that is characteristic of man was discovered? Humanity is a mixture of good and evil. The line dividing good and evil passes through everything human and reaches the very depths of the human soul. It is visible even in the abyss of a concentration camp. We have studied man in a way that probably no previous generation has studied him. So what is it Human? This is the being that always decides who he is. This is the creature who invented the gas chambers. But this is also the creature who walked into these cells, standing up proudly, with a prayer on his lips.

No one has the right to commit lawlessness, even those who suffered from lawlessness, and suffered very cruelly.

Two world wars completely destroyed morality.

SPINOZA. Socrates, I assure you... I have information: they don’t believe in anyone at all, in anything. The philosopher would have disappeared there. Lonely - my God! — we were, in essence, once all of us. But now... Don't forget: the truth is what is least believed today, it is the most implausible for them. And the one who expresses it will be considered out of date, his speech will have no effect on anyone.

SOCRATES (underlined). Art! They said that only art can influence people there below.

KANT. Not without interest! Not a bad idea!

SOCRATES (invigorated). I didn't want to talk about it at first. But really, there is no other way out, now I am convinced of this.

SPINOZA. Art means fantasies, myths, poems, but not truth at all... Can we participate in something like that?

KANT. Funny objection - don't be offended! The unreal that art presents to people is sometimes closer to the truth than their human reality.

KANT. But I ask, Socrates, why don’t people learn anything yet?

SOCRATES. It's right. As long as they do not read philosophical books, they will pay for their philosophical errors with suffering and blood, want and death. But think again—shouldn’t we have paid for our philosophical wisdom with blood, suffering, want, or death?

SPINOZA. He's right, Mr. Professor.

SOCRATES. What do you even want? Nobody understands us - unless they come to it themselves. No one will understand what we said or wrote, until he begins to think on his own, until he discovers all this on his own and awakens. But was it different with us? We needed to act, to implement what we thought about. Until we acted, we did not penetrate to the core and did not influence anyone. At least that’s how it was with me. I was heard not thanks to my speeches, I was heard only thanks to my death...

SPINOZA. If everyone strived for good, he would become good. However, people do not expect anything from each other or from themselves. And they don’t demand anything from themselves.

SOCRATES. When I was down there, long ago ready to meet fate, an old Jew told me a curious Jewish legend. The state of affairs in the world depends on whether thirty-six righteous people constantly live in it. And no one knows who they are. And if someone is identified, he immediately disappears.

MOTHER. He doesn’t see us, doesn’t hear us. Nobody understands our thoughts. Think about where we are... They must go their own way to the end, each on their own, alone. This is what it comes down to - find yourself.

KANT. Everything that people saw and heard here can only be an idea. After all, if we showed them the truth as it is, they would remain blind and deaf to it.

23.11.2015 11:58

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

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

After reading the very first pages of the great, without exaggeration, book “Saying Yes to Life” by the great scientist, psychologist, philosopher Viktor Frankl, I realized that my supposed problems are not problems at all. I suddenly realized how far I was from an objective perception of my life. I haven't seen 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 begin to reveal the contents of the book without first mentioning its author. Viktor Frankl (1905-1997) is an outstanding Austrian scientist with a worldwide reputation. He was awarded a huge number of academic degrees by different universities around the world. He has written more than 30 books dedicated to revealing psychological theory the meaning of life, human philosophy. He showed millions of people - myself included - the opportunity to understand the meaning of their lives.

He spent 1942-1945 years of his life in Nazi concentration camps. Moreover, shortly before his arrest, as a highly qualified professional, he had the opportunity to travel to the United States. However, he decided to stay because... I couldn’t leave my elderly parents. Perhaps this feat, like many of his other feats performed in concentration camps, mystically saved his life. The fact that he survived is a combination of chance and pattern. It can also be called an accident that he was never included in the teams formed for destruction every day. It can be called a pattern that he survived the hell of hunger, torture, cold, humiliation, preserving his principles of humanity.

Even before the war, he wrote a book - a teaching about 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 of course without success. To pass such tests 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 chance of survival in such inhuman conditions had the strong in spirit, and not the physically strong.

The author's main goal was to write as much as possible full story about the experiences of people in concentration camps, 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 reactions and experiences, and the experiences of millions of people who passed this severe test.

He calls the 1st phase the shock phase.
The 2nd phase is the phase of apathy, when after a few days a person’s reactions begin to change, when something in a person’s soul seems to die, the body’s defenses turn on.
And phase 3 is liberation. She exhibits paradoxical reactions of lack of joy. The prisoner requires serious psychological support.

The body's defenses

The author was amazed by the perfection of the human body, in which unimaginable reserves and capabilities are hidden. They appeared immediately upon arrival at the death camp. For six months they wore a single shirt and did not wash. Always dirty from constant excavation work, where wounds cannot be avoided. But they had no infections or inflammations. They worked in the cold, half-footed, in shabby clothes. But for some reason no one even caught a runny nose. How is this possible, at what point does the body turn on such protective forces? When is there such a tragic situation, a constant threat to life?

Hunger

The book is not about the global horrors of death camps, but about the daily “little” tortures of prisoners that people in the camps experienced every day. For example, I was struck by the detailed narrative about how the author struggled with hunger every day, and what he experienced at the same time. For a minute it seemed to me that I also felt this state.

Together with everyone else, he suffered from hunger and exhaustion. The food the prisoners received consisted of a bowl of empty, watery soup and a meager 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. Considering 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 condition?

How to imagine that you are standing in the mud, in the cold. At the same time, you need to hammer the stubborn ground with a pickaxe. And every minute you listen for when the siren will call for the only half-hour lunch break in this and every day. Do you constantly wonder 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, and frantically put it back.

A very serious topic of debate among prisoners was how best to use the meager bread ration. Two parties were even created. One believed that the daily portion should be eaten immediately. They put forward two arguments. First: at least once a day you can briefly suppress unbearable hunger; second: with this approach, bread will not be stolen. In the second, they believed that there was no need 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. Even at night, piercing whistles tore everyone out of sleep. The moment came to fight the dampness, when it was necessary to climb into wet boots with swollen feet. At the same time, to see the crying of men with wounded legs... That’s when he clutched at such, albeit weak, consolation - a piece of bread kept from the evening!

Suicide

You may ask, how is it possible to fight for life in such conditions, who can do it? Death may seem like a reward compared to such a life. 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 man, immediately upon arriving at the camp, vowed “not to throw himself on the wire.” Although knowing the numbers, he understood that he would hardly be able to escape multiple selections of destruction.

Apathy

The author talks about the state of apathy that appeared in all prisoners after a state of shock. At the very beginning, the prisoners could not bear the sadistic images. They could not watch as their comrades were forced to squat in the cold, in the mud, under the blows of a whip. But days passed, and then weeks, and they 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 amazed at his own insensitivity. In fact, apathy is a special defense mechanism of the body. All reality seems to be shrinking. All feelings and thoughts are concentrated on one task only: how to survive!

When it really hurt

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

The question of the meaning of life

Initially, we pose this question incorrectly. We must first understand 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 necessary: 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 how we acted in this particular case that will determine how 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 will, which he gave to his friend on the day that he thought was the last day of his life: “Listen, Otto! If I don't come 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 never loved anyone more than her. Third: the short time that we were together remained for me such happiness that outweighs all the bad, even what I have to endure now.”

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.

Victor Frankl – modern writer psychological works. As he states in his book “Saying Yes to Life: A Psychologist in a Concentration Camp” in human life There are periods 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 has 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.

On our literary website you can download Viktor Frankl’s book “Say Yes to Life!” free in formats suitable for different devices - epub, fb2, txt, rtf. Do you like to read books and always keep up with new releases? We have a large selection of books of various genres: classics, modern fiction, psychological literature and children's publications. In addition, we offer interesting and educational articles for aspiring writers and all those who want to learn how to write beautifully. Each of our visitors will be able to find something useful and exciting for themselves.

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 concentration camp, seen “from the inside,” from the position of a person who has personally experienced everything that will be discussed 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 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 nutrition 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 is desperately fighting to avoid getting into this echelon, to protect their loved ones from it, by any means trying to manage to disappear from the lists of those being 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 In literature in Russian, the Polish name for this camp is more often found - Auschwitz. – Approx. 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.)

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 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,” 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 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...

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 full 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 What represents, after all, is not his 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 developed in previous decades. Huge material for it has already been created by the First World War, introducing us to “barbed wire disease,” an acute psychological reaction that occurred among prisoners in prison 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 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.”

I must say that initially I wanted to release this book not under own name, but only under your 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.