Frankl’s Approach To Suffering

Viktor Frankl is an Austrian psychotherapist and famed author of the inspirational book Man’s Search for Meaning, which details his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp. In this book, Frankl shares his insights from his time spent in four different camps, and explains the basis for a theory he would call Logotherapy, a therapy centered around the creation of meaning.

If we are talking about suffering, then Frankl experienced it. Terror, sickness, starvation, despair, and the threat of death plagued his daily life for three years. In those walls, Frankl encountered something more terrifying than mere physical pain – he had to face the senseless brutality of his fellow man, the feeling of deep anguish and the loss of hope for anything better.

He speaks about looking all around him at others who collapsed into this doom and misery. They stopped believing in a future, and their faith in themselves and humanity in general withered. But here, Frankl noticed other things, too. He noticed that not everyone succumbed and that some people, seemingly despite all odds, repeatedly chose kindness, hope and forgiveness. These are the people that survived. He says that the lesson he was taught was that “it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life – daily and hourly.”

The challenge of existence, then, was to create an active life – meaning one where he finds and serves his purpose, creates, and does ennobling and positive work. This fulfils us and gives us the strength to face adversity. Frankl also claims that it is our responsibility to craft our own moral attitude and behavior. To develop our own philosophy and to live by our own ethics. And, this had to accommodate suffering, not avoid it. In fact, for Frankl, suffering was a big part of the picture: “If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.”

Man’s struggle with suffering, then, is not a mistake but an opportunity to seek and create something deeper and more meaningful. We all have the choice to behave with dignity, no matter how intense our suffering. We all have the option to choose our values – even to seek to be grateful to our suffering for highlighting those values for us. Frankl might have argued, after all, that his touching and eloquent embrace of the role of suffering came about because of his experiences and not in spite of them.

“The experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action. There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress […] We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way … It is this spiritual freedom – which cannot be taken away – that makes life meaningful and purposeful.”

Or, as Nietzsche claimed, “to live is to suffer, and to survive is to find some meaning in suffering.”

In Frankl’s days of suffering, he found that there was always a choice: even when all action was prevented, you could still determine the contents of your own mind. He describes being forced to use positive visualization to inoculate himself against the daily tedium and pain. Like the Stoics, he, too, believed that pain lessens dramatically when we are objective and step back. Observe them from afar.

Frankl survived the camps and lived to tell his story, and his repeated conclusion is that love is humankind’s ultimate goal, and the deepest purpose and meaning to our lives. Even if we have nothing left in the world at all, we can still choose to love. We can still choose honor and dignity and gratitude.

For Frankl, when we accept that life entails suffering, it gives our lives meaning. Our opportunity as unique individuals living on this planet is then to find an opportunity in the way we bear this burden. There is no question of giving up the burden – our redemption comes in how we carry it, and for what purpose. The why tells us how.

He who knows how to suffer has mastered everything. Importantly, this is not abstract but real and practical. Modern people are plagued with a lack of meaning and existential emptiness. In this void of meaning, we may succumb to others’ will and do as they do. “One should not search for an abstract meaning of life. Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfilment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone’s task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it. Rather, each man is questioned by life and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”

Suffering remedy 1: Find your purpose

Frankl believed that we find meaning in one of three ways:

1. We can work, act or create something of value

2. We can truly encounter another human being

3. We can adopt a certain attitude to our suffering

It’s this last route that we are interested in. When we are confronted with an uncomfortable, painful or unjust situation, we have a choice. We can take the opportunity to strengthen our character, and ask what it is that we stand for. We all have immense potential within us, but we must consciously choose to take what we are given and transform it, elevate it, and learn from it. Suffering better means that we don’t wish for life to be easier, but for ourselves to be stronger.

Frankl is not suggesting an easy “think positive” solution or encouraging us to make the best of things – can you imagine how hollow this is in the face of the suffering he encountered? Rather, we are each invited by suffering to be better. To choose our own path out of it. To make something of our experiences, according to our values and intention. How we do this depends on us – for some, it will be an exercise in power and will, for others, a creative endeavor, and for still others, a spiritual challenge to be met with love and acceptance.

So, what is your character? What are you made of?

Any truly wise and accomplished person will speak fondly of the pain they’ve been dealt, the truths this pain showed them, and the lessons they were forced to learn. It’s not that pain provides meaning, but rather our engagement with it. It doesn’t matter who you are, what your resources are, or how bad you are suffering. At any point, we can all take up this work. We can choose our attitude. And we can do this in a very practical way by anchoring into our values.

Here are some questions that can help you zoom in on your unique power to create your own meaning and purpose:

• To what end would you be happy to endure any suffering? In other words, what in this world is so valuable to you that you can imagine sacrificing anything for?

• When have you felt most fulfilled, joyful and at peace in your life? What were you doing?

• What perspective can you offer the world that is 100% unique to you?

• When you are close to leaving this earth, by what standard will you measure your time here? Exactly how will you know you have had a full and meaningful life?

• What story do you want to tell about the adversity you’ve experienced in life so far?

• At the end of the day, what kind of a person are you, and what do you stand for, no matter what?

Suffering is something that can teach us to find meaning, but it goes the other way around, too: digging deep into our own values and purpose is something that makes suffering easier to bear. Let’s look at some examples.

Most people would say that one of the most painful experiences in life is processing the death of a loved one. We can imagine an even more painful situation if we think about the kind of death people most think “shouldn’t” happen – the death of a child. A couple could lose their young child and be devastated. For years they would mourn, feeling like the universe had dealt them the unfairest, cruelest blow possible. They could fill up with resentment, bitterness, and deep despair at the unchangeable fact that their child is gone and will never, ever come back.

But this couple could, in time, digest this pain and make something sweet and beautiful out of it. If you speak to them in ten or twenty years, they may say, “We never stop missing her, and the pain never goes away. But her passing taught us to appreciate the time we did have with her, and to never take the beautiful things in life for granted.” The couple might say that their pain was like a crash course in finding meaning. When their whole world fell apart, it was a matter of urgency to go inside and ask themselves. “what really matters, then?”

Perhaps their spiritual faith is deepened. Perhaps they realize they had taken things for granted and want to change their lifestyle to prioritize what matters. Maybe they learnt to humble themselves, to allow their community to support them, and to work on their marriage to pull each other through.

Similarly, a bad breakup could leave you with way more clarity about the kind of person you do want to meet and the person you want to be when you discover them. You may have never realized before then just how important certain beliefs and values were until you engaged with the pain of that breakup.

A medical scare or prolonged illness may force you to confront the fact you are not currently living with integrity and purpose, and are allowing your unique potential to go unfulfilled and unexplored. Importantly, all of this insight and meaning-making would not be able to happen without acceptance. If we fight against and resist the pain we feel, we are always trapped in a reactive, passive mode, feeling like a victim of life. But this just prolongs the pain and delays the insight to be gotten from that pain. We never give ourselves the chance to say, “This is the way it is. Can I accept that? What now?”

Suffering remedy 2: Compassion

No matter what we feel we have lost, we never lose our ability to choose kindness and compassion, for ourselves or others. We may not like the adversity or injustice life throws our way, but we can survive it. We can focus on what is good in our lives, and this steadies our mind and helps us maintain our purpose and sense of meaning regardless of what is happening around us.

We can also recognize that great developments in mankind’s trajectory here on earth have always happened when people refuse to catastrophize, give up, despair or collapse into blame and self-pity. In fact, human beings are capable of great beauty, mercy, inventiveness and resilience – if they choose it. In this context, as with the Stoics, action is redemptive and grounding. Action gives purpose and direction. And one of the greatest actions we can take is to show kindness.

If somebody treats you badly, pause and decide whether you want to harbor hate and resentment for them in your heart. You might not be able to do anything about what they have chosen, but you can still choose. You can rise above it and forgive, assume the best and let it go. Similarly, if you mess up somehow, don’t get too caught up in self-flagellation and guilt. Take very seriously your responsibility for learning what you can and making amends, but don’t get too attached to the idea of yourself as a hopeless cause!

If somebody treats you well, realize that their act of kindness, no matter how small, is always within each of us as an unfulfilled possibility. Grab hold of it, be grateful, and do whatever you can to amplify that in the world around you. Pay it forward, and gift the same compassion you were given to somebody else.

Frankl doesn’t sugar-coat human nature. He saw both profound cruelty and profound compassion and sweetness in the people he was imprisoned with. “Life in a concentration camp tore open the human soul and exposed its depths. Is it surprising that in those depths we again found human qualities which in their very nature were a mixture of good and evil?”

Frankl believed there were good people and bad people in every group of human beings, and that people could also contain a mix of both. We don’t need to rail against the fact that some people are cruel and vicious, and unfair. Our only business is to focus on who we want to be – and we can decide to run our lives according to higher moral values.

There is an urban legend about an attempted break-in. A family were sitting at the dinner table eating, when a man breaks into the house, drunk and violent. Realizing that the house is not empty, he panics and starts threatening them, demanding they give him everything they have. The wife stands up calmly, fetches a plate of food and a glass of wine and hands it to the man, inviting him to come and sit at the table. Overcome with humility and touched by her kindness, the man collapses into floods of tears. He sits with them at the table and apologizes profusely, explaining how his life has hit rock bottom, that he desperately needs help, and that he’s so, so sorry for everything he’s done.

A cynic will hear this story and think, “Well, what if he decided to just kill them all? Their compassion doesn’t mean much then, does it?” But in fact, that’s precisely where their compassion has the most meaning. The family don’t show kindness for any other reason than wanting that to be what they create in the world. The story may seem to frame the intruder’s apologies and remorse as a kind of prize to win by being compassionate, but the value in kindness is there whether others receive it or not.

When we are kind, we also do so because it elevates us. Because it makes true the claim that we can create the world we want. We can choose compassion for no “reason” at all. And we can forgive not because of what others “deserve” but because we value our own peace of mind and open-heartedness more than we value clinging to pain.

One unexpectedly powerful way to become masterful at dealing with life’s pain is to just let kindness soften it a little. Treat pain like the family treated the intruder – as something deserving of kindness, with you willing to make a place at the table for it, even if it might hurt you. This kind of compassion is not only abstract, but it’s also real. It finds its home in concrete action. The next time you feel pain and suffering, try a few of these ideas to remind yourself of your ability to choose your own attitude and take action to reflect it.

Tip 1: Try not to take things personally. Sometimes, there is simply no sense to be found in some people’s actions, or even in natural events and phenomena. We suffer when we try to understand or figure it all out, or else look inside to find out what we did personally to deserve it. The next time a bit of bad luck comes your way, shrug it off and say out loud to yourself, “this is not about me.” A driver cut you off in traffic? That’s his business. It didn’t happen to you, it just happened. Then let it go.

Tip 2: Try to forgive people who you feel have wronged you in the past. One easy way to do this is to remind yourself of all the ways you have hurt others in your life – often unintentionally. Really grasp that you were just doing the best you could at the time. Now take that insight and apply it to the person who hurt you. Can you see how their behaviors were a reflection of their own trouble? Commit to not carrying that trouble with you any longer.

Tip 3: If you find yourself in a rotten situation that you genuinely cannot change or budge even a little, then start thinking of the people involved, and how you show them a little humanity anyway. Offer your help, give a compliment, or simply smile where it would have been easy to scowl. See if there’s just one concrete action you can take to make everyone feel a bit better. Sometimes, we can change the whole course of the world by simply adopting a positive mindset, showing others that it’s possible, and inspiring them to find that choice in themselves.

Summary:

• Viktor Frankl experienced extreme hardship and suffering and, from this, developed his own theory about how many searches for and creates his own meaning. Frankl’s experiences taught him that suffering pushes human beings to find meaning and purpose in their lives. To survive, in other words, is to find meaning in one’s suffering.

• Frankl believed that struggle with suffering is an opportunity to seek and create something deeper and more meaningful, identify values and principles, and even deepen one’s spiritual understanding.

• Instead of searching for meaning externally, we have to look at our own unique strengths and calling in life, and hear what life demands from us, rather than making demands of it. This means that we need to take concrete action.

• Frankl thought that there were 3 ways to find meaning in life: We can work or create something of value, we can truly encounter another human being, or we can make meaning out of our suffering.

• One way to do this is to fine-tune your own unique purpose. Suffering can force us to look closely at what really matters to us most in life, but knowing our values also allows us to suffer better.

• Another remedy for suffering, according to Frankl, is to have compassion, and to be guided by love. Frankl sees love as mankind’s highest possibility, and when we choose kindness and empathy, we can take any form of suffering and redeem it.