Man´s Search for Meaning 

For Harry or Marion who haven't been born yet 

 

<< He could have developed logotherapy in America, thus fulfilling his life's mission, but he did not. He thus he arrived at Auschwitz. >>

 

Man's Search for Meaning has been rolling around my house for a long time, I would dare to say without being too wrong that a couple of years... A few days ago I picked up the book, randomly ajar its pages and was overwhelmed by what I could read.

Why hadn't I opened it before? Clearly because when it got home I thought it was just another self-help manual. The one who follows me already knows that after having done my ‘internship' at the Borstal, I don't need anyone to come and tell me stories. As simple as that.

Hunger, lice, frostbite, exhaustion, these are some of the symptoms that V.E. Frankl began to notice within weeks of his internment at Kaufering III. Despondency, despair had settled in his person, but fortunately, the exchange of a cigarette for a watery soup gave way to a comforting conversation with a certain Benscher that brought him back to life.

On April 27, 1945, liberation came, but the suffering did not end with it. Everything accumulated during the years of internment could not vanish overnight. In Munich, where he spent time convalescing, he received the news of the death of his mother and his wife, who was forced to have an abortion because Jewish women were not allowed to give birth. Frankl and his wife already had the names for the creature: Harry if it was a boy, Marion if it was a girl.

From my Borstal.

LDR

Viktor Frankl.- El hombre en busca de sentido. CTE. Herder Editorial. Barcelona, 2015