Man´s Search for Meaning (3)

Et lux in tenebris lucet   

In the event that you do not have this book in your hands, I will continue to advance you brushstrokes of the next phase that an ordinary person goes through while being confined in a Nazi death camp, according to psychiatrist Viktor E. Frankl.

On page 55, Viktor Frankl describes the lack of feeling he had in the second phase of life at the Lager: he was able to eat his soup while looking at the corpse of a person he had been talking to two hours earlier.

For a moment, the doctor seems to agree with psychoanalysis, at least at first, because it leaves open the question whether the dream that satisfies a basic desire is psychologically beneficial, because in the end when a prisoner dreams of bread, cakes, cigarettes and a good bath of hot water, when waking up he finds the terrible reality.

A few paragraphs below, Dr. Frankl openly refutes one of the postulates of psychoanalysis when he briefly describes sexuality in the extermination camp. It is a basic desire that is almost completely overridden by both malnutrition and the initial shock. This is a phenomenon that draws the attention of psychologists.

Apathy, hunger, the absence of feelings, emptiness, desolation ..., but despite everything, there are things that refuse to die. The inmate imagines being with the loved one and talks and listens to him or her and the small events shared by both are relived with such intensity that they seem indestructible.

In closing, I have a question for you. Do you know the story Death in Tehran? I did not know it and now I know what means to be a toy of destiny.

 

From my Borstal.

LDR

 

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