"He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how". - Nietzsche

From the book, Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl.

Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions.

An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.

Love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. The salvation of man is through love and in love.

Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his innner self. Whether or not he is actually persent, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.

Humor was another of the soul's weapons in the fight for self-preservation. It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloffness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds.

Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates (of concentration camp) were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him-mentally and spiritually.

The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity-even under the most difficult circumstances-to add a deeper meaning to his life.

Often it is just an exceptionally difficult external situation which gives man the opportunity to grow spirtually beyond himself.

Life is like being at the dentist. You always think that the worst is still to come, and yet it is over already.

It is peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future -- sub specie aeternitatis.

Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.

"Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich starker". (That which does not kill me, makes me stronger.) - Nietzsche.

"He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how". - Nietzsche


LOGOTHERAPY

Logotherapy focuses on the future, that is to say, on the assignments and meanings to be fulfilled by the patient in his future. At the same time, logotherapy de-focuses all the vicious circle formations and feedback mechanisms which play such a great role in the development of neuroses.

Logotherapy focuses on the meaning of human existence as well as on man's search for such a meaning. According to logotherapy, this striving to find a meaning in one's life is the primary motivational force in man.

The will to meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can be fulfilled by him alone; only then does it achieve a significance which will satisfy his own will to meaning.

Values, however, do not drive a man; they do not push him, but rather pull him.

Mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should become. Such a tension is inherent in the human being and therefore is indispensable to mental well-being.

The meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment.

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 whihc demands fulfillment. 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.

Man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognise that it is he who is asked. In a word, 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.

The essence of existence: Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now! It seems to me that there is nothing which would stimulate a man's sense of responsibleness more than this maxim, which invites him to imagine first that the present is past and, second, that the past may yet be changed and amended. Such a precept confronts him with life's finiteness as well as the finality of what he makes out of both his life and himself.

A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes-within the limits of endowment and environment-he has made out of himself. After all, man is that being who has invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who has entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer of the Shema Yisrael on his lips.