A psychologist in the concentration camps. And other unpublished writings

Having recently been deported – following which, from September 1942, he had been imprisoned first at Theresienstadt, then at Auschwitz, subsequently at Kaufering III and finally at Türkheim – the doctor and specialist Viktor E. Frankl managed to return to his hometown, Vienna, after more than three years. He had escaped death but had lost almost all his loved ones. It was then that, in just seven days, he dictated his memoirs: recollections destined to be compiled into a book that would be translated into forty-two languages and is now commendably being republished in a new edition enriched with some previously unpublished texts by Frankl himself. But how might "A Psychologist in the Concentration Camps" be described? It must be said, first and foremost, that this is neither an essay nor a mere memoir of the author’s experience in the concentration camps. It is, without a doubt, a truly remarkable work, both for the highly distinctive perspective from which the analysis is conducted and for the message it conveys: life is worth living in any situation, and human beings prove capable – even in the most extreme circumstances – of revealing their full inner greatness. Of course, in this work Frankl does not fail to cite numerous examples of bestial behaviour. The passages in which he describes the psychological state of the prisoners – mired in apathy, lethargy, chronic irritability and numbness – are particularly moving. His primary focus, however, is on exploring human nature and its potential. What he observes in this regard applies not only to the experience of imprisonment in a concentration camp but also to all other ‘extreme situations’ (illness, suffering, bereavement, disability and so on) that severely test the human capacity to endure and survive. Each of us may therefore find a reflection of ourselves in this book: not necessarily of what we have been, but, perhaps, of what we may become by overcoming the many obstacles strewn across our life’s journey. According to Frankl, we should bring about a radical change in our lives in the name of love, the emotion that represents the highest point to which a human being can rise. The author wrote on this subject: ‘Love is the only way to fully understand another human being in the deepest essence of their person. No one can become fully aware of the true essence of another human being without loving them’. We must therefore respond to the systematic debasement of human dignity and the planned annihilation of the individual by appealing to an emotion capable of reaching the innermost nature of others: an illuminating, contagious, unquenchable flame.

Viktor E. Frankl

Franco Angeli, 167 pp., 23 euros