Searching for the meaning of life

The search for meaning in life:

Sigmund Freud, Viktor Frankl, attention to the nature and treatment of neurosis, Frankl's logotherapy (existential One of the analytical methods)

The central theme of existentialism: life is suffering, and to live is to find meaning in suffering

The main content of this book: through the author’s own experience in the concentration camp The narrative of life shows the process and effect of the author's logotherapy, inspiring readers and helping them gain the ability to seek value and meaning in harsh environments

Foreword: Don't always focus on success, the more you Staring at him and treating it as a target will make it easier for you to miss the target, because success, like happiness, is something that can be encountered but cannot be sought. It must come naturally, and it can only be achieved as a person for a cause that is greater than himself. He was able to produce the unconscious side effects of his devotion. You have to let it happen without caring too much, and success will follow after a long time precisely by forgetting about it.

The mental reaction of prisoners to concentration camp life can be divided into three stages:

The first stage:

Horror, seeing the Auschwitz station for the first time Card, everyone's heart trembled suddenly. Everyone felt a temporary confusion when they saw the receptionist. They used gin to anesthetize themselves. When they first arrived at the station, they faced the challenge of survival. The seemingly simple pointing marked the The fate of a person, taking off his clothes and jewelry, losing all material connections with the first half of his life, leaving him with just a naked body, enduring huge hardships (lack of sleep, extremely cold environment, small beds, and skin sores) made the author understand the meaning of "human beings". You can get used to anything, but don't ask us how we got used to it." When I saw this sentence, my heart trembled suddenly. These few simple words conveyed the sadness, a kind of pain that is so painful that I no longer want to remember it. The feeling is getting stronger. An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is a normal behavior. I was beaten when feces was splashed on my face but I wiped it with my hands. I was punished for taking leave because I had a fever. All of these shocked me beyond fear.

Faced with such a boring, painful and unbearable concentration camp life, people who are accustomed to a rich intellectual life are good at pursuing love by missing their wives. At this moment, they finally understand that love is something that people can aspire to pursue. , the ultimate, highest goal, love far beyond the physical existence of the beloved.

The second stage:

The miserable life in the concentration camp does not lack the so-called art and humor. In the struggle for self-protection, humor is another powerful soul weapon in addition to art. More than anything else in the human makeup, humor has the power to lift people away from and beyond their circumstances, even if it only lasts a few seconds. During life in the concentration camp, prisoners often made up jokes about the future to make life more interesting. Life is suffering, but if it is accompanied by art and humor, it will be much more exciting. In the face of huge suffering, no matter how small the positive joy is, it is satisfying and happy. When I saw the prisoners who worked the night shift coming back covered with snow, they were kicked out after only a few minutes of sitting. In comparison, even being sick in the ward was boring. Napping is an extremely comfortable enjoyment of life

Life in the concentration camp made the prisoners realize that people are completely and inevitably affected by the environment. However, in the concentration camp, the only thing that was not deprived was a choice Freedom of manner, freedom of choice of attitude, this is what it means to be a real prisoner, and it is also the criterion for judging whether suffering is meaningful. I have always been curious about what the prisoners in the concentration camp lived on, and later I realized that people can only survive by counting on the future. This was his salvation in the most difficult period of existence. For a prisoner living in a concentration camp, thinking about it every day He has to feel irritated by all kinds of complicated things with a strong sense of reality and no future at all. However, if he looks for opportunities and opportunities in future life, he can imagine himself standing on a bright podium in the future, doing a good job. Lectures about the concentration camps were given as if the pain currently being experienced was only in the past and that it was no longer a suffering.

Various examples from the concentration camps prove that there is a close connection between a person's state of mind and his body's immune status. In the concentration camps, any effort devoted to restoring a person's inner strength must first successfully show him his future goals. . Suffering has meaning, and life itself is the search for meaning.

The third stage: prisoner psychology after liberation

The newly liberated prisoners saw all kinds of unexpected beauty in the world but never felt joy. They had been deceived by dreams many times, which made them They couldn't believe that the day of liberation would really come, that they would be truly free. Then, there will be a kind of moral deformity. In addition, people's indifference and lack of emotion when returning to their previous lives make their moral deformity more serious. The joyful knock on the door is answered by silence, no one understands, no one Care