“Certainly, the human being is finite, and his freedom is limited. It is not freedom from conditions, but freedom to take a stand toward the conditions.
As I once formulated it: ‘As a professor in two fields – neurology and psychiatry – I am fully aware of the degree to which the human being is conditioned by biological, psychological, and social factors. But in addition to being a professor in two disciplines, I have lived through four camps – concentration camps, I mean – and as such I bear witness to the unsuspected degree to which a human being is capable of standing up to and resisting even the worst conceivable conditions.’”
— Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
This is another in a series of publications in which I present logotherapy through quotations from its founder – the inspiring Viktor Frankl. I am so deeply drawn to this psychotherapeutic method because, like no other, it succeeds in recognizing the dignity of the suffering human being even under the most dehumanizing conditions, such as those of a concentration camp. A dignity that arises from the realization that freedom does not lie in the possibility of doing whatever we want, but is the most precious human endowment if we take responsibility for our reactions, even when it appears at first glance that we have no choice.
Only under conditions of extreme external constraint and coercion does the possibility arise of coming to know the deepest dimension of freedom – the freedom that “is not freedom from conditions, but freedom to take a stand toward the conditions.” When the ring of external circumstances in our life tightens, more than ever we have the opportunity to realize where its true place lies.
