Man's Search For Meaning - Victor E Frankl Flashcards
“Success, like happiness, cannot be pursued: it must ensue”
- Victor E. Frankl -
“Don’t aim at success - the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it.
For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued: it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of ones dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the bi-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.
Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.
I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge.
Then you will live to see that in the long run - in the long run, I say! - success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it”
- Victor E. Frankl -
Man’s Search for Meaning - Page 12.
The Existential Vacuum
- Victor E. Frankl -
“At the beginning of human history, man lost some of the basic animal instincts in which an animals behaviour imbedded and by which it is secured…
man has (also) suffered another loss in his more recent development inasmuch as the traditions which buttressed his behaviour are now rapidly diminishing.
No instinct tells him what he has to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do: sometimes he doesn’t even know what he wishes to do.
Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people wish him to do (totalitarianism)”
Victor E. Frankl
Man’s Search for Meaning - Page. 111
“The Meaning of Life”
- Victor E. Frankl -
“One should not search for an abstract meaning of life.
…each situation in life presents a problem for him to solve, the question of the meaning of life may be reversed. Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize 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.
Thus, logotherapy sees in responsiblness the very essence of human existence”
Victor E. Frankl
Man’s Search for Meaning - Page 113
“The Essence of Existence”
- Victor E. Frankl -
“The emphasis on responsibleness is reflected in the categorical imperative of logotherapy, which is:
“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!
…this maxim invites (a man) to imagine first that the present is past and, second, that the past may yet be changed and ammended.
Such a precept confronts him with life’s finitness as well as the finality of what he makes out of both his life and himself.
Logotherapy tries to make the patient fully aware of his own responsibleness: therefore, it must leave to him the option for what, to what, or to whom he understands himself to be responsible”
Victor E. Frankl
Man’s Search for Meaning - Page. 114
