Viktor Frankl (26 Maart 1905 tot 2 September 1997) was ’n Oostenrykse neuroloog en psigiater. Hy was ook in ’n Nazi-konsentrasiekamp.
Hy het bekendheid verwerf daarvoor dat hy die grondlegger van logoterapie was wat baie sterk beïnvloed is deur sy persoonlike ervarings van lyding en verlies in die Nazi-konsentrasiekampe.
Logoterapie
Logoterapie is gegrond op die oortuiging dat die menslike natuur gemotiveer word deur die soeke na ’n lewensdoel; dit is die strewe na sin in ’n mens se lewe.
Geloofsoortuiging
Hy was van Joodse afkoms. Hy het egter baie min van God gesê, daarom is dit onseker wat sy presiese geloofsoortuiging was (kyk God in Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy).
Aanhalings
Hy het onder andere die volgende gesê:
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
“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 one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-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 about it”
“Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.”
Ware sin in die lewe
Ware sin in die lewe verkry mens uit die wete dat ons in diens is van ’n almagtige God wat lief is vir alle mense. Ons lewe hier op aarde is bloot tydelik en daarom moet ons die meeste maak van die kort tydjie hier op aarde voor ons die ewige lewe ingaan in God se Koninkryk.
Verdere bronne
Hier is nog ’n paar videos oor hom:
Aanhalings
Viktor Frankl: Life Changing Quotes (Man’s Search For Meaning)
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
“But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.”
“Man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those chambers upright, with the Lord’s Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.”
“What is to give light must endure burning.”
“When I was taken to the concentration camp of Auschwitz, a manuscript of mine ready for publication was confiscated. Certainly, my deep desire to write this manuscript anew helped me to survive the rigors of the camps I was in.”
“In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.”
“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.”
“For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.”
“So 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!”
“For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth – that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.”
“No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.”
“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather 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.”
“If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering.”
“Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assigment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated; thus, everyone’s task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it.”
“By declaring that man is responsible and must actualize the potential meaning of his life, I wish to stress that the true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system. I have termed this constitutive characteristic “the self-transcendence of human existence.” It denotes the fact that being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself–be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself–by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love–the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself. What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.”
“I do not forget any good deed done to me and I do not carry a grudge for a bad one.”
“A human being is a deciding being.”
“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
“For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.”
“The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance.”