man-s-search-for-meaning

LOGOTHERAPY IN A NUTSHELL
When the Nazis started their euthanasia program, he
held all the strings in his hands and was so fanatic in
the job assigned to him that he tried not to let one
single psychotic individual escape the gas chamber.
After the war, when I came back to Vienna, I asked
what had happened to Dr. J. "He had been imprisoned
by the Russians in one of the isolation cells of
Steinhof," they told me. "The next day, however, the
door of his cell stood open and Dr. J. was never seen
again." Later I was convinced that, like others, he had
with the help of his comrades made his way to South
America. More recently, however, I was consulted by
a former Austrian diplomat who had been imprisoned
behind the Iron Curtain for many years, first in Siberia
and then in the famous Lubianka prison in Moscow.
While I was examining him neurologically, he suddenly
asked me whether I happened to know Dr. J.
After my affirmative reply he continued: "I made his
acquaintance in Lubianka. There he died, at about the
age of forty, from cancer of the urinary bladder.
Before he died, however, he showed himself to be the
best comrade you can imagine! He gave consolation to
everybody. He lived up to the highest conceivable
moral standard. He was the best friend I ever met
during my long years in prison!"
This is the story of Dr. J., "the mass murderer of
Steinhof." How can we dare to predict the behavior of
man? We may predict the movements of a machine, of
an automaton; more than this, we may even try to
predict the mechanisms or "dynamisms" of the human
psyche as well. But man is more than psyche.
Freedom, however, is not the last word. Freedom is
only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is
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