Man's Search For Meaning - Viktor E. Frankl

EXPERIENCES IN A CONCENTRATION CAMPchiatrists expect the reactions of a man to an abnormalsituation, such as being committed to an asylum, to beabnormal in proportion to the degree of his normality.The reaction of a man to his admission to a concentrationcamp also represents an abnormal state of mind,but judged objectively it is a normal and, as will beshown later, typical reaction to the given circumstances.These reactions, as I have described them,began to change in a few days. The prisoner passedfrom the first to the second phase; the phase of relativeapathy in which he achieved a kind of emotional death.Apart from the already described reactions, thenewly arrived prisoner experienced the tortures ofother most painful emotions, all of which he tried todeaden. First of all, there was his boundless longingfor his home and his family. This often could becomeso acute that he felt himself consumed by longing.Then there was disgust; disgust with all the uglinesswhich surrounded him, even in its mere externalforms.Most of the prisoners were given a uniform of ragswhich would have made a scarecrow elegant by comparison.Between the huts in the camp lay pure filth,and the more one worked to clear it away, the moreone had to come in contact with it. It was a favoritepractice to detail a new arrival to a work group whosejob was to clean the latrines and remove the sewage.If, as usually happened, some of the excrementsplashed into his face during its transport over bumpyfields, any sign of disgust by the prisoner or anyattempt to wipe off the filth would only be punishedwith a blow from a Capo. And thus the mortification ofnormal reactions was hastened.39