Meaning Read online

  FRANKL: My wife Elly was with me for the audience with the Pope, and we were both deeply impressed. Pope Paul VI greeted us in German and continued in Italian, with a priest as interpreter. He acknowledged the significance of Logotherapy for the Catholic Church and for all humankind. He also commended my conduct in the concentration camps, but it was unclear to us what he had in mind. As he signaled the end of the audience, and as we were moving toward the door, he suddenly began to speak in German once again, calling after us—to me, the Jewish neurologist from Vienna—in exactly these words: “Please pray for me!” It was deeply stirring.

  The Frankls with Jerry Long, 1991.

  COLLEAGUE: And if you had it to do all over again?

  FRANKL: Live as if you were already living for the second time, and as if you had made the mistakes you are about to make now. That’s all.

  End of Scene 21

  Scene 22

  General Philosophy

  Title Board: GENERAL PHILOSOPHY

  Summarizing his life

  Meaning

  Visual: Series of thoughtful Frankl photos.

  Stage Directions: Chorale from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony softly in the background. Portions in italics are not meant to be performed.

  COLLEAGUE: Your writings and your lectures have been as much philosophical as they have been psychological.

  FRANKL: Is there a difference?

  COLLEAGUE: Perhaps not. Yet the central theme of your life has been a search for meaning.

  FRANKL: In finding meaning we are perceiving a possibility in reality. Once we have actualized the possibility offered by a situation, once we have fulfilled the meaning a situation holds, we have converted that possibility into reality. And we have done so once and forever!

  COLLEAGUE: This search for meaning is almost inherent.

  FRANKL: Yes, I understand the primordial anthropological fact that being human is always being directed, and pointing, to something or someone other than oneself: to a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter, a cause to serve or a person to love. Only to the extent that someone is living out this self-transcendence of human existence, is he truly human or does he become his true self. He becomes so, not only by concerning himself with his self’s actualization, but by forgetting himself and giving himself, overlooking himself and focusing outward.

  COLLEAGUE: You’ve talked about this focusing outward—are meanings unique?

  FRANKL: They are unique, they are ever-changing, but they are never missing. Life is never lacking a meaning.

  COLLEAGUE: Even when you can’t change a situation?

  FRANKL: Yes, even then. When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.

  COLLEAGUE: Always the inner search, always asking questions.

  FRANKL: Life is asking us questions day by day, and we have to answer. Life, I would say, is a life-long question-and-answer period. As to the answers, I do not weary of saying we can only answer to life by answering for our lives. Responding to life means being responsible for our lives.

  COLLEAGUE: How do you fit this into the present, the future, and the past?

  Viktor Frankl, 1954.

  Source: Viktor Frankl Institute, Vienna, Austria.

  FRANKL: The present is the borderline between the unreality of the future and the eternal reality of the past. The present is also the borderline of eternity which is finite because it only extends to the present, to the present moment at which we choose what we want to admit into eternity.

  COLLEAGUE: Explain more, please.

  FRANKL: The borderline of eternity is the place where at every moment of our lives the decision is made as to what should be externalized and what should not.

  COLLEAGUE: What is needed in the world?

  FRANKL: Thousands of years ago mankind developed monotheism. Today another step is due. I would call it monanthropism. Not in the belief in the one God, but rather the awareness of the one mankind, the awareness of the unity of humanity; a unity in whose light the different colors of our skins would fade away.

  COLLEAGUE: Can you summarize the tenets of Logotherapy?

  FRANKL: Logotherapy regards man as being in search of meaning and responsible for its fulfillment. Logotherapy sees its own assignment in making man conscious of “being responsible,” of his “responsibleness.”

  COLLEAGUE: And summarizing your life?

  FRANKL: You may guess at my words—“I have seen the meaning in my life in helping others to see in their lives a meaning.”

  COLLEAGUE: And suffering …

  FRANKL: The right kind of suffering—facing your fate without flinching—is the highest achievement that has been granted to man.

  COLLEAGUE: There are peak moments and moments of greatness.

  FRANKL: They are connected. The greatness of a life can be measured by the greatness of a moment: the height of a mountain range is not given by the height of some valley, but by that of its tallest peak. In life, too, the peaks decide the meaningfulness of the life, and a single moment can retroactively flood an entire life with meaning.

  COLLEAGUE: Some people miss out in life.

  FRANKL: A person sitting in a streetcar who has the opportunity to watch a wonderful sunset, or to breathe in the rich scent of flowering acacias, and who instead goes on reading his newspaper, could at such a moment be accused of being negligent toward his obligations.

  COLLEAGUE: You watched sunsets in the camps.

  FRANKL: Sunsets are free, and they are freedom.

  COLLEAGUE: Men talk about earning or deserving love.

  FRANKL: Love is not deserved, is unmerited—it is simply grace. But love is not only grace: it is also enchantment.

  COLLEAGUE: And how is life meaningful?

  FRANKL: In three ways: first, through what we give to life in terms of our creative works; second, by what we take from the world in terms of our experiencing values; and third, through the stand we take toward a fate we no longer can change, like an incurable disease.

  End of Scene 22

  Scene 23

  Frau Kotek

  Title Board: FRAU KOTEK

  A cancer patient

  Frankl; Frau Kotek

  Visual: Lecture hall, old woman, outside of hospital,

  Frankl.

  Stage Directions: This is a dialogue with an eighty-year-old female patient who is suffering from a cancer which had metastasized. Several shots of woman and Frankl, cutting back and forth.

  FRANKL: What do you think of when you look back on your life? Has life been worth living?

  FRAU KOTEK: Well, Doctor, I must say that I had a good life. Life was nice, indeed. And I must thank the Lord for what it held for me. I went to theaters, I attended concerts, and so forth. You see, Doctor, I went there with the family in whose house I had served for many decades as a maid, in Prague, at first, and afterwards in Vienna. And for the grace of all of these wonderful experiences I am grateful to the Lord.

  FRANKL: You are speaking of some wonderful experiences; but all of this will have to end now, won’t it?

  FRAU KOTEK: [Thoughtfully.] In fact, now everything ends …

  FRANKL: Well, do you think now that all of the wonderful things of your life might be annihilated and invalidated when your end approaches? [And she knew that it did!]

  FRAU KOTEK: [Still more thoughtfully.] All those wonderful things …

  Frankl, 1994.

  FRANKL: But tell me: do you think anyone can undo the happiness, for example, that you have experienced? Can anyone blot it out?

  FRAU KOTEK: [Now facing him.] You are right, Doctor; nobody can blot it out!

  FRANKL: Or can anyone blot out the goodness you have met in your life?

  FRAU KOTEK: [Becoming increasingly emotionally involved.] Nobody can blot it out!

  FRANKL: What you have achieved and accomplished—

  FRAU KOTEK: Nobody can blot it out!

  FRANKL: Or what you have bravely and honestly suffered: c
an anyone remove it from the world—remove from the past wherein you have stored it, as it were?

  FRAU KOTEK: [Now moved to tears.] No one can remove it. [Pause.] It is true, I had so much to suffer; but I also tried to be courageous and steadfast in taking life’s blows. You see, Doctor, I regarded my suffering as a punishment. I believe in God.

  FRANKL: But cannot suffering sometimes also be a challenge? Is it not conceivable that God wanted to see how Anastasia Kotek will bear it? And perhaps He had to admit: “Yes, she did so very bravely.” And now tell me: can anyone remove such an achievement and accomplishment from the world, Frau Kotek?

  Frankl rock-climbing.

  Source: Viktor Frankl Institute, Vienna, Austria.

  FRAU KOTEK: Certainly no one can do it!

  FRANKL: This remains, doesn’t it?

  FRAU KOTEK: It does!

  FRANKL: By the way, you had no children, had you?

  FRAU KOTEK: I had none.

  FRANKL: Well, do you think that life is meaningful only when one has children?

  FRAU KOTEK: If they are good children, why shouldn’t it be a blessing?

  FRANKL: Right, but you should not forget that, for instance, the greatest philosopher of all times, Immanuel Kant, had no children; but would anyone venture to doubt the extraordinary meaningfulness of his life? I rather think if children were the only meaning of life, life would become meaningless, because to procreate something which in itself is meaningless certainly would be the most meaningless thing. What counts and matters in life is rather to achieve and accomplish something. And this is precisely what you have done. You have made the best of your suffering. You have become an example for our patients by the way and manner in which you take your suffering upon yourself. I congratulate you on behalf of this achievement and accomplishment, and I also congratulate your roommates who have an opportunity to watch and witness such an example. [Addressing students.] Ecce homo! [The audience now bursts into a spontaneous applause.] This applause concerns you, Frau Kotek. [She is weeping now.] It concerns your life, which has been a great achievement and accomplishment. You may be proud of it, Frau Kotek. And how few people may be proud of their lives. [Pause.] I should say your life is a monument. And no one can remove it from the world.

  FRAU KOTEK: [Regaining her self-control.] What you have said, Professor Frankl, is a consolation. It comforts me. Indeed, I never had an opportunity to hear anything like this. [Pause.]

  [Slowly and quietly she leaves the lecture hall.]

  FRANKL: Apparently, she now was reassured. A week later she died; like Job, one could say, “in a full age.” During the last week of her life, however, she was no longer depressed, but, on the contrary, full of faith and pride! Prior to this, she had admitted to Dr Gerda Becker, who was in charge of her on the ward, that she felt agonized and, more specifically, ridden by the anxiety that she was useless. The interview, however, which we had together had made her aware that her life was meaningful and that even her suffering had not been in vain. Her last words, immediately before her death, were the following: “My life is a monument. So Professor Frankl said to the whole audience, to all the students in the lecture hall. My life was not in vain.” Thus reads the report of Dr Becker. And we may be justified in assuming that, also like Job, Frau Kotek “came to her grave like a shock of corn cometh in his season.”

  Frankl lecturing, 1960.

  Source: Viktor Frankl Institute, Vienna, Austria.

  End of Scene 23

  Scene 24

  The Science Teacher

  Title Board: THE SCIENCE TEACHER

  Science Teacher; Frankl

  Visual: Thirteen-year-old Frankl.

  Stage Directions: Last scene in play. Blackout followed by Frankl climbing photograph and lecturing. End with good photo of Frankl and a tape recording of some lines from one of his speeches over the visual.

  SCIENCE TEACHER: I must emphasize the findings of science. You see, life in the final analysis is nothing but a combustion process, an oxidation process.

  FRANKL: [Jumping to his feet.] Professor Fritz, if this be the case, what meaning does life have?

  End of Scene 24

  Finis

  Copyright

  First published by

  Crown House Publishing Ltd

  Crown Buildings, Bancyfelin, Carmarthen, Wales, SA33 5ND, UK

  www.crownhouse.co.uk

  and

  Crown House Publishing Company LLC

  6 Trowbridge Drive, Suite 5, Bethel, CT 06801, USA

  www.crownhousepublishing.com

  © Rubin Battino 1999, 2001, 2002

  The right of Rubin Battino to be identified as the author of this work has

  been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and

  Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.

  Enquiries should be addressed to Crown House Publishing Limited.

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library.

  Print ISBN 978–189983683–3

  Mobi ISBN 978–184590306–0

  ePub ISBN 978–184590540–8

  LCCN 2002107638