Sublime

When asked how he survived the horrors of the Holocaust, renowned Austrian psychiatrist (and my personal hero) Viktor Frankl said, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In that response lies our growth and freedom.” The experience of Frankl, who lost everything and everyone he loved in t

Semrad taught us that most human suffering is related to love and loss and that the job of therapists is to help people “acknowledge, experience, and bear” the reality of life—with all its pleasures and heartbreak. “The greatest sources of our suffering are the lies we tell ourselves,” he’d say, urging us to be honest with ourselves about every fac

Dostoevski said once, “There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.” These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of their suf

Victor Frankl, himself a survivor of Auschwitz (and a neurologist and psychologist): “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.”

It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future—sub specie aeternitatis. And this is his salvation in the most difficult moments of his existence, although he sometimes has to force his mind to the task.

What alone remains is “the last of human freedoms”—the ability to “choose one’s attitude in a given set of circumstances.” This ultimate freedom, recognized by the ancient Stoics as well as by modern existentialists,

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that 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 circumstan

Nelle circostanze più degradanti che si possano immaginare, Frankl usò la facoltà umana dell’autocoscienza per scoprire un principio fondamentale relativo alla natura umana: fra stimolo e risposta, l’uomo ha la libertà di scegliere. Fanno parte di questa libertà proprio le facoltà che ci contraddistinguono come esseri umani. L’autoconsapevolezza, m

They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that 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. Viktor Frankl