MAN’S SEARCH FOR MEANING
By Viktor Frankl
(Study Guide 2)
Please highlight the phrases in the book that guided your answers to the following
questions.
Please research on the concepts that were not elaborated in the book.
PART ONE
Experiences in the Concentration Camp
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Explain the concept of “barbed wire sickness”.
Narrate in your own words the story of “gay evening”.
What is the significance of the “finger game”.
What are the instances when the illusion of reprieve found confirmation among
the prisoners?
What is the “bath for the dead”?
Explain the culminating point of Frankl’s first phase of psychological reaction.
How were the prisoners able to find humor in what’s happening to them in the
concentration camp?
Why, according to Viktor Frankl, does textbooks tell lie?
Explain, “There are things which must cause you to lose your reason or you have
none to lose.” Cite a personal example.
Explain, “An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.” Cite
a personal example.
Narrate stories about the second phase: relative apathy.
In what way did the “protective shell” was able to help the prisoners in the camp?
Describe the irony of the guard about camaraderie.
What is regression? How was it shown by the inmates in the camp?
Describe how the body becomes undernourished in their situation.
What is “cultural hibernation”?
According to Frankl, was it possible to deepen the spiritual life in spite of all the
enforced physical and mental primitiveness of life? Why or why not?
Highlight in your book – A thought transfixed me: 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 the highest goal to
which man can aspire… The salvation of man is through love and in love.” I
understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be
it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved, achieve fulfillment.
For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words,
“The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.”
Whom did Frankl speak with in the camp that made him find his soul?
Highlight in your book – Love goes beyond the physical person of the beloved. It
finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he
is actually present, whether or not he is actually alive at all, ceases somehow to
be of importance.”… There was no need for me to know; nothing could touch the
strength of my love, my thoughts, and the image of my beloved. Had I known
that my wife was dead, I think that I would still have given myself undisturbed by
that knowledge, to the contemplation of her image, and that my mental
conversation with her would have been just as vivid and just as satisfying. “Set
me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death.”
How did the inner life of the prisoner stregthen?
Highlight in your book – “How beautiful the world could be?”
Highlight in your book – “I was struggling to find the reason for my sufferings, my
slow dying. In a last violent protest against the hopelessness of imminent death,
I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that
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hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a victorious “Yes” in
answer to my question of existence of an ultimate purpose.”
What does “Et lux in tenberis lucet” mean?
Is there such thing as art in concentration camp?
Highlight in your book – Humor was another of the soul’s weapons in the fight for
self-preservation.
Is the “size” of human suffering absolutely relative? Explain your answers.
How did existence descend to the level of animal life?
Who is Otto? Narrate his incident in the book.
Explain, “miniature delusions of grandeur”.
-GOOD LUCK!-
Prepared by:
Teacher June