Frankl’s message is not that you should enjoy the pain. It is that you should look for what the pain is asking you to become.
This is the foundation of Logotherapy, Frankl’s school of psychology. While Freud believed humans were driven by the "will to pleasure," and Adler believed we are driven by the "will to power," Frankl argued for something much deeper: The Danger of the "Existential Vacuum" Frankl coined a term that is perhaps more relevant today than it was in 1946: the existential vacuum (or "inner void"). viktor frankl insanin anlam arayisi
This is the meaning found in love, beauty, and nature. Frankl wrote that even in the camp, a single sunset over the barbed wire could be enough to make a man forget his hunger. He famously said: "Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of their personality." Frankl’s message is not that you should enjoy the pain
He gave the example of a man whose wife had died. The man was devastated. Frankl asked him, "What would have happened if you had died first?" The man said, "She would have been miserable." Frankl replied, "You see? You have spared her that suffering—but you have to pay for it by surviving and mourning her." Suddenly, the man’s grief became a sacrifice of love. The meaning did not remove the pain, but it transformed it. Frankl did not believe in toxic positivity. He called for something he called Tragic Optimism : the ability to say "Yes" to life in spite of the tragedy. While Freud believed humans were driven by the
Standing in that unspeakable reality, Frankl had an epiphany. He realized that while the Nazis could take away his clothes, his hair, his food, and even his name, they could not take away one thing: