Yes To Life In Spite of Everything

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This is the first English translation of three talks that Viktor Frankl gave after his release from a concentration camp, post WWII. He speaks of a community of camp survivors who, after their ordeal, chose to celebrate life in every way they could--to say yes to life, in spite of everything they had lost and endured. Frankl and some of his fellow survivors found meaning in life through creating that meaning; that is, they focused on finding meaning in their work, in art, nature and music and by committing to adapting to whatever circumstance's life or fate threw their way. They did not let themselves become disenchanted with life for that leads to a sense of meaningless and despair. Mas se na realidade Frankl parte deste contexto particular do pós guerra para nos propor algo mais na nossa procura incessante de um sentido para a nossa vida. E nós leitores fazemos esse caminho essa busca a partir da obra de Frankl. Pessoalmente fiquei preso no modo como o livro aparentemente me influenciou… Actions: meaningful acts that outlive us, whether that is in creating art, invention or in social acts of good. This small book is a collection of three lectures that Victor Frankl delivered in 1946, after his liberation from four years spent in various concentration camps.

Just months after his liberation from Auschwitz renowned psychiatrist Viktor E. Frankl delivered a series of talks revealing the foundations of his life-affirming philosophy. The psychologist, who would soon become world famous, explained his central thoughts on meaning, resilience and his conviction that every crisis contains opportunity. I really enjoyed Yes to Life. Despite this book being an amalgamation of a few lectures, the end result was still very coherent and impactful. Viktor Frankl gives us the gift of looking at everything in life as an opportunity' Edith Eger, bestselling author of The Choice

Customer reviews

These lectures focus on suicide, forced annihilation and concentration camps respectively. With such difficult content I had expected this read to be quite depressing, but there’s hope running through even the darkest of themes. Given the author’s belief that we can find meaning regardless of our circumstances, this hope felt particularly appropriate. Certainly, our life, in terms of the biological, the physical, is transitory in nature. Nothing of it survives—and yet how much remains! What remains of it, what will remain of us, what can outlast us, is what we have achieved during our existence that continues to have an effect, transcending us and extending beyond us. The effectiveness of our life becomes incorporeal and in that way it resembles radium, whose physical form is also, during the course of its “lifetime” (and radioactive materials are known to have a limited lifetime) increasingly converted into radiation energy, never to return to materiality. What we “radiate” into the world, the “waves” that emanate from our being, that is what will remain of us when our being itself has long since passed away..."

One could also say that our human existence can be made meaningful “to the very last breath”; as long as we have breath, as long as we are still conscious, we are each responsible for answering life’s questions. This should not surprise us once we recall the great fundamental truth of being human—being human is nothing other than being conscious and being responsible!" While Frankl specifically says that no one’s suffering can be compared to anyone else’s I still find it difficult to think of any of my experiences, not matter how painful they are for me, to be comparable to those who have been subjected to concentration camps. After reading this book part of me wants to admonish myself for having a whinge about any problem I face. However, the overwhelming takeaway for me is if people like Viktor experienced what they did and still managed to find hope and meaning, then it is always possible for me, no matter what comes my way, to change my perspective. To say yes to life is not only meaningful under all circumstances - because life itself is - but it is also possible under all circumstances. Content warnings include death by suicide, descriptions of concentration camp experiences, euthanasia, mental illness and suicidal ideation. Published here for the very first time in English, Frankl's words resonate as strongly today as they did in 1946. Despite the unspeakable horrors in the camp, Frankl learnt from his fellow inmates that it is always possible to say ‘yes to life’ – a profound and timeless lesson for us all. SS седи във влака срещу евреин. Евреинът вади една херинга и я захапва, а после отново я увива и я прибира.Viktor Frankl, like anyone who endured the atrocities of the Holocaust, is someone I don’t have the vocabulary to describe. I’m in awe of the resilience and oftentimes almost unfathomable positivity of anyone who has lived through experiences I can’t even imagine. What’s even more extraordinary is that the lectures Frankl gave, which are the basis of this book, were presented only nine months after his liberation from his final concentration camp. Let us imagine a man who has been sentenced to death and, a few hours before his execution, has been told he is free to decide on the menu for his last meal. The guard comes into his cell and asks him what he wants to eat, offers him all kinds of delicacies; but the man rejects all his suggestions. He thinks to himself that it is quite irrelevant whether he stuffs good food into the stomach of his organism or not, as in a few hours it will be a corpse. And even the feelings of pleasure that could still be felt in the organism’s cerebral ganglia seem pointless in view of the fact that in two hours they will be destroyed forever. In a nutshell: there is no purpose but the purpose that is given to you. Life is asking you, and you have to answer. Finding that meaning is a burden but one you have power over. You can see the concentration camp influence here - the more difficult life becomes, the more meaningful. Illness is not a lost of meaning, it is something meaningful, illness challenges you, and if you answer the challenge right you'll come out a bigger person. There is joy and happiness in life, but you cannot force these, there's no point in having joy and happiness as goals in itself, that's not possible as joy and happiness are outcomes that arise by themselves. As you create, as you 'open your door outwards', as you work, as you react to the challenges life throws at you, you'll find your meaning. Author Viktor Emil Frankl M.D., Ph.D., was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist as well as a Holocaust survivor. Frankl was the founder of logotherapy, which is a form of Existential Analysis, the "Third Viennese School" of psychotherapy. Frankl lost his pregnant wife, his mother, father, and brother to the Nazi concentration camps of WW2. He spends a lot of time on Suffering, something he endured a lot of in the camps. He recounts anecdotes of camp experiences that support his principles. Suffering is unique to each individual, some have more, some less, but always in the right doses to extract meaning from each individual’s life. Given his embrace of Suffering as a giver of meaning, he is a strong opponent of Suicide and Euthanasia – we each have to “die our own death.”

Yes to Life was a great short read. It is my second book from the author, after his famous 1946 book Man's Search for Meaning, which I loved, and put on my "favorites" shelf. Suffering – this provides meaning to our lives through lived experience and should be embraced, not avoided. Some of the early text read the way some university philosophy lectures I’ve attended felt, where I was anxious for the lecturer to get to the point, but these sections were the groundwork for what was to come. Frankl gives examples of patients he treated and people he encountered in concentration camps, and these provided the answers to ‘how does this theory apply to real life?’, which is something I always seek. Frankl, a psychotherapist by profession, was interned in 1941, along with his parents and pregnant wife. Separated from his loved ones, he cherished the hope that the family would be re-united one day, and that hope sustained him. Upon his liberation, he discovered that they had all perished. Hope postponed is destructive, he concludes, and is glad he held on to his dreams for life on the outside until the war ended. What blows my mind is that everything he has said & written referring to the holocaust is true even today. The below is true for all wars, all civil unrests, all religious battles, all oppressions & even the recent pandemic - even after 75+ years..... its amazing!!!Many of you who have not lived through the concentration camp will be astonished and will ask me how a human being can endure all the things I have been talking about. I assure you, the person who has experienced and survived all of that is even more amazed than you are! But do not forget this: the human psyche seems to behave in some ways like a vaulted arch—an arch that has become dilapidated can be supported by placing an extra load on it..." Three lectures from 1946 on the 'meaning' of life. If you've read Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning you will recognise a lot of what you're reading here, but it's compressed, and the main goal is different. Frankl's writing in the book proper is mostly philosophical musings on the meaning of life. Frankl details the chronically ill, as well as those afflicted with mental illness. Frankl was a remarkable man in many ways, and his writing here was excellent. Instead of going over what he covers, it would be more apropos to include a few direct quotes, since the book contained so many great quotables.