Frankl, Self Actualized?
Dear [Mentat],
I would say that while Viktor Frankl was, at the time he wrote his Man’s Search For Meaning book, self-actualizing, I wonder if he was so while being held in the German concentration camps? I suspect not. It’s been six years since I read this book. So I don’t remember every detail of his captivity. But while he certainly held on to his sanity in spite of it all, I don’t recall him behaving any more heroically than did the other captives he described. He was just one of the oppressed who came up with his own ways of dealing with the confinement and threats of death, as did most of the rest of them.
What made Frankl stand out in our minds, I offer, was what he did with this information long after he was released. He took it and started the whole logotherapy movement. But while imprisoned, he did what he had to, to survive. Nothing more, and nothing less. After all, he didn’t write his book while his freedom and security needs were denied [referring here to Maslow's hierarchy of needs triangle]. It was only after those were restored that he did the bulk of his psychiatry work and writing. If we [could] go back to the 1940s and observe Frankl’s day-to-day life as a captive, would we see him behaving anymore like a self-actualizer than the others? His own account suggests that we wouldn’t. You might argue that his experiences at Auschwitz were necessary to his becoming self-actualized later. But I don’t think he was self-actualized during his captivity. So I’m not sure he exemplifies the destitute man who achieved self-actualization in spite of his deprivations, because his deprivation and self-actualization weren’t concurrent.
But I agree that we’d more likely find people gratifying level four and five needs in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs than level three just because the higher levels offer so many more choices for fulfillment.
March 22nd, 2011 at 5:13 pm
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