D = S - M

  • Victor Frankl was a Jewish Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, and a Holocaust survivor
  • In 1946, published his book, one of the most influential of the 20th century: Man's Search for Meaning
  • He wrote that…(From this random book summary)
    • Normally, people have a collection of meanings that lend sense & purpose to their lives: health, approval of one's peers, material wealth, good love-life, family relations, comfort, happiness, etc. But what about when none of these usual meanings are present, such as in a concentration camp? Instead, there are suffering, poor health, brutality, deprivation, lack of material comfort, the closeness of death, etc.
    • In Frankl's experience, many people simply give-up on life under these conditions, and choose suicide, in one form or another.
    • However, other people do not. Frankl's question, then, was – what is the difference between these two? What drives some people to continue fighting for life, while other people simply die?
    • Frankl's answer is: Survivors had some meaning or purpose – some hope to propel them forward. “He who has a WHY to live for can bear almost any HOW.”1)
  • He came up with a simple formula: Despair = Suffering - Meaning
    • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EIxGrIc_6g#t=2m5s
    • :!: In a Nazi concentration, there is no question that there was extreme suffering. But suffering wasn't what determined suicide. Despair is suffering without meaning. Frankl saw that life can have meaning under all conditions, even in the extreme suffering of a Nazi concentration camp.
    • “The last of the human freedoms that can never be taken from us is the freedom to choose how to respond to the situation that we're in.” (FIXME confirm quote)

2:05-4:14

In Dialogue

So let's imagine that we have two people who are both experiencing equally intense suffering – let's say their situations are basically identical, same diagnosis, same prognosis, same situation in life. Except one of those people is suicidal and begins to plan his suicide, while the other person isn't suicidal. What do you think would be the difference between those two people? In situations that are otherwise identical, in response to the same suffering, what kind of difference would have one person suicidal and the other not?

1)
Nietzsche