Viktor Frankl was a Viennese psychiatrist deported by the Nazis in 1942 to spend the remainder of World War II in 4 different concentration camps including Auschwitz. On arrival he confides in a prison mate that his scientific manuscript in his pocket must be preserved at all costs. His prison mate smiles, shouts “Scheisse!” and the manuscript is promptly lost when all inmates are ordered to strip naked and abandon their possessions, including his manuscript.
Frankl details the morbid routines of daily camp life, including a debate on the conflicting theories on whether to slowly graze on the allotted 9-ounce piece of bread or to eat it all at once to stem the pang of hunger and get the day going, the economics of cigarettes and soups, and the capo system in the camps. Frankl avoids becoming a monster by finding the true meaning of his life in the camp: anticipating his giving a series of lectures on the psychology of living in a concentration camp. He begins jotting down a psychiatric theory on scraps of paper, whenever he can obtain them, which would later become his logotherapy. On release from the camp, Frankl was entirely alone, his family all murdered in the camps in one manner or another, yet he chose to continue his psychiatric work in Vienna, married a Catholic, and continued finding meaning his life.
His Logotherapy, given a short summary in the 2006 edition of this book which I read, holds the philosophy that one must have meaning in life or else sink into utter despair, depression, and/or nihilism. Frankl, like Ellul, notes that in technological society we are so caught up in the machinery of life that we struggle to find meaning. To this he prescribes Logotherapy (the pursuit of meaning) which he opposes to Freudianism (the pursuit of pleasure) and Adlerism (the pursuit of power). Logotherapy, to Frankl, isn’t laden with the symbolism of Freud’s psychiatry, but rather asks simple questions like, Do you think your suffering in this situation can lead to something good? Are we getting old, or should we cherish the past? Frankl’s way of looking at the world is simple but effective, and his sense of humor in interviews, and the lightness of his writing, is at odds with the shocking details of the camp life he endured.
I don’t I need to say anything about his story of life in the concentration camps. More than enough has been written on these. Frankl’s style is not designed to elicit an emotional response, rather approaching it like a clinician looking at himself as a patient. The most striking thing is Frankl’s insight into the soul under these conditions, that even at its lowest point, man can find joy in arriving at a concentration camp which doesn’t have a smoking chimney, or at having just 5 minutes to look at an empty field, or being freed from labor for 2 days while dying of typhoid (which he recovered from). Frankl contends that having meaning in his life ultimately saved him, but at every moment he could always decide whether to maintain this meaning, or become debased as the capos did.
I can, however, relate to one thing: utter despair bringing about a sort of delirious thirst for life. In 2019 I was anticipating the birth of my third child. The mother and I were camping with our 2 sons, and she was 6 months pregnant. The pregnancy had been difficult, with more than a few scares. While camping, we had another scare. She passed a blood clot at 7pm, and then went into premature labor at 4am that morning. I moved the boys into their own tent while I delivered our third child, who emerged from the birth canal with eyes closed, not breathing, still wrapped in the placenta. I tapped the child’s back, calling for baby to respond. The mother refused to look, for now. After doing this for minutes I resolved that our third child was dead, and had likely died in the womb that evening during the scare. I pulled the placenta down and determined she was a girl. We named her Lailah (night in Hebrew). After spending some time with her, the sun came up, and we packed everything up, put Lailah in a blanket, and went home.
We had an interesting time explaining the death and delivery of our unborn child in an isolated place with no cellphone reception to the coroner, detective, police, and fire department. They all struggled to determine where this child fit legally into the system. We asked questions like, “What dates do we put on the headstone?” “Should we get a death certificate?” The coroner wasn’t sure, since Lailah was technically unborn, and so her death was in a weird, liminal, neither here nor there legal territory. It turns out that, if you miscarry after 20 weeks, you’re obligated to report it to the police. The detective was relieved that Lailah hadn’t died after delivery, which would have complicated things. Two of the firefighters looked at me as though I had lost a young child. The other 2 didn’t look much at me (I assume they weren’t fathers, and they were younger). A police officer, a father himself, was trying to figure it all out.
Not all my friends and family agreed with my interpretations of all this, but they all mourned Lailah’s death anyway. I didn’t know how to take this. A week later, it came to me while I left the car running outside and ran inside to get something before going to the mortuary. The floor opened up and the abyss appeared. It said either, Let this kill you, or Let it drive you. From there, I had no choice, I let it drive me. My bones took over. I saw the good in Lailah’s death, the meaning of my life.
I had seen this abyss once before, when making Death Grip, when the non-Stunt People members of the crew abandoned the shoot on the second day. The SP crew wanted to help me move forward. I remember Ed Kahana’s face, wondering what would happen. I looked down, and the abyss opened up and asked the same thing. You have a choice here, and your decision will change you. This abyss might be the margin between life and annihilation, between meaning and meaninglessness. It’s here where a secondary choice mechanism appears to take over, one that operates on a deeper level. That’s why I use the term “bones.”
Me and my nuclear family had become very isolated. I had allowed it to happen, but it was due to fear and confusion. I never wanted it this way. Now I saw an opportunity to begin opening back up to our family and friends. I started talking to my parents again, stopped being combative with those who disagreed with me. Their mourning for Lailah was as real as mine, and that was good enough for me. A year later, in 2020, I delivered our 4th child in our bedroom without any help. It was invigorating. I felt something flowing through my bones driving me toward a goal that defied logic. I continued opening up, offered to mend relationships I had broken, started a podcast, began writing my book, became more curious about the world. Lailah’s death had brought certainty. I took a new white belt in life with dignity.
At some time during this process, a friend told me that his wife miscarried their child after 10 weeks. I informed him a hole had been ripped through the fabric of his life, and now he needed to mourn the death of his child. If you don’t mourn the death of your child, then your bones will. This is your meaning as a parent. Leaving this hole open invites disaster. This is the certainty I’m talking about.
My new, outward perspective caused tension with the mother of my children, who had taken the other path that day on the way to the mortuary: she closed in on her pain from the death, and it wouldn’t let up. She anchored herself to things that she believed would never change, and she tried to anchor us down too. The isolation eventually turned dangerous. So I looked at the heavens and said, I am taking the kids, and if I’m as demonic as she says, if You have no use for me, then kill me, because I can’t seem to stop my bones right now. I sat there pleading this for over an hour, until my bones took over. I called a lawyer, packed my kids in a van, and drove us away from that place. Now I’m a full-time single father, the opportunity of a lifetime.
Wounds do cause trauma, but as Frankl says, there’s always a choice, either to turn toward the pain and be consumed by it, or turn outward and let it forge you. If one crosses the abyss, the other must follow, or the house is split, and a divided house cannot stand.
ויּאמר ערם יצתי מבּטן אמּי וערם אשׁוּב שׁמה יהוה נתן ויהוה לקח יהי שׁם יהוה מברך
He said, “Naked I came out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away. Blessed be the name of the LORD.”
(Job 1:21)