Man's Search for Meaning

by Viktor E. Frankl

Such detachment is granted to the outsider, but he is too far removed to make any statements of real value.

I just waited for things to take their course, the first of many such times to come.

I struck out my whole former life.

Apathy, the blunting of the emotions and the feeling that one could not care any more, were the symptoms arising during the second stage of the prisoner’s psychological reactions, and which eventually made him insensitive to daily and hourly beatings.

The lack of having these simple desires satisfied led him to seek wish-fulfillment in dreams.

Whether these dreams did any good is another matter; the dreamer had to wake from them to the reality of camp life, and to the terrible contrast between that and his dream illusions.

Those who have not gone through a similar experience can hardly conceive of the soul-destroying mental conflict and clashes of will power which a famished man experiences.