Life in the Concentration Camp
A controlling metaphor is established quite early in the text which situates the reality of life in a concentration camp within a metaphorical framework. What may be surprising is both the simplicity of the camp life distilled down to its essence and the revelation that the enemy was not at all times and in all circumstances the Nazis:
"This was an unrelenting struggle for daily bread and for life itself, for one's own sake or for that of a good friend.”
The Emptied Glass
The old metaphor of whether a glass of water is half full or half empty gives way to a more precise and insightful delineation between the two opposite extremes of perspective when pessimism is compared not to optimism, but to action:
“The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and file it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back.”
The Logotherapist
Central to the author’s theory of the man’s search for meaning is his conception of logotherapy. Logotherapy is actually posited as a form of therapy which facilitates the ability for one to find meaning in life based on the premise that anxiety and stress and a host of psychological conditions are stimulated precisely by an inability to attach meaning to one’s existence. Fancy talk that; let the author’s metaphorical imagery describe it better:
“The role played by a logo therapist is that of an eye specialist rather than that of a painter. A painter tries to convey to us a picture of the world as he sees it, an ophthalmologist tries to enable us to see the world as it really is.”
Dr. J (Last Name Not Erving)
The author reserves his most intensely judgmental metaphor for a man identified as Dr. J, "the mass murderer of Steinhof” in reference to a Viennese mental hospital. Leaving nothing to ambiguity and holding nothing back, Frenkl gives no quarter to this abomination of humanity, describing him as:
“the only man I ever encountered in my whole life whom I would dare to call a Mephistophelean being, a satanic figure.”
“The Existential Vacuum”
The term “existential vacuum” is of great significance in the book, recurring several times throughout the narrative and reference through allusion at other times. It is a central component of the conceptualization of logotherapy as a necessity to help many people discover something they have come to believe is inherently absent from their lives:
“They lack the awareness of a meaning worth living for. They are haunted by the experience of their inner emptiness, a void within themselves; they are caught in that situation which I have called the existential vacuum.’”
