Are we body, or are we mind? Viktor Frankl responds that neither alone explains the human being. A third dimension is missing.
Body, psyche and spirit
For Frankl, the human being has three inseparable dimensions: the body, which feels, the psyche, which thinks, and the spirit, which chooses. The first two can be studied and explained by doctors and psychologists, and that was where Freud and psychoanalysis stopped. But there is a third layer, the spirit, that no x-ray is capable of capturing.
What survives when the rest fail
Frankl observed something extraordinary in the concentration camps: even when the body weakens from hunger and the mind falters from trauma, the spirit remains free. It is this layer that chooses the attitude towards suffering, even when the body and psyche no longer have control over anything. It is the same freedom that appears in three psychological phases which he observed in the prisoners.
Why this third dimension changes everything
If human beings were just body and psyche, it would be enough to heal trauma or alleviate physical pain to resolve suffering. But Frankl shows that there is a dimension that can only be cured by another path, that of meaning: it is in the spirit that the most radical hunger of the human being lives, the hunger for meaning, and it is from there that the movement that he calls self-transcendence.
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What is the triple dimension of the human being, according to Frankl?
It is the idea that we are, at the same time, body, psyche and spirit. The body feels, the psyche thinks, but it is the spirit that chooses, and this ability to choose remains free even when the body weakens and the mind falters.
Why is the spirit the most important dimension for Frankl?
Because it is the only one of the three that no one can steal from the outside. A prisoner in concentration camps could lose his body to starvation and his psyche to trauma, but Frankl observed that the freedom to choose one's own attitude, a function of the spirit, endured even in the most extreme horror.
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Home class (Community NousCast): Em Busca de Sentido, de Viktor Frankl