I taught Frankl’s classic about 5 years ago in my college composition class. While the students liked the book, I wasn’t satisfied with the way I taught it, but I feel compelled to give it another try.
I find the challenges immense, not the least of which are the following:
One. How do you convince your students that a book set largely in a Nazi concentration camp and that argues we must accept suffering and death as part of the human condition is in fact a life-affirming book?
Two. How do you teach Frankl’s main principle, that we must assert our free will, we must cultivate our inner life, and we must cultivate a mature, brave attitude in the face of suffering and evil without resorting to clichés and homilies?
Three. How does a man, that’s me, who is mired in cynicism teach the life-affirming principles in Frankl’s book without revealing hypocrisy? To be fair to myself, I would guess less than 1% of the human race adheres to the principles articulated in Frankl's book.
I wonder if the book will actually affect my cynicism this time around. We shall see.
Four. I find myself agreeing with Frankl's argument: to be life affirming, to be courageous in the face of suffering, and to cultivate an inner life that withstands external pressures, but putting these principles into practice is another matter. In other words, how do you apply these principles to your own life?
Final Thoughts
My main focus will be to show my students how people who whine and see themselves as victims in the face of suffering actually make their condition worse, so that their reaction to suffering becomes in many cases worse than the suffering itself. Related to that principle, I’ll try to show how that attempts to avoid suffering, actually create more suffering and not the kind that builds character, but rather the kind that builds narcissism.
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