Replying to LO24275 --
Dear Organlearners,
Dennis Presser <dennis.presser@dot.state.wi.us> writes:
>Covey is quoting from Viktor Frankl's book, *Man's Search
>for Meaning*
>
>Frankl survived Nazi concentration camps and, based on his
>experiences before and during this time, developed a
>psychotherapy that he called Logotherapy.
Greetings Dennis,
You have touched with your reference to Frankl upon a very important as
aspect on the diagram:
experiencing => [human] =>expressing
What happens when this diagram gets cut off so that only
experiencing => [human]
remains? Is it not possible to get a "build-up" of experiences
just like the pressure of steam in a container build up as it
gets more and more heat?
Here in South Africa we also had concentration camps set up by the British
forces during the Brittish-Boer War (BBW) 1899-1902. During this BBW 26
000 white Afrikaner women and childeren died in those camps. 14 000 black
people also died in camps set up for them. (It is almost as if the
Brittish forces defined "apartheid" in these camps 50 years before it
became a political ideology.) Their only "sin" was that they could speak
Afrikaans, the language of the Afrikaner people.
There was little opportunity in these camps for people to express their
destructive experiences in a constructive manner. After the BBW, the
majority of Afrikaner people in the Transvaal and Orange Free State (the
two republics against whom the Brittish waged war) were so poor that again
they had little opportunity to express their feelings in a constructive
manner. This lack of healing opportunities was in my opinion a major
reason why they let their "excess experience pressure" vent into the
idology of apartheid.
In terms of the BBW and its aftermath, I think that
destructive experiencing => [human] =>destructive expressing
does not bring relief in "excess experience pressure" and thus
will not aid healing. What we need is
ALL experiencing => [human] =>constructive expressing
This is for me the key in understanding the value of Victor
Frankl's important work.
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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