The video shows a fragment of Tamara Eidelman’s lecture in Toronto on the 5th of April. Many people from Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, and Israel feel despair at times today, stemming from the inability to effect change and the sense of the meaninglessness of actions. The lecture contains an appeal to Viktor Frankl, who developed his healing system. Is it possible to remain free in a concentration camp? How can we survive today without succumbing to depression, hopelessness, and despair?
A bloody war has been ongoing in Ukraine for over two years. Israel is in confrontation with Hamas, Iran, and Hezbollah. Is a new world war imminent? It is already clear today that we will never return to the “pre-war” life, as not only external circumstances have changed, but also priorities, meanings, and values.
Throughout history, there have been periods of inhumane trials for people, including terrible wars. Viktor Frankl became one of the individuals who managed to survive and transform his experience into texts. Losing his entire family in a concentration camp, he returned to life and founded a new direction in psychotherapy called Logotherapy – healing with meaning. The method is based on the search for meaning in all manifestations of life, even the most terrible ones, as a lack of meaning leads to a person’s demise.
Quoting from Viktor Frankl’s book: “The first to break were those who believed that everything would end soon. After them, those who did not believe it would ever end. Those who survived were those who focused on their actions, without expectations of what may or may not happen. When we live expecting everything to end, we allegedly cling to the previous reality, making it psychologically difficult for us to survive in the present reality. Those who survive are those who live in the here and now.”
Frankl devised a few simple rules for surviving in situations where life seems impossible: accept the situation as it is; do not wait for the end of the war, postponing life – this is exhausting; live in real-time, in the reality of war, without running away or trying to forget about it; solve current problems and experience losses in the here and now, without compartmentalizing grief; find the meaning of life in simple routine things and individual details of the day (for example: I will wake up to help; I will wake up to see the sunrise).
Tamara Natanovna discusses this at the end of her lecture, emphasizing that today she would choose communication with loved ones and creative work out of the “family and work” dilemma. This is the only way to survive the horrors of war with the least possible losses.
