All Things Seen & Unseen

The Hornet Song When the Canaanites hardened their hearts against God, And grieved Him because of their sin, God sent along hornets to bring them to terms, And to help His own people to win. Now the hornets persuaded them that it was best To go quickly and not to go slow, They didn't compel them to go 'gainst their will. But they just made them willing to go. If a nest of live hornets were brought to this room, And the creatures allowed to go free, You would not need urging to make yourself scarce, You ' d want to get out, don't you see!

Viktor Frankl 1 (1905-1997) was an amazing man although I doubt he would describe himself thus. He survived imprisonment in a concentration camp at Auschwitz under the Nazi regime during WW2. He was a doctor, a neurologist who became a famous psychiatrist. He survived because he found a personal meaning to survive. He founded the so-called 'Third 2 School of Viennese Psychiatry'. The book's title, Man's Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy sums up much of Frankl's psycho-therapeutic approach.  He studied with Sigmund Freud and with Alfred Adler but concluded that each fundamentally reduced the stature of man. For Freud focussed on man's 'will to pleasure' as the chief spring for many human acts, and Adler on man's 'will to power'. Frankl didn't deny the importance of these aspects of humanity but he denied their centrality. But Frankl believed that what was more basic to humanity was the 'will to meaning [logos]'