"Every joke is a tiny revolution" ~ Orwell
In today’s pages (p78-83), Victor Frankl addresses the dangers of the past, the sufferings of the present and the promise of the future.
For concentration camp prisoners, the ‘most depressing influence’ on their psychology was the fact that no one knew how long they would remain imprisoned for. This created, in the words of one unnamed research psychologist, a ‘provisional existence’, to which Frankl adds ‘of unknown limit’. Continue reading “The Victor Frankl 5-a-Day Book Cult: Day 15”
Our guide and translator was a Syrian engineer I’ll call Abu Falafel. The first time I met him was at the house he’d been allocated by the ministry on the outer ring of Thessaloniki. It was on the ground floor of a unspectacular apartment building and he shared it with his youngest son, who is deaf.
Abu Falafel started, as all Syrians do, by ignoring our protestations that a second lunch would be unnecessary. He’d gone to so much trouble already, prepping ingredients, that we gladly acquiesced.
And so began the theatre of falafel that would give him his name. Continue reading “Abu Falafel”
Before driving to Diavata camp, we had to pick up our interpreter. Being all-smiles Syrian, he was first compelled to cook up huge plates of falafel, mutabbel and hummus, and feed us until we could take no more.
Then we drove out to the camp.
Diavata is hidden away in the warehouse suburbs of industrial Thessaloniki. No one could come across these people if they didn’t know they were here – it’s a long way from the polished waterfront and expensive international chain coffee. Weatherbeaten old gypsies are on their haunches outside, selling vegetables and huge watermelons laid out on tarpaulins. Continue reading “Diavata Camp, Thessaloniki”
If ever you feel that life isn’t quite lining up, or that your blood isn’t quite circulating as it should, or that you haven’t seen or smelt or heard anything different in a while, take a trip out of your front door and ask strangers how you can help.
That’s what I’ve been doing this past week. Continue reading “How travel works on the mind”
In today’s pages (p74-78), Victor Frankl sets out the first principles of his theory of logotherapy: addressing directly the question of man’s search for meaning.
Following his description of the psychological trials of the camp inmate, Frankl asks whether or not the ‘human being is completely and unavoidably influenced by his surroundings’.
Is that theory true which would have us believe that man is no more than a product of many conditional and environmental factors – be they of a biological, psychological or sociological nature? … [D]o the prisoners’ reactions to the singular world of the concentration camp prove that man cannot escape the influences of his surroundings?
