"‘He who has a why to live can bear almost any how” isn’t just psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s most famous quote.
The quote gained renewed attention through Jerusalem author Rachel Goldberg-Polin, whose son Hersh was taken hostage by Hamas on Oct. 7. During her family’s agonizing struggle to secure his release, Goldberg-Polin emerged as one of the world’s most vocal and recognizable advocates for all the hostages.
Discussing her memoir, When We See You Again, Goldberg-Polin told 60 Minutes journalist Anderson Cooper that her son Hersh, who was 23 when he was murdered in captivity, drew profound strength from Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl’s account of his survival in the Holocaust, and, in particular, from this “He who has a why” quote, which Frankl attributed to the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.
Intrigued by the lasting influence of this enduring aphorism and the philosophy behind it, the Magazine traveled to Modi’in to meet two of Israel’s leading exponents of logotherapy, Frankl’s meaning-centered approach to life and psychology.
Conversations explored not only the origins of this famous quotation but also why it continues to resonate so deeply in these turbulent times.
When conventional psychology isn’t enough
Batya Yaniger, PsyD, the Chicago-born and raised founder of the Viktor Frankl Institute in Israel, launched the institute in 2009 to provide rigorous training and certification both in Israel and to a worldwide audience. She traveled to a home full of charm and warmth to be with her mentor, Dr. Teria Shantall, a South African psychologist who made aliyah in 1999.
Shantall studied directly with Frankl, wrote her doctoral dissertation on the meaning of suffering among Holocaust survivors, and has spent more than five decades teaching and writing about logotherapy.
“We all want to make sense of life,” Shantall said. “We want to live for something. We want to feel that we can make a contribution to the world. Frankl called this the ‘will to meaning.’ It doesn’t make sense that we’ve been imbued with this desire for meaning if there is no meaning to be found.”
Lauding the civil report’s chief author
In Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl emerged from his devastating experiences in Nazi concentration camps as a witness to both the best and worst of human behavior.
“How do we remain human when confronted with inhumanity? We use the experience as an opportunity to grow more human ourselves,” Yaniger said.
Shantall leans forward. “Despite the experience – not because of it.”
The conversation pivots to the report on the sexual atrocities committed by Hamas, which coincidentally was authored and published by the Civil Commission just blocks away from Shantall’s home in Modi’in.
“These sexual crimes were uniquely devastating because they attack a person’s dignity at the deepest level,” Shantall said. “They assault your sense of worth. You are treated as something to be used, abused, and thrown aside.”
Healing begins when victims reclaim their humanity and when others, like the heroes who comprise the Civil Commission, refuse to look away.
“Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy [principal author of the Civil Commission’s report] is an example of responsibility in action. She didn’t have to see all that,” Yaniger observed. “The victims had no choice. Her willingness to confront horrific testimony demonstrates a commitment to something larger than herself. She was willing to be a witness. Logotherapy teaches commitment to what is meaningful. That’s how we bring the world to a higher place.”
An attitude toward life
“You could call logotherapy a clinical tool that anyone could use, but more than a tool, it’s an attitude toward life, a way of thinking about yourself. We feel like a victim and don’t know where to go from here. Logotherapy teaches that we always have the freedom to choose, even if it’s only our attitude, and to find something good to make out of it.”
Yaniger pointed out that people tend to become self-centered when suffering. This awareness is central to the training she conducts at the Viktor Frankl Institute of Logotherapy in Israel.
“The shift from self-absorption to realizing we play a meaningful part of a meaningful whole starts in the classroom. Our students describe their experience as not just ‘another course’ but a rich encounter with others that is felt as a community or family, of sorts. They begin to adopt a new paradigm for how to live with purpose, and their personal change then impacts their clients and all the people around them,” Yaniger observed.
“Frankl’s premise is that even when you lose your physical freedom, you retain the freedom to choose your attitude,” Shantall added, describing a way of thinking about yourself.
Logotherapy as a practice, not a collection of quotes
Yaniger admits some frustration with people knowing Frankl’s famous quotations but not realizing that logotherapy can actually be applied therapeutically. The captives who found a meaningful way to grow through what happened to them illustrate the human capacity at its best, she pointed out.
“They demonstrated what Frankl called ‘tragic optimism’ – the intuitive ability to transform tragedy into triumph. Logotherapy simply facilitates this process,” Yaniger said.
Not that it’s instant. “Healing often begins with silence,” Shantall noted. “People often can’t speak about their experiences at first. They need time to trust you and come out of themselves. It’s a long process of healing.”
Commenting on Goldberg-Polin’s courage to speak publicly about her tremendous ordeal and loss, Shantall praised her efforts:
“We would congratulate her for the way she has handled the situation. Rather than rushing someone past grief, one has to go through the anguish. Logotherapy acknowledges anguish as part of the human experience. Our clients put their anguish on the table.”
A recent article in Makor Rishon highlights the phenomenal uptick in sales of Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning, since Oct. 7, as evidence that the teachings remain as relevant today as they were when Frankl published his modest, barely noticed book in German in 1946. The book gained a worldwide audience and became a classic only after its publication in English in 1959.
Sales of Man’s Search for Meaning have once again skyrocketed to the top of bestseller lists in Israel, and Frankl’s monumental work is even being used alongside hassidic texts for those struggling with trauma.
“Both hassidic texts and Frankl emphasize that human beings are driven by the will to live a life of meaning, not merely the pursuit of pleasure or power,” Yaniger observed, adding: “People turn to hassidism whenever they want Torah teachings to really come to life and better understand the human condition.”
Frankl distanced himself publicly from organized religion while maintaining a private Jewish prayer practice and a lifelong appreciation for the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson. According to a well-known account preserved by Chabad, the Rebbe encouraged Frankl to remain confident in his meaning-centered approach to psychology at a time when Sigmund Freud’s and Alfred Adler’s theories dominated the field.
Frankl remained steadfast in his commitment to logotherapy, which would eventually earn worldwide recognition – even from a grieving Jerusalem mother, whose hostage son tried his best to follow its principles.
“Logotherapy is aligned with Jewish or hassidic approaches more than any other psychology, not because of a religious orientation,” Yaniger observed, “but because it shares the same outlook on the unconditional worth of the human being and the values that give life meaning.”