Preview and Summary: Any program or philosophy attempting to expunge human guilt must treat people as free human beings - able to make decisions, with the concomitant personal responsibility to rise above, to forge a new life, with new and better choices. We must assume responsibility for our own lives, overcome our own guilt and waywardness.

 

 

Official website of Dr. Frankl

Biographical information:

Viktor Emil Frankl, M.D., Ph.D. was Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at the University of Vienna Medical School. During World War II he spent 3 years in various concentration camps, including Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, and Dachau. 1946-70 he was director of the Vienna Neurological Policlinic. He was Visiting Professor at Harvard and at universities in Pittsburgh, San Diego and Dallas. Frankl authored 39 books which have been published in 48 languages. According to the American Journal of Psychiatry, his work is "perhaps the most significant thinking since Freud and Adler."

Notable quotations from Dr. Frankl:

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

 “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

“Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run—in the long-run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it.”

 “Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.”

READ MORE quotations

 

Dr. Frankl and personal responsibility

Dr. Frankl's work, with an emphasis on personal responsibility, has been included in this discussion as it begins to relate directly to the subject of Jesus and personal guilt for past wrongs.

 

How Dr. Frankl helped convicted felons, prison inmates, deal with personal guilt.

"A remarkable thing happened when I was invited to speak at San Quentin, at that time a high security prison for those who had committed murder. After I was finished speaking I was told how favorably the prisoners had reacted to my address. One prisoner had said that other psychologists had always told them that their criminal actions were a result of their childhood; that, try as they may, there was little they could do to change this reality. This excuse was something they did not want to hear, because they were being treated as though they had no human worth, no freedom to make choices and decisions. In contrast, I had told them that,

"You are a human just as I am and therefore you had the same freedom to make the choices that I did. You could have decided not to do something so terrible and senseless, just like every other man. You could have made use of this freedom through a sense of responsibility... You were free to commit a crime, to become guilty. Now, however, you are responsible for overcoming guilt by rising above it, by growing beyond yourselves, by changing for the better."

"You see, it is a prerogative of mankind to realize guilt. It is also his responsibility to overcome guilt. Members of society must be provided with a direction, instruction that life does have meaning, so that a person in San Quentin realizes that the person he killed was a human being who had significance. Criminal behavior in adulthood and in youth comes from a lack of responsibility, or of meaning. When gangster youth were asked, 'Why do you do these violent things?' the typical response was, 'Why not?' The absence of an answer to the question, 'Why not?' can result in senseless aggression. In other cases it results in depression and even suicide, or addiction and drug use. This trio of aggression, addiction, and depression is the mass neurotic symptomology of the feeling of meaninglessness or existential vacuum that exists in our society. There is no such thing as freedom all by itself. Freedom is always preceded by responsibility; they are connected to one another. It is a mistake to pursue freedom without the consideration of responsibility. That is why I have recommended in America that in addition to the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast, there should be the Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast."

 

the Nicene Council view of guilt-absolution, via the blood of Jesus, is not only barbarous but utterly ineffective

Traditional Christian salvation-teaching treats people as if they had no human dignity; as if they were helpless pawns. The Council-teachings expunge personal responsibility from discussion, viewing people as if they possessed no gift of volition, as if they could not rise above and improve themselves.

Notice how the San Quentin prisoner reacted to psychologists' practices which "treated [prisoners] as though they had no human worth, no freedom to make choices and decisions." This kind of materialistic, soul-less image of Man creates for the prisoners a sense of injustice, manipulation, rage, and hopelessness.

See this paper -- No Longer Theory: Correctional Practices That Work, by Harvey Shrum Ed.D. -- written by a prison researcher who decries the materialistic view of today's penal policies, and their wholesale ineffectiveness, as opposed to the more enlightened philosophy of Dr. Frankl - READ MORE

 

Each person must deal with his or her own guilt - no third-party "savior god" can help us; attempts to avail oneself of such will only increase one's dysfunction. We must rise above, cast off ecclesiastical nanny-ism, find meaning in suffering and in life, and change ourselves by our own choices.

See the apostle Paul's discussion of this personal responsibility in Galatians 6.