V.Frankl – Man’s Search for Meaning

With more than 4 million copies in print in the English language alone, Man's Search for Meaning, the chilling yet inspirational story of Viktor Frankl's struggle to hold on to hope during his three years as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps, is a true classic. Beacon Press is now pleased to present a special gift edition of a work that was hailed in 1959 by Carl Rogers as†one of the outstanding contributions to psychological thought in the last fifty years. † Frankl's training as a psychiatrist informed every waking moment of his ordeal and allowed him a remarkable perspective on the psychology of survival.His assertion that â€Å"the will to meaning† is the basic motivation for human life has forever changed the way we understand our humanity in the face of suffering. Man's Search for Meaning AN INTRODUCTION TO LOGOTHERAPY Fourth Edition Viktor E. Frankl PART ONE TRANSLATED BY ILSE LASCH PREFACE BY GORDON W. ALLPORT BEACON PRESS TO THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHER, B eacon Press 25 Beacon Street Boston, Massachusetts 02108-2892 www. beacon. org Beacon Press books are published under the auspices of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.  © 1959, 1962, 1984, 1992 by Viktor E.Frankl All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First published in German in 1946 under the title Ein Psycholog erlebt das Konzentrationslager. Original English title was From Death-Camp to Existentialism. 05 04 03 02 01 Contents Preface by Gordon W. Allport 7 Preface to the 1992 Edition II PART ONE 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 Experiences in a Concentration Camp 15 PART TWO Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Frankl, Viktor Emil. [Ein Psycholog erlebt das Konzentrationslager. English] Man's search for meaning: an introduction to logotherapy / Viktor E.Frankl; part one translated by Use Lasch; preface by Gordon W. Allport. — 4th ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ). ISBN 0-8070-1426-5 (cloth) 1. Frankl, Viktor Emil . 2. Holocaust, Jewish (1939—1945)— Personal narratives. 3. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)— Psychological aspects. 4. Psychologists—Austria—Biography. 5. Logotherapy. I. Title. D810J4F72713 1992 i5o. ig'5—dc2o 92-21055 Logotherapy in a Nutshell 101 POSTSCRIPT 1984 The Case for a Tragic Optimism 137 Selected English Language Bibliography of Logotherapy 155 About the AuthorPreface Dr. Frankl, author-psychiatrist, sometimes asks his pa ­ tients who suffer from a multitude of torments great and small, â€Å"Why do you not commit suicide? † From their an ­ swers he can often find the guide-line for his psychotherapy: in one life there is love for one's children to tie to; in another life, a talent to be used; in a third, perhaps only lingering memories worth preserving. To weave these slender threads of a broken life into a firm pattern of mean ­ ing and responsibility is the object and challenge of logotherapy, which is Dr.Frankl's o wn version of modern exis ­ tential analysis. In this book, Dr. Frankl explains the experience which led to his discovery of logotherapy. As a longtime prisoner in bestial concentration camps he found himself stripped to naked existence. His father, mother, brother, and his wife died in camps or were sent to the gas ovens, so that, except ­ ing for his sister, his entire family perished in these camps. How could he—every possession lost, every value destroyed, suffering from hunger, cold and brutality, hourly expecting extermination—how could he find life worth preserving?A psychiatrist who personally has faced such extremity is a psychiatrist worth listening to. He, if anyone, should be 8 Preface able to view our human condition wisely and with compassion. Dr. Frankl's words have a profoundly honest ring, for they rest on experiences too deep for deception. What he has to say gains in prestige because of his present position on the Medical Faculty of the Universit y of Vienna and because of the renown of the logotherapy clinics that today are springing up in many lands, patterned on his own famous Neurological Policlinic in Vienna.One cannot help but compare Viktor Frankl's approach to theory and therapy with the work of his predecessor, Sigmund Freud. Both physicians concern themselves primarily with the nature and cure of neuroses. Freud finds the root of these distressing disorders in the anxiety caused by conflicting and unconscious motives. Frankl distinguishes several forms of neurosis, and traces some of them (the noogenic neuroses) to the failure of the sufferer to find meaning and a sense of responsibility in his existence. Freud stresses frustration in the sexual life; Frankl, frustration in the â€Å"will-to-meaning. In Europe today there is a marked turning away from Freud and a widespread embracing of Preface 9 existential analysis, which takes several related forms—the school of logotherapy being one. It is characteristi c of Frankl's tolerant outlook that he does not repudiate Freud, but builds gladly on his contributions; nor does he quarrel with other forms of existential therapy, but welcomes kinship with them. The present narrative, brief though it is, is artfully constructed and gripping. On two occasions I have read it through at a single sitting, unable to break away from its spell.Somewhere beyond the midpoint of the story Dr. Frankl introduces his own philosophy of logotherapy. He introduces it so gently into the continuing narrative that only after finishing the book does the reader realize that here is an essay of profound depth, and not just one more brutal tale of concentration camps. From this autobiographical fragment the reader learns much. He learns what a human being does when he suddenly realizes he has â€Å"nothing to lose except his so ridiculously naked life. † Frankl's description of the mixed flow of emotion and apathy is arresting.First to the rescue comes a cold de tached curiosity concerning one's fate. Swiftly, too, come strategies to preserve the remnants of one's life, though the chances of surviving are slight. Hunger, humiliation, fear and deep anger at injustice are rendered tolerable by closely guarded images of beloved persons, by religion, by a grim sense of humor, and even by glimpses of the healing beauties of nature—a tree or a sunset. But these moments of comfort do not establish the will to live unless they help the prisoner make larger sense out of his apparently senseless suffering.It is here that we encounter the central theme of existentialism: to live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering. If there is a purpose in life at all, there must be a purpose in suffer ­ ing and in dying. But no man can tell another what this purpose is. Each must find out for himself, and must accept t h e responsibility that his answer prescribes. If he succeeds he will continue to grow in spite of all indignities. Frankl is fond of quoting Nietzsche, â€Å"He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how. In the concentration camp every circumstance conspires to make the prisoner lose his hold. All the familiar goals in life are snatched away. What alone remains is â€Å"the last of human freedoms†Ã¢â‚¬â€the ability to â€Å"choose one's attitude in a given set of circumstances. † This ultimate freedom, recognized by the ancient Stoics as well as by modern existentialists, takes on vivid significance in Frankl's story. The prisoners were only average men, but some, at least, by choosing to be â€Å"worthy of their suffering† proved man's capacity to rise above his outward fate. As a psychotherapist, the author, of course, wants to 0 Preface know how men can be helped to achieve this distinctively human capacity. How can one awaken in a patient the feeling that he is responsible to life for something, however grim his circumstances may be? Frankl gives us a moving a ccount of one collective therapeutic session he held with his fellow prisoners. At the publisher's request Dr. Frankl has added a state ­ ment of the basic tenets of logotherapy as well as a bibliog ­ raphy. Up to now most of the publications of this â€Å"Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy† (the predecessors being the Freudian and Adlerian Schools) have been chiefly in German.The reader will therefore welcome Dr. Frankl's supplement to his personal narrative. Unlike many European existentialists, Frankl is neither pessimistic nor antireligious. On the contrary, for a writer who faces fully the ubiquity of suffering and the forces of evil, he takes a surprisingly hopeful view of man's capacity to transcend his predicament and discover an adequate guiding truth. I recommend this little book heartily, for it is a gem of dramatic narrative, focused upon the deepest of human problems.It has literary and philosophical merit and pro ­ vides a compelling introduction to th e most significant psychological movement of our day. GORDON W. ALLPORT Preface to the 1992 Edition This book has now lived to see nearly one hundred print ­ ings in English—in addition to having been published in twenty-one other languages. And the English editions alone have sold more than three million copies. These are the dry facts, and they may well be the reason why reporters of American newspapers and particularly of American TV stations more often than not start their in ­ terviews, after listing these facts, by exclaiming: â€Å"Dr.Frankl, your book has become a true bestseller—how do you feel about such a success? † Whereupon I react by reporting that in the first place I do not at all see in the bestseller status of my book an achievement and accomplishment on my part but rather an expression of the misery of our time: if hun ­ dreds of thousands of people reach out for a book whose very title promises to deal with the question of a meaning to life, it must be a question that burns under their fingernails.To be sure, something else may have contributed to the impact of the book: its second, theoretical part (â€Å"Logother ­ apy in a Nutshell†) boils down, as it were, to the lesson one may distill from the first part, the autobiographical account (â€Å"Experiences in a Concentration Camp†), whereas Part One 11 Gordon W. Allport, formerly a professor of psychology at Harvard University, was one of the foremost writers and teachers in the field in this hemisphere. He was author of a large number of original works on psychology and was the editor of the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology.It is chiefly through the pioneering work of Professor All ­ port that Dr. Frankl's momentous theory was introduced to this country; moreover, it is to his credit that the interest shown here in logotherapy is growing by leaps and bounds. 12 Preface to the 1992 Edition Preface to the 1992 Edition 13 serves as the ex istential validation of my theories. Thus, both parts mutually support their credibility. I had none of this in mind when I wrote the book in 1945. And I did so within nine successive days and with the firm determination that the book should be published anonymously.In fact, the first printing of the original German version does not show my name on the cover, though at the last moment, just before the book's initial publication, I did finally give in to my friends who had urged me to let it be published with my name at least on the title page. At first, however, it had been written with the absolute conviction that, as an anonymous opus, it could never earn its author literary fame. I had wanted simply to convey to the reader by way of a concrete example that life holds a potential meaning under any conditions, even the most miserable ones.And I thought that if the point were demonstrated in a situation as extreme as that in a concentration camp, my book might gain a hearing. I ther efore felt responsible for writing down what I had gone through, for I thought it might be helpful to people who are prone to despair. And so it is both strange and remarkable to me that— among some dozens of books I have authored—precisely this one, which I had intended to be published anonymously so that it could never build up any reputation on the part of the author, did become a success.Again and again I therefore admonish my students both in Europe and in America: â€Å"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 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 comman ds you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of our 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 of it. † The reader may ask me why I did not try to escape what was in store for me after Hitler had occupied Austria. Let me answer by recalling the following story. Shortly before the United States entered World War II, I received an invitation to come to the American Consulate in Vienna to pick up my immigration visa. My old parents were overjoyed because they expected that I would soon be allowed to leave Austria. I suddenly hesitated, however.The question beset me: could I really afford to leave my parents alone to face their fate, to be sent, sooner or later, to a concentration camp, or even to a so-called extermination camp? Where did my responsibility lie? Should I foster my brain child, logotherapy, by emigrating to fertile soil where I could write my books? Or should I concentrate on my duties as a real child, the child of my parents who had to do whatever he could to protect them? I pondered the problem this way and that but could not arrive at a solution; this was the type of dilemma that made one wish for â€Å"a hint from Heaven,† as the phrase goes.It was then that I noticed a piece of marble lying on a table at home. When I asked my father about it, he explained that he had found it on the site where the National Socialists had burned down the largest Viennese synagogue. He had taken the piece home because it was a part of the tablets on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed. One gilded Hebrew letter was engraved on the piece; my father explained that this letter stood for one of the Commandments. Eagerly I asked, â€Å"Which one is it? † He answered, â€Å"Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the land. At that moment I decided to stay with my father and my mother upon the l and, and to let the American visa lapse VIKTOR E. FRANKL Vienna, 1992. PART ONE Experiences in a Concentration Camp THIS BOOK DOES NOT CLAIM TO BE an account of facts and events but of personal experiences, experiences which millions of prisoners have suffered time and again. It is the inside story of a concentration camp, told by one of its survivors. This tale is not concerned with the great horrors, which have already been described often enough (though less often believed), but with the multitude of small torments.In other words, it will try to answer this question: How was everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the mind of the average prisoner? Most of the events described here did not take place in the large and famous camps, but in the small ones where most of the real extermination took place. This story is not about the suffering and death of great heroes and martyrs, nor is it about the prominent Capos—prisoners who acted as trustees, having special priv ileges—or well-known pris ­ oners.Thus it is not so much concerned with the sufferings of the mighty, but with the sacrifices, the crucifixion and the deaths of the great army of unknown and unrecorded victims. It was these common prisoners, who bore no dis ­ tinguishing marks on their sleeves, whom the Capos really despised. While these ordinary prisoners had little or noth- 18 Man's Search for Meaning Experiences in a Concentration Camp 19 ing to eat, the Capos were never hungry; in fact many of the Capos fared better in the camp than they had in their entire lives.Often they were harder on the prisoners than were the guards, and beat them more cruelly than the SS men did. These Capos, of course, were chosen only from those prisoners whose characters promised to make them suitable for such procedures, and if they did not comply with what was expected of them, they were immediately demoted. They soon became much like the SS men and the camp wardens and may be judged on a similar psychologi ­ cal basis. It is easy for the outsider to get the wrong conception of camp life, a conception mingled with sentiment and pity.Little does he know of the hard fight for existence which raged among the prisoners. This was an unrelenting strug ­ gle for daily bread and for life itself, for one's own sake or for that of a good friend. Let us take the case of a transport which was officially announced to transfer a certain number of prisoners to an ­ other camp; but it was a fairly safe guess that its final destination would be the gas chambers. A selection of sick or feeble prisoners incapable of work would be sent to one of the big central camps which were fitted with gas chambers and crematoriums.The selection process was the signal for a free fight among all the prisoners, or of group against group. All that mattered was that one's own name and that of one's friend were crossed off the list of victims, though everyone knew that for each man saved another v ictim had to be found. A definite number of prisoners had to go with each transport. It did not really matter which, since each of them was nothing but a number. On their admission to the camp (at least this was the method in Auschwitz) all their docu- ments had been taken from them, together with their other possessions.Each prisoner, therefore, had had an oppor ­ tunity to claim a fictitious name or profession; and for vari ­ ous reasons many did this. The authorities were interested only in the captives' numbers. These numbers were often tattooed on their skin, and also had to be sewn to a certain spot on the trousers, jacket, or coat. Any guard who wanted to make a charge against a prisoner just glanced at his number (and how we dreaded such glances! ); he never asked for his name. To return to the convoy about to depart. There was nei ­ ther time nor desire to consider moral or ethical issues.Every man was controlled by one thought only: to keep himself alive for the fami ly waiting for him at home, and to save his friends. With no hesitation, therefore, he would arrange for another prisoner, another â€Å"number,† to take his place in the transport. As I have already mentioned, the process of selecting Capos was a negative one; only the most brutal of the pris ­ oners were chosen for this job (although there were some happy exceptions). But apart from the selection of Capos which was undertaken by the SS, there was a sort of selfselecting process going on the whole time among all of the prisoners.On the average, only those prisoners could keep alive who, after years of trekking from camp to camp, had lost all scruples in their fight for existence; they were pre ­ pared to use every means, honest and otherwise, even brutal force, theft, and betrayal of their friends, in order to save themselves. We who have come back, by the aid of many lucky chances or miracles—whatever one may choose to call them—we know: the best of us did not return. Many factual accounts about concentration camps are al ­ ready on record. Here, facts will be significant only as far as 20 Man's Search for MeaningExperiences in a Concentration Camp 21 they are part of a man's experiences. It is the exact nature of these experiences that the following essay will attempt to describe. For those who have been inmates in a camp, it will attempt to explain their experiences in the light of present-day knowledge. And for those who have never been inside, it may help them to comprehend, and above all to understand, the experiences of that only too small per ­ centage of prisoners who survived and who now find life very difficult. These former prisoners often say, â€Å"We dislike talking about our experiences.No explanations are needed for those who have been inside, and the others will under ­ stand neither how we felt then nor how we feel now. † To attempt a methodical presentation of the subject is very difficult, as psycholo gy requires a certain scientific de ­ tachment. But does a man who makes his observations while he himself is a prisoner possess the necessary detach ­ ment? Such detachment is granted to the outsider, but he is too far removed to make any statements of real value. Only the man inside knows. His judgments may not be objective; his evaluations may be out of proportion.This is inevita ­ ble. An attempt must be made to avoid any personal bias, and that is the real difficulty of a book of this kind. At times it will be necessary to have the courage to tell of very in ­ timate experiences. I had intended to write this book anonymously, using my prison number only. But when the manuscript was completed, I saw that as an anonymous publication it would lose half its value, and that I must have the courage to state my convictions openly. I therefore refrained from deleting any of the passages, in spite of an intense dislike of exhibitionism.I shall leave it to others to distill the c ontents of this book into dry theories. These might become a contribution to the psychology of prison life, which was investigated after the First World War, and which acquainted us with the syndrome of â€Å"barbed wire sickness. † We are indebted to the Second World War for enriching our knowledge of the â€Å"psychopathology of the masses,† (if I may quote a varia ­ tion of the well-known phrase and title of a book by LeBon), for the war gave us the war of nerves and it gave us the concentration camp.As this story is about my experiences as an ordinary pris ­ oner, it is important that I mention, not without pride, that I was not employed as a psychiatrist in camp, or even as a doctor, except for the last few weeks. A few of my colleagues were lucky enough to be employed in poorly heated first-aid posts applying bandages made of scraps of waste paper. But I was Number 119,104, and most of the time I was digging and laying tracks for railway lines. At one time, m y job was to dig a tunnel, without help, for a water main under a road.This feat did not go unrewarded; just before Christ ­ mas 1944, I was presented with a gift of so-called â€Å"premium coupons. † These were issued by the construction firm to which we were practically sold as slaves: the firm paid the camp authorities a fixed price per day, per prisoner. The coupons cost the firm fifty pfennigs each and could be ex ­ changed for six cigarettes, often weeks later, although they sometimes lost their validity. I became the proud owner of a token worth twelve cigarettes. But more important, the cig ­ arettes could be exchanged for twelve soups, and twelve soups were often a very real respite from starvation.The privilege of actually smoking cigarettes was reserved for the Capo, who had his assured quota of weekly coupons; or possibly for a prisoner who worked as a foreman in a warehouse or workshop and received a few cigarettes in exchange for doing dangerous jobs. The only exceptions to this were those who had lost the will to live and wanted to â€Å"enjoy† their last days. Thus, when we saw a comrade smoking his own cigarettes, we knew he had given up faith 22 Man's Search for Meaning Experiences in a Concentration Camp 23 n his strength to carry on, and, once lost, the will to live seldom returned. When one examines the vast amount of material which has been amassed as the result of many prisoners' observa ­ tions and experiences, three phases of the inmate's mental reactions to camp life become apparent: the period follow ­ ing his admission; the period when he is well entrenched in camp routine; and the period following his release and liberation. The symptom that characterizes the first phase is shock. Under certain conditions shock may even precede the pris ­ oner's formal admission to the camp.I shall give as an ex ­ ample the circumstances of my own admission. Fifteen hundred persons had been traveling by train for several days and nights: there were eighty people in each coach. All had to lie on top of their luggage, the few rem ­ nants of their personal possessions. The carriages were so full that only the top parts of the windows were free to let in the grey of dawn. Everyone expected the train to head for some munitions factory, in which we would be em ­ ployed as forced labor. We did not know whether we were still in Silesia or already in Poland.The engine's whistle had an uncanny sound, like a cry for help sent out in com ­ miseration for the unhappy load which it was destined to lead into perdition. Then the train shunted, obviously nearing a main station. Suddenly a cry broke from the ranks of the anxious passengers, â€Å"There is a sign, Auschwitz! † Everyone's heart missed a beat at that moment. Auschwitz—the very name stood for all that was horrible: gas chambers, crematoriums, massacres. Slowly, almost hesi ­ tatingly, the train moved on as if it wanted to spare its passengers the dreadful realization as long as possible: Auschwitz!With the progressive dawn, the outlines of an immense camp became visible: long stretches of several rows of barbed wire fences; watch towers; search lights; and long columns of ragged human figures, grey in the greyness of dawn, trekking along the straight desolate roads, to what destination we did not know. There were isolated shouts and whistles of command. We did not know their meaning. My imagination led me to see gallows with people dangling on them. I was horrified, but this was just as well, because step by step we had to become accustomed to a terrible and immense horror.Eventually we moved into the station. The initial silence was interrupted by shouted commands. We were to hear those rough, shrill tones from then on, over and over again in all the camps. Their sound was almost like the last cry of a victim, and yet there was a difference. It had a rasping hoarseness, as if it came from the throat of a man who had to keep shouting like that, a man who was being murdered again and again. The carriage doors were flung open and a small detachment of prisoners stormed inside. They wore striped uniforms, their heads were shaved, but they looked well fed.They spoke in every possible European tongue, and all with a certain amount of humor, which sounded grotesque under the circumstances. Like a drowning man clutching a straw, my inborn optimism (which has often controlled my feelings even in the most desperate situa ­ tions) clung to this thought: These prisoners look quite well, they seem to be in good spirits and even laugh. Who knows? I might manage to share their favorable position. In psychiatry there is a certain condition known as â€Å"delu ­ sion of reprieve. † The condemned man, immediately before his execution, gets the illusion that he might be reprieved at the very last minute.We, too, clung to shreds of hope and believed to the last moment that it would not be so ba d. Just the sight of the red cheeks and round faces of 24 Man's Search for Meaning Experiences in a Concentration Camp 25 those prisoners was a great encouragement. Little did we know then that they formed a specially chosen elite, who for years had been the receiving squad for new transports as they rolled into the station day after day. They took charge of the new arrivals and their luggage, including scarce items and smuggled jewelry. Auschwitz must have been a strange spot in this Europe of the last years of the war.There must have been unique treasures of gold and silver, platinum and diamonds, not only in the huge storehouses but also in the hands of the SS. Fifteen hundred captives were cooped up in a shed built to accommodate probably two hundred at the most. We were cold and hungry and there was not enough room for everyone to squat on the bare ground, let alone to lie down. One five-ounce piece of bread was our only food in four days. Yet I heard the senior prisoners in ch arge of the shed bargain with one member of the receiving party about a tie-pin made of platinum and diamonds. Most of the profits would eventually be traded for liquor—schnapps.I do not remember any more just how many thousands of marks were needed to purchase the quantity of schnapps required for a â€Å"gay evening,† but I do know that those long-term prisoners needed schnapps. Under such conditions, who could blame them for trying to dope themselves? There was another group of prisoners who got liquor supplied in al ­ most unlimited quantities by the SS: these were the men who were employed in the gas chambers and crematoriums, and who knew very well that one day they would be re ­ lieved by a new shift of men, and that they would have to leave their enforced role of executioner and become victims themselves.Nearly everyone in our transport lived under the illusion that he would be reprieved, that everything would yet be well. We did not realize the meaning beh ind the scene that was to follow presently. We were told to leave our luggage in the train and to fall into two lines—women on one side, men on the other—in order to file past a senior SS officer. Surprisingly enough, I had the courage to hide my haver ­ sack under my coat. My line filed past the officer, man by man. I realized that it would be dangerous if the officer spotted my bag.He would at least knock me down; I knew that from previous experience. Instinctively, I straightened on approaching the officer, so that he would not notice my heavy load. Then I was face to face with him. He was a tall man who looked slim and fit in his spotless uniform. What a contrast to us, who were untidy and grimy after our long journey! He had assumed an attitude of careless ease, supporting his right elbow with his left hand. His right hand was lifted, and with the forefinger of that hand he pointed very leisurely to the right or to the left.None of us had the slightest idea of t he sinister meaning behind that little movement of a man's finger, pointing now to the right and now to the left, but far more frequently to the left. It was my turn. Somebody whispered to me that to be sent to the right side would mean work, the way to the left being for the sick and those incapable of work, who would be sent to a special camp. I just waited for things to take their course, the first of many such times to come. My haver ­ sack weighed me down a bit to the left, but I made an effort to walk upright.The SS man looked me over, appeared to hesitate, then put both his hands on my shoulders. I tried very hard to look smart, and he turned my shoulders very slowly until I faced right, and I moved over to that side. The significance of the finger game was explained to us in the evening. It was the first selection, the first verdict made on our existence or non-existence. For the great ma ­ jority of our transport, about 90 per cent, it meant death. Their sentence was ca rried out within the next few hours. Those who were sent to the left were marched from the station straight to the crematorium.This building, as I was 26 Man's Search for Meaning Experiences in a Concentration Camp 27 told by someone who worked there, had the word â€Å"bath† written over its doors in several European languages. On entering, each prisoner was handed a piece of soap, and then but mercifully I do not need to describe the events which followed. Many accounts have been written about this horror. We who were saved, the minority of our transport, found out the truth in the evening. I inquired from prisoners who had been there for some time where my colleague and friend P had been sent. â€Å"Was he sent to the left side? â€Å"Yes,† I replied. â€Å"Then you can see him there,† I was told. â€Å"Where? † A hand pointed to the chimney a few hundred yards off, which was sending a column of flame up into the grey sky of Poland. It dissolved into a sinister cloud of smoke. â€Å"That's where your friend is, floating up to Heaven,† was the answer. But I still did not understand until the truth was explained to me in plain words. But I am telling things out of their turn. From a psycho ­ logical point of view, we had a long, long way in front of us from the break of that dawn at the station until our first night's rest at the camp.Escorted by SS guards with loaded guns, we were made to run from the station, past electrically charged barbed wire, through the camp, to the cleansing station; for those of us who had passed the first selection, this was a real bath. Again our illusion of reprieve found confirmation. The SS men seemed almost charming. Soon we found out their rea ­ son. They were nice to us as long as they saw watches on our wrists and could persuade us in well-meaning tones to hand them over. Would we not have to hand over all our possessions anyway, and hy should not that relatively nice person have the watch? Maybe one day he would do one a good turn. We waited in a shed which seemed to be the anteroom to the disinfecting chamber. SS men appeared and spread out blankets into which we had to throw all our possessions, all our watches and jewelry. There were still naive prisoners among us who asked, to the amusement of the more sea ­ soned ones who were there as helpers, if they could not keep a wedding ring, a medal or a good-luck piece. No one could yet grasp the fact that everything would be taken away.I tried to take one of the old prisoners into my confi ­ dence. Approaching him furtively, I pointed to the roll of paper in the inner pocket of my coat and said, â€Å"Look, this is the manuscript of a scientific book. I know what you will say; that I should be grateful to escape with my life, that that should be all I can expect of fate. But I cannot help myself. I must keep this manuscript at all costs; it contains my life's work. Do you understand that? † Yes, he was beginning to understand.A grin spread slowly over his face, first piteous, then more amused, mock ­ ing, insulting, until he bellowed one word at me in answer to my question, a word that was ever present in the vocabu ­ lary of the camp inmates: â€Å"Shit! † At that moment I saw the plain truth and did what marked the culminating point of the first phase of my psychological reaction: I struck out my whole former life. Suddenly there was a stir among my fellow travelers, who had been standing about with pale, frightened faces, help ­ lessly debating. Again we heard the hoarsely shouted com ­ mands. We were driven with blows into the immediate anteroom of the bath.There we assembled around an SS man who waited until we had all arrived. Then he said, â€Å"I will give you two minutes, and I shall time you by my watch. In these two minutes you will get fully undressed 28 Man's Search for Meaning Experiences in a Concentration Camp 29 and drop everything on the floor wh ere you are standing. You will take nothing with you except your shoes, your belt or suspenders, and possibly a truss. I am starting to count— now! † With unthinkable haste, people tore off their clothes. As the time grew shorter, they became increasingly nervous and pulled clumsily at their underwear, belts and shoe ­ laces.Then we heard the first sounds of whipping; leather straps beating down on naked bodies. Next we were herded into another room to be shaved: not only our heads were shorn, but not a hair was left on our entire bodies. Then on to the showers, where we lined up again. We hardly recognized each other; but with great relief some people noted that real water dripped from the sprays. While we were waiting for the shower, our nakedness was brought home to us: we really had nothing now except our bare bodies—even minus hair; all we possessed, literally, was our naked existence.What else remained for us as a material link with our former lives? For me there were my glasses and my belt; the latter I had to exchange later on for a piece of bread. There was an extra bit of excitement in store for the owners of trusses. In the evening the senior prisoner in charge of our hut welcomed us with a speech in which he gave us his word of honor that he would hang, personally, â€Å"from that beam†Ã¢â‚¬â€he pointed to it—any per ­ son who had sewn money or precious stones into his truss. Proudly he explained that as a senior inhabitant the camp laws entitled him to do so. Where our shoes were concerned, matters were not so simple.Although we were supposed to keep them, those who had fairly decent pairs had to give them up after all and were given in exchange shoes that did not fit. In for real trouble were those prisoners who had followed the ap- parently well-meant advice (given in the anteroom) of the senior prisoners and had shortened their jackboots by cut ­ ting the tops off, then smearing soap on the cut edges to hide the sabotage. The SS men seemed to have waited for just that. All suspected of this crime had to go into a small adjoining room. After a time we again heard the lashings of the strap, and the screams of tortured men.This time it lasted for quite a while. Thus the illusions some of us still held were destroyed one by one, and then, quite unexpectedly, most of us were overcome by a grim sense of humor. We knew that we had nothing to lose except our so ridiculously naked lives. When the showers started to run, we all tried very hard to make fun, both about ourselves and about each other. After all, real water did flow from the spraysl Apart from that strange kind of humor, another sensa ­ tion seized us: curiosity. I have experienced this kind of curiosity before, as a fundamental reaction toward certain strange circumstances.When my life was once endangered by a climbing accident, I felt only one sensation at the critical moment: curiosity, curiosity as to whether I should come out of it alive or with a fractured skull or some other injuries. Cold curiosity predominated even in Auschwitz, some ­ how detaching the mind from its surroundings, which came to be regarded with a kind of objectivity. At that time one cultivated this state of mind as a means of protection. We were anxious to know what would happen next; and what would be the consequence, for example, of our standing in the open air, in the chill of late autumn, stark naked, and still wet from the showers.In the next few days our curi ­ osity evolved into surprise; surprise that we did not catch cold. There were many similar surprises in store for new ar- 30 Man's Search for Meaning Experiences in a Concentration Camp 31 rivals. The medical men among us learned first of all: â€Å"Textbooks tell lies! † Somewhere it is said that man cannot exist without sleep for more than a stated number of hours. Quite wrongl I had been convinced that there were certain things I just could not do: I c ould not sleep without this or I could not live with that or the other.The first night in Auschwitz we slept in beds which were constructed in tiers. On each tier (measuring about six-and-a-half to eight feet) slept nine men, directly on the boards. Two blankets were shared by each nine men. We could, of course, lie only on our sides, crowded and huddled against each other, which had some advantages because of the bitter cold. Though it was forbidden to take shoes up to the bunks, some people did use them secretly as pillows in spite of the fact that they were caked with mud. Otherwise one's head had to rest on the crook of an almost dislocated arm.And yet sleep came and brought oblivion and relief from pain for a few hours. I would like to mention a few similar surprises on how much we could endure: we were unable to clean our teeth, and yet, in spite of that and a severe vitamin deficiency, we had healthier gums than ever before. We had to wear the same shirts for half a year, unt il they had lost all ap ­ pearance of being shirts. For days we were unable to wash, even partially, because of frozen water-pipes, and yet the sores and abrasions on hands which were dirty from work in the soil did not suppurate (that is, unless there was frost ­ bite).Or for instance, a light sleeper, who used to be dis ­ turbed by the slightest noise in the next room, now found himself lying pressed against a comrade who snored loudly a few inches from his ear and yet slept quite soundly through the noise. If someone now asked of us the truth of Dostoevski's statement that flatly defines man as a being who can get used to anything, we would reply, â€Å"Yes, a man can get used to anything, but do not ask us how. † But our psychological investigations have not taken us that far yet; neither had we prisoners reached that point. We were still in the first phase of our psychological reactions.The thought of suicide was entertained by nearly every ­ one, if only for a b rief time. It was born of the hopelessness of the situation, the constant danger of death looming over us daily and hourly, and the closeness of the deaths suffered by many of the others. From personal convictions which will be mentioned later, I made myself a firm promise, on my first evening in camp, that I would not â€Å"run into the wire. † This was a phrase used in camp to describe the most popular method of suicide—touching the electrically charged barbed-wire fence. It was not entirely difficult for me to make this decision.There was little point in commit ­ ting suicide, since, for the average inmate, life expectation, calculating objectively and counting all likely chances, was very poor. He could not with any assurance expect to be among the small percentage of men who survived all the selections. The prisoner of Auschwitz, in the first phase of shock, did not fear death. Even the gas chambers lost their horrors for him after the first few days—afte r all, they spared him the act of committing suicide. Friends whom I have met later have told me that I was not one of those whom the shock of admission greatly de ­ pressed.I only smiled, and quite sincerely, when the follow ­ ing episode occurred the morning after our first night in Auschwitz. In spite of strict orders not to leave our â€Å"blocks,† a colleague of mine, who had arrived in Auschwitz several weeks previously, smuggled himself into our hut. He wanted to calm and comfort us and tell us a few things. He had become so thin that at first we did not recognize him. With a show of good humor and a Devil-may-care attitude he gave us a few hurried tips: â€Å"Don't be afraid! Don't fear the selections! Dr.M (the SS medical chief) has a soft spot for doctors. † (This was wrong; my friend's kindly 32 Man's Search for Meaning words were misleading. One prisoner, the doctor of a block, of huts and a man of some sixty years, told me how he had entreated Dr. M to let off his son, who was destined for gas. Dr. M coldly refused. ) â€Å"But one thing I beg of you†; he continued, â€Å"shave daily, if at all possible, even if you have to use a piece of glass to do it . . . even if you have to give your last piece of bread for it. You will look younger and the scraping will make your cheeks look ruddier.If you want to stay alive, there is only one way: look fit for work. If you even limp, because, let us say, you have a small blister on your heel, and an SS man spots this, he will wave you aside and the next day you are sure to be gassed. Do you know what we mean by a ‘Moslem'? A man who looks miserable, down and out, sick and emaciated, and who cannot manage hard physical labor any longer . . . that is a ‘Moslem. ‘ Sooner or later, usually sooner, every ‘Moslem' goes to the gas chambers. Therefore, remember: shave, stand and walk smartly; then you need not be afraid of gas.All of you standing here, even if you h ave only been here twenty-four hours, you need not fear gas, except perhaps you. † And then he pointed to me and said, â€Å"I hope you don't mind my telling you frankly. † To the others he repeated, â€Å"Of all of you he is the only one who must fear the next selection. So, don't worry! † And I smiled. I am now convinced that anyone in my place on that day would have done the same. Experiences in a Concentration Camp I think it was Lessing who once said, â€Å"There are things which must cause you to lose your reason or you have none to lose. An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior. Even we psychiatrists expect the reactions of a man to an abnormal situation, such as being com ­ mitted to an asylum, to be abnormal in proportion to the degree of his normality. The reaction of a man to his admission to a concentration camp also represents an abnormal state of mind, but judged objectively it is a normal and, as will be shown later, typi cal reaction to the given circumstances. These reactions, as I have described them, began to change in a few days.The prisoner passed from the first to the second phase; the phase of relative apathy, in which he achieved a kind of emotional death. Apart from the already described reactions, the newly arrived prisoner experienced the tortures of other most painful emotions, all of which he tried to deaden. First of all, there was his boundless longing for his home and his family. This often could become so acute that he felt himself consumed by longing. Then there was disgust; disgust with all the ugliness which surrounded him, even in its mere external forms.Most of the prisoners were given a uniform of rags which would have made a scarecrow elegant by comparison. Between the huts in the camp lay pure filth, and the more one worked to clear it away, the more one had to come in contact with it. It was a favorite practice to detail a new arrival to a work group whose job was to clean the latrines and remove the sewage. If, as usually happened, some of the excrement splashed into his face during its transport over bumpy fields, any sign of disgust by the prisoner or any attempt to wipe off the filth would only be punished with a blow from a Capo.And thus the mortification of normal reactions was hastened. At first the prisoner looked away if he saw the punishment parades of another group; he could not bear to see fellow prisoners march up and down for hours in the mire, their movements directed by blows. Days or weeks later things changed. Early in the morning, when it was still dark, the prisoner stood in front of the gate with his detachment, ready to march. He heard a scream and saw how 34 Man's Search for Meaning Experiences in a Concentration Camp 35 comrade was knocked down, pulled to his feet again, and knocked down once more—and why? He was feverish but had reported to sick-bay at an improper time. He was being punished for this irregular attempt t o be relieved of his duties. But the prisoner who had passed into the second stage of his psychological reactions did not avert his eyes any more. By then his feelings were blunted, and he watched un ­ moved. Another example: he found himself waiting at sick ­ bay, hoping to be granted two days of light work inside the camp because of injuries or perhaps edema or fever.He stood unmoved while a twelve-year-old boy was carried in who had been forced to stand at attention for hours in the snow or to work outside with bare feet because there were no shoes for him in the camp. His toes had become frost ­ bitten, and the doctor on duty picked off the black gan ­ grenous stumps with tweezers, one by one. Disgust, horror and pity are emotions that our spectator could not really feel any more. The sufferers, the dying and the dead, be ­ came such commonplace sights to him after a few weeks of camp life that they could not move him any more.I spent some time in a hut for typhus pati ents who ran very high temperatures and were often delirious, many of them moribund. After one of them had just died, I watched without any emotional upset the scene that followed, which was repeated over and over again with each death. One by one the prisoners approached the still warm body. One grabbed the remains of a messy meal of potatoes; another decided that the corpse's wooden shoes were an improve ­ ment on his own, and exchanged them. A third man did the same with the dead man's coat, and another was glad to be able to secure some—just imagine! —genuine string.All this I watched with unconcern. Eventually I asked the â€Å"nurse† to remove the body. When he decided to do so, he took the corpse by its legs, allowing it to drop into the small corridor between the two rows of boards which were the beds for the fifty typhus patients, and dragged it across the bumpy earthen floor toward the door. The two steps which led up into the open air always constit uted a prob ­ lem for us, since we were exhausted from a chronic lack of food. After a few months' stay in the camp we could not walk up those steps, which were each about six inches high, without putting our hands on the door jambs to pull our ­ selves up.The man with the corpse approached the steps. Wearily he dragged himself up. Then the body: first the feet, then the trunk, and finally—with an uncanny rattling noise— the head of the corpse bumped up the two steps. My place was on the opposite side of the hut, next to the small, sole window, which was built near the floor. While my cold hands clasped a bowl of hot soup from which I sipped greedily, I happened to look out the window. The corpse which had just been removed stared in at me with glazed eyes. Two hours before I had spoken to that man.Now I continued sipping my soup. If my lack of emotion had not surprised me from the standpoint of professional interest, I would not remember this incident now, because there was so little feeling in ­ volved in it. Apathy, the blunting of the emotions and the feeling that one could not care any more, were the symptoms arising during the second stage of the prisoner's psychological re ­ actions, and which eventually made him insensitive to daily and hourly beatings. By means of this insensibility the pris ­ oner soon surrounded himself with a very necessary protec ­ tive shell. 6 Man's Search for Meaning Experiences in a Concentration Camp 37 Beatings occurred on the slightest provocation, sometimes for no reason at all. For example, bread was rationed out at our work site and we had to line up for it. Once, the man behind me stood off a little to one side and that lack of symmetry displeased the SS guard. I did not know what was going on in the line behind me, nor in the mind of the SS guard, but suddenly I received two sharp blows on my head. Only then did I spot the guard at my side who was using his stick.At such a moment it is not the physical pain which hurts the most (and this applies to adults as much as to punished children); it is the mental agony caused by the injustice, the unreasonableness of it all. Strangely enough, a blow which does not even find its mark can, under certain circumstances, hurt more than one that finds its mark. Once I was standing on a railway track in a snowstorm. In spite of the weather our party had to keep on working. I worked quite hard at mending the track with gravel, since that was the only way to keep warm. For only one moment I paused to get my breath and to lean on my shovel.Unfortunately the guard turned around just then and thought I was loafing. The pain he caused me was not from any insults or any blows. That guard did not think it worth his while to say anything, not even a swear word, to the ragged, emaciated figure standing before him, which probably reminded him only vaguely of a human form. Instead, he playfully picked up a stone and threw it at me. That, to me, se emed the way to attract the attention of a beast, to call a domestic animal back to its job, a creature with which you have so little in common that you do not even punish it.The most painful part of beatings is the insult which they imply. At one time we had to carry some long, heavy girders over icy tracks. If one man slipped, he endangered not only himself but all the others who carried the same girder. An old friend of mine had a congenitally dislocated hip. He was glad to be capable of working in spite of it, since the physically disabled were almost certainly sent to death when a selection took place. He limped over the track with an especially heavy girder, and seemed about to fall and drag the others with him. As yet, I was not carrying a girder so I jumped to his assistance without stopping to think.I was immediately hit on the back, rudely repri ­ manded and ordered to return to my place. A few minutes previously the same guard who struck me had told us deprecatingly tha t we â€Å"pigs† lacked the spirit of comrade ­ ship. Another time, in a forest, with the temperature at 2 °F, we began to dig up the topsoil, which was frozen hard, in order to lay water pipes. By then I had grown rather weak physi ­ cally. Along came a foreman with chubby rosy cheeks. His face definitely reminded me of a pig's head. I noticed that he wore lovely warm gloves in that bitter cold. For a time he watched me silently.I felt that trouble was brewing, for in front of me lay the mound of earth which showed exactly how much I had dug. Then he began: â€Å"You pig, I have been watching you the whole time! I'll teach you to work, yet! Wait till you dig dirt with your teeth—you'll die like an animal! In two days I'll finish you off! You've never done a stroke of work in your life. What were you, swine? A businessman? † I was past caring. But I had to take his threat of killing me seriously, so I straightened up and looked him directly in the eye. â⠂¬Å"I was a doctor—a specialist. † â€Å"What? A doctor?I bet you got a lot of money out of people. † â€Å"As it happens, I did most of my work for no money at all, in clinics for the poor. † But, now, I had said too much. He threw himself on me and knocked me down, shouting like a madman. I can no longer remember what he shouted. I want to show with this apparently trivial story that 38 Man's Search for Meaning Experiences in a Concentration Camp 39 there are moments when indignation can rouse even a seemingly hardened prisoner—indignation not about cruelty or pain, but about the insult connected with it. That time blood rushed to my head because I had to listen o a man judge my life who had so little idea of it, a man (I must confess: the following remark, which I made to my fellow-prisoners after the scene, afforded me childish relief) â€Å"who looked so vulgar and brutal that the nurse in the outpatient ward in my hospital would not even have admitted him to the waiting room. † Fortunately the Capo in my working party was obligated to me; he had taken a liking to me because I listened to his love stories and matrimonial troubles, which he poured out during the long marches to our work site. I had made an impression on him with my diagnosis of his character and with my psychotherapeutic advice.After that he was grate ­ ful, and this had already been of value to me. On several previous occasions he had reserved a place for me next to him in one of the first five rows of our detachment, which usually consisted of two hundred and eighty men. That favor was important. We had to line up early in the morn ­ ing while it was still dark. Everybody was afraid of being late and of having to stand in the back rows. If men were required for an unpleasant and disliked job, the senior Capo appeared and usually collected the men he needed from the back rows.These men had to march away to an ­ other, especially dreaded kind of work under the command of strange guards. Occasionally the senior Capo chose men from the first five rows, just to catch those who tried to be clever. All protests and entreaties were silenced by a few well-aimed kicks, and the chosen victims were chased to the meeting place with shouts and blows. However, as long as my Capo felt the need of pouring out his heart, this could not happen to me. I had a guaranteed place of honor next to him. But there was another advan- tage, too. Like nearly all the camp inmates I was suffering from edema.My legs were so swollen and the skin on them so tightly stretched that I could scarcely bend my knees. I had to leave my shoes unlaced in order to make them fit my swollen feet. There would not have been space for socks even if I had had any. So my partly bare feet were always wet and my shoes always full of snow. This, of course, caused frostbite and chilblains. Every single step became real torture. Clumps of ice formed on our shoes during our m arches over snow-covered fields. Over and again men slipped and those following behind stumbled on top of them. Then the column would stop for a moment, but not for long.One of the guards soon took action and worked over the men with the butt of his rifle to make them get up quickly. The more to the front of the column you were, the less often you were disturbed by having to stop and then to make up for lost time by running on your painful feet. I was very happy to be the personally appointed physician to His Honor the Capo, and to march in the first row at an even pace. As an additional payment for my services, I could be sure that as long as soup was being dealt out at lunchtime at our work site, he would, when my turn came, dip the ladle right to the bottom of the vat and fish out a few peas.This Capo, a former army officer, even had the courage to whisper to the foreman, whom I had quarreled with, that he knew me to be an unusually good worker. That didn't help matters, but he n evertheless managed to save my life (one of the many times it was to be saved). The day after the epi ­ sode with the foreman he smuggled me into another work party. There were foremen who felt sorry for us and who did their best to ease our situation, at least at the building site. 40 Man's Search for Meaning Experiences in a Concentration Camp 41But even they kept on reminding us that an ordinary laborer did several times as much work as we did, and in a shorter time. But they did see reason if they were told that a normal workman did not live on 10-1/2 ounces of bread (theoretically—actually we often had less) and 1-3/4 pints of thin soup per day; that a normal laborer did not live under the mental stress we had to submit to, not having news of our families, who had either been sent to another camp or gassed right away; that a normal workman was not threat ­ ened by death continuously, daily and hourly.I even al ­ lowed myself to say once to a kindly foreman, â€Å" If you could learn from me how to do a brain operation in as short a time as I am learning this road work from you, I would have great respect for you. † And he grinned. Apathy, the main symptom of the second phase, was a necessary mechanism of self-defense. Reality dimmed, and all efforts and all emotions were centered on one task: pre ­ serving one's own life and that of the other fellow. It was typical to hear the prisoners, while they were being herded back to camp from their work sites in the evening, sigh with relief and say, â€Å"Well, another day is over. It can be readily understood that such a state of strain, coupled with the constant necessity of concentrating on the task of staying alive, forced the prisoner's inner life down to a primitive level. Several of my colleagues in camp who were trained in psychoanalysis often spoke of a â€Å"regression† in the camp inmate—a retreat to a more primitive form of mental life. His wishes and desires became obvious in his dreams. What did the prisoner dream about most frequently? Of bread, cake, cigarettes, and nice warm baths.The lack of having these simple desires satisfied led him to seek wishfulfillment in dreams. Whether these dreams did any good is another matter; the dreamer had to wake from them to the reality of camp life, and to the terrible contrast between that and his dream illusions. I shall never forget how I was roused one night by the groans of a fellow prisoner, who threw himself about in his sleep, obviously having a horrible nightmare. Since I had always been especially sorry for people who suffered from fearful dreams or deliria, I wanted to wake the poor man.Suddenly I drew back the hand which was ready to shake him, frightened at the thing I was about to do. At that moment I became intensely conscious of the fact that no dream, no matter how horrible, could be as bad as the reality of the camp which surrounded us, and to which I was about to recall him. Because of the high degree of undernourishment which the prisoners suffered, it was natural that the desire for food was the major primitive instinct around which mental life centered. Let us observe the majority of prisoners when they happened to work near each other and were, for once, not closely watched.They would immediately start discuss ­ ing food. One fellow would ask another working next to him in the ditch what his favorite dishes were. Then they would exchange recipes and plan the menu for the day when they would have a reunion—the day in a distant future when they would be liberated and returned home. They would go on and on, picturing it all in detail, until suddenly a warning was passed down the trench, usually in the form of a special password or number: â€Å"The guard is coming. † I always regarded the discussions about food as danger ­ ous.Is it not wrong to provoke the organism with such detailed and affective pictures of delicacies when it has somehow m anaged to adapt itself to extremely small rations 42 Man's Search for Meaning Experiences in a Concentration Camp 43 and low calories? Though it may afford momentary psycho ­ logical relief, it is an illusion which phy

Purpose of Anthem for a Doomed Youth Essay

Owen’s purpose in writing Anthem for a Doomed Youth is to reveal the cruel reality of war which was always hidden from the public in World War One and to show anger to the people who sent him to the trenches. He says in his preface â€Å"All a poet can do today is warn†¦.† this shows he aims to prevent war from happening in later generations. One way that Owen conveys rage is through the men not getting the recognition that they deserved. He does this by dehumanizing the soldiers and comparing them to â€Å"cattle† which shows that they were only seen as instruments of war by the government. Throughout the poem the men not recognized as individuals, but are referred to as â€Å"they†, â€Å"these† or â€Å"them†, by referring to them as a collective he gives a tone that people other than family did not care about the men’s well being at war. If and when the men do die, the prayers to remember them are ‘hasty’ and careless, this is because too many people die in a day to give the true amount of respect they needed showing the futility of war. In the last line of the poem â€Å"a drawing down of blinds†, this metaphor infers death but in different ways. Firstly, in Owen’s time if a funeral car drove past people would pull their blinds down to show respect to the deceased this shows that everyday someone in a town will die and did not come home, so the ‘blinds’ are drawn for funerals that did not take place as men were lost in battle. At the end of everyday blinds are drawn down this can symbolize the sun also going down at the end of a day or finality when someone dies, the blinds of their life are drawn. Finally it infers that people might have drawn their blinds down, or turned their back, to the truth about the war, because maybe it was too brutal to think of their loved ones in the middle of it. Owen also proves in this poem that people, on the battle field and back in Britain, lost their faith in God during the war. Even the title of the piece is ironic in a way. An â€Å"anthem† is usually written for a religious purpose, but when contrasted with a â€Å"doomed youth† it shows not only that war was falsely portrayed as heroic to the men, but also that the war was â€Å"doomed† from the start and not even God could have helped them. Also, no one stopped  to mourn the fallen, the only ‘choirs’ are the voices from the ‘shells’ and bombs on no-mans land. Whilst the men are dehumanized, the rifles, shells and other machines are personified and given human feelings such as â€Å"stuttering† and â€Å"demented† showing that the equipment of war meant more to the government than the men. Also, world war one was the first war to introduce industrial methods of warfare so the guns were seen as better and given more care than the men. When dehumanizing the soldiers and personifying the arms Owen is criticizing the war by saying that the guns mean more than the men controlling them. But although the guns are given feelings and characteristics, they are negative. The artillery are â€Å"stuttering† which can be caused by shell-shock this implies that the soldiers ‘disabilities’ have been transferred to the weapons. The form of the poem is a sonnet, sonnets first started out as romantic but truthful poems by poets such as Wordsworth. By Owen using a sonnet as the poem’s form he conveys irony and conflict as the poem is about aggression and struggle. To conclude, Owen uses Anthem for a Doomed Youth to criticize the war and to expose the true reality of the trenches, he does this by using many language techniques such as dehumanization, metaphors, oxymoron, onomatopoeia and personification.

Impact of Culture on Health Essay

* What do we mean by culture?   * Culture is one of those concepts that most people seem to intuitively grasp, yet cannot define clearly. * The process of categorizing groups of people as others (other than one’s own group) is a common feature of the way human beings think, and it forms a part of the whole phenomenon we think of as culture. * There other uses of the term culture that can confuse the situation – for example, saying someone is more cultured than the other, referring to some concept of high/elite culture, expressed through personal manners, education and knowledge, involvement in or familiarity with artistic activities such as opera, modern art, calligraphy, dance or theater – that is contrasted to pop culture. * Definitions they share the basic components, existing as a kind of whole and links many kinds of aspects of life and social structure within a group or society; it refers to the relationship between what people know and believe and what t hey do; it is acquired and shared, more or less, among members of the group or society and transmitted to members of the group/society over time. * The Classic Definition: Cultures is said to be that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society (E.B Taylor, 1871) * The Symbolic Definition: Human culture is a kind of symbolic text, in which behavior, objects, and belief interact together in a kind of ongoing dramatic production that represents issues and concepts of meaning fr a particular society * Members act as characters in this grand drama and what goes on (plot) only makes sense in reference to an underlying interpretive framework. * Culture as an Ideology: Equate the concept of culture to a kind of dominant ideology or to beliefs, social institutions, practices, and media representation associated with particular configurations of power. * Discourse at any point is linked with a configuration of power and the rules for interpreting what is or is not a valid statement. * Culture Materialist Definitions. Viewing culture primarily as a system of belief, practice, and technology directly tied to economic activity or to the adaptation of a people to a particular physical environment. * Linguistic Definition: thinking of a culture as a type of language. Speakers of the language may use differently, to create slang, irony, humor, or even poetry OR they make break the rules to create a particular effect. BUT it is still the same language and underneath the language is some shared base of understanding about the nature of existence and day-to-day life. * Mental or Cognitive Definitions: Construct of culture as something primarily in the mind of people within a particular group, a kind of shared conceptual framework that organizes thought and behavior. From this perspective, culture is not so much about what people do, but abo ut what they think and how that determines what they do. * Culture and Biocultural: Think of culture in relation to the human condition is to understand humans as biocultural. It is something that is imposed on the biological world by a society or group of people who have, over many years, developed a system of beliefs and practices. * How can we define the people who share a particular culture? * Is it a political definition? (most cases no) Is it a geographic boundary? A social boundary? Is it religion? * Culture is not fixed but evolves as people from one society or group come into contact with other people or as they change over time, their culture changes. * What do we mean by health? * Free of disease – absence of pathogens and healthy immune system * Body functions normally – organs, nervous and other systems function as they should * Free of injury and other problems * Eats healthy foods – food that provides essential nutrients and is free of substances that cause damage to bodily functions. * Engage in healthy, preventive behavior – basic hygiene, immunizations, sees a doctor * Avoids risky behavior * To be in reasonable physical shape. * To be in a stable mental state to be happy, satisfied with life, get along with people * General well being * In some parts of the world, criteria defined by other cultures can interfere with biomedical standards. * To obese can be a sign of wealth or in the case of females, fertility, maternal capability and warm personality. * Rites that often involve what we might call â€Å"health risks† yet they are understood to be good and absolutely necessary to proceed to the next life stage. * To understand diverse concepts of health and healthy behavior, it is necessary to think of health in a broader way, beyond biomedical. * Health is often very close to ideas within that culture about being well. Chapter 3: Ethnomedicine I: Cultural Health Systems of Related Knowledge and Practice. * An ethnomedical system can be defined as: an applied cultural knowledge system related to health that sets out the kinds of health problems that can exist, their causes and (based on their causes) appropriate treatments – as an interrelated system of belief and nature. * It is of key importance when thinking about the cultural aspect of ethnomedical system is that across cultures there are different answers to all of these questions, from the range of potential health problems, to causes, to treatments, as well as the closely related question of what kinds of individuals are qualified to provide treatment * Human beings are biocultural some theorists have found it useful to make a distinction between disease (abnormal biomedical state caused by pathogens or physical anomalies) and an illness (a culturally defined state of not being well, with many culturally defined causes including biomedical). * Disease and illness may or may not refer to the same phenomenon. * Functionally, both systems have the same kinds of elements and in both cases there is a linkage between the elements. The differences have to do with the specific content, and the means by which cause is determined (with respect to cause – in the biomedical case, that includes both research and clinical diagnosis.) * Where the biomedical system categorizes unwell states based on physical symptoms linked to biological causes, the nonbiomedical system may have its classification on combinations of emotional and physical manifestations links to the spiritual causes, disruption in harmony, imbalance in a person’s lifestyle or an improper mix of substances and forces. * Personalistic system – disease is due to the â€Å"active, purposeful intervention of an agent† where the ill person is the object of action by a sorcerer, spirit or supernatural force. * The general pattern of treatment is to block/counter the spiritual agent with spiritual forces in support of the patient. The center of action (in terms of cause or treatment) is not necessarily within the patient, but in the supernatural world. * Naturalistic system – disease is explained by the impersonal actions of systems based on old historical systems of great civilizations. Illness arise when people are out of balance physically, spiritually, or in some other way. * The pattern of treatment is to restore balance through various combinations of herbal medicinal, meditation, diet, lifestyle changes, or other actions. * A very important principle to remember is that a given social or cultural group will rarely operate in reference to a single ethnomedical system. The norm for most people is multiple and coexisting ethnomedical systems of some blending of elements from various types of systems. One system may be dominant, but aspects of other systems are also likely to be included. * The Placebo Effect and Role of Belief – placebo effect the tendency for treatments and pills to have no biochemical or biomedical effect to cause improvement in patient health symptoms. This occurs because of the belief that the treatment or pill has curative properties or because of the ritual process of going to a doctor itself. * Ethnomedical Systems: Non-Western Examples * Ayurvedic Medicine (India) * Originates with ancient Vedic culture in India and focues on prevention and a holistic concept of health accomplished through the maitenence of balance in many areas of life, including thought, diet, lifestyle and the use of herbs. * Body is comprised of 3 primary energy types called dosha each represents characteristics derived from the 5 elements of space, air, fire, water and earth. * Vata subtle energy associated with movement * Pittaconnected to the body’s metabolic system * Kapha associated with body structure * Cambodian/Khmer Health Belief Systems * The traditional system shares some aspects in common with Chinese and other Asian systems in the emphasis on balance. Illness may be attributed to imbalance in natural forces. This is often symbolized or expressed as the influence of wind or kchall on blood circulation illness * South African Health Belief Systems * Among the Shona and other peoples, one aspect of a naturalistic system is understood to be related to the presence of a nyoka or snake in the body. Movement of the nyoka is related to many diseases, including diarrhea, stomach ailments, sexually transmitted infections, epilepsy, mental retardation and others. * Health Belief Systems in Latin America and the Carribbean * Espiritismo common in Cuba and Puerto Rice, synthesis of Afro-Caribbean, French, and possibly U.S. spiritualist. The belief system is that there is both a supreme being and a world of spirits with influence on health that can be accessed through a medium, typically in a group sà ©ance-like setting. * Santeria also found in Cuba and Puerto Rico, blend of West African and Catholic traditions. It is based on the idea that there are many spirits called â€Å"orishas† who are connected to the supreme being and who can be appealed to help in various dimensions of life. * Curanderismo founded in many parts of central/latin America; a healer or curandero makes a diagnosis using tarot-type cards or by sweeping a broken egg or other object across the body of the patient. The idea is that there is a supremem/higher power that is the source of energy, and the curandero is the instrument of that higher power. * Western Example – the biomedical system is primarily based on a classification system tied to biological phenomena – the action of pathogens (viruses, bacteria), cellular or other biomechanical malfunctions, injuries/system damage, and others. Treatment is, of course, directly connected to generalists or specialists trained to address specific kinds of biomedical phenomena. Chapter 4: Ethnomedicine II: Cultural Systems of Psychology and Mental/Emotional Health The Cultural Construction of Mental/Emotional Illness * Anything defined as an abnormal mental/emotional state is also likely to involve a cultural judgement and therefore may say a lot about cultural values and beliefs as a whole at particular moments in history * Ex. drapetomania – the disease causing negros to run away. It was thought to be a curable disease of the mind, involving sulkiness and dissatisfaction prior to running away, that could be brought on when white slave owners trated slaves too much like human beings, or on the other hand when they were overly cruel and brutal. * Ex. dysaethesia aethiopica – characterized by a state of half-sleep and a physical or nervous insensibility that caused them to behave like â€Å"rascals† * DSM – reference book for mental conditions that are viewed in Western/biomedicine as abnormal, with detailed descriptions of the etiology, symptoms and treatment for each condition. While it is based on scientific/clinical research, the symptoms and descriptions for many c onditions offer a fascinating glimpse of the way in which such conditions can be shaped by cultural expectations and changes in such expectations. * Ex. Antisocial Personality Disorder the symptoms seem to outline a kind of personality that could be viewed as troublesome if not criminal but the picture changes when context and culture are added. * Ex. ADHD according to the DSM IV, this disorder is characterized by two sets of symptoms – inattention and hyperactivity impulsivity. This is a condition that can cause difficulties and impairs appropriate functioning. But there is room for interpretation. Some elements of hyperactivity and are subjective and depend on culturally related standards for appropriate behavior. The Question of Universal vs. Culture-Specific * Do all humans beings experience the same mental health phenomena or emotional phenomena? * The universalist position would argue that human beings have essentially the same psychological makeup – a position often referred to as â€Å"psychic unity† * The cultural relativist perspective cultures entail unique patterns of thought and behavior. * Combination of both perspectives cultures shape how emotions and mental experiences are constructed, named, and given meaning, and the living patters of specific cultures tend to accentuate particular stressors that may result in mental health issues. * There do appear to be some mental health conditions that occur in some form across cultures, and so could be seen as universal conditions (ex. depression). * Mental conditions that appear unique to one or a few cultural groups can be thought of in 2 ways * culture bound syndromes defined as any form of disturbed behavior that is specific to a certain cultural system and does not conform to western classification of diseases * Many of these patterns are considered to be â€Å"illnesses† and have local names. * Problems with culture-bound syndromes: no suggested steps for how a provider should incorporate cultural factors into the diagnosis or learn what those factors are; overlap between some conditions across cultures; the process of selecting the culture bound system is unclear * Conditions that are prompted by specific patterns of social stress and/or ecological contexts * Ex. In the Saora tribe in India there is a peculiar condition among young men and women who cry and laugh at inappropriate times, experience memory loss and feel like they are being bitten by ants. These young people are considered misfits and are not interested inpursuing the traditional subsistence of farming life. For this, they are under considerable stress due to social pressure from relatives and friends. To solve this problem, a marriage ceremony is carried out in which the disturbed person is married to the spirit. Young person becomes a shaman. * Anorexia/Bulimia in the United States * Fear of weight gain and distorted view of one’s body. This causes people to restrict their eating or binge eat/purge. One of the key contributing factors is the combination of weigh gain during puberty set against perceived social pressure to conform to culturally specific ideals of beauty * Historical Trauma * American Indian/Alaska Native populations have long experienced a range of disparities in health. These peoples suffer from a collective, psychological scar resulting from the experience of violence, culture loss, land loss, discrimination and eventual marginalization that resulted from European colonialism and conquest in the Americas. * Immigrant/Refugee Mental Health Syndromes * Many immigrants and refugee populations coming to the United States and other host countries from civil disasters and other traumatic situations experiences psychological consequences in addition to the stress of acculturation itself. * Emotions and Culture * Lutz and the Ifaluk found that emotions are culturally constructed. Emotions are a daily working phenomenon. Chapter 5: The Moral Dimension: The Relationship of Etiology to Morality in Cultural Beliefs and Practices Related to Health * Cross Cultural etiologies of illness can range from those that seem neutral, like pathogens or genetics, to those that don’t like sorcery or family disharmony * In other words, there appear to be some causes for which no judgment can be made or blame assigned, and some that can be blamed on somebody or something, whether the person who is ill, or another person, or another social institution or group. Culture, as reflected in ethnomedical systems, involves socially produced definitions of what is normal vs. not normal. * When a person experiences some abnormal phenomenon (illness) it could be thought of as: * Abnormal but morally ok not your fault * Abnormal but not morally ok your fault or somebody’s fault. Can result from stigma. * The moral connection to illness is very much related to several kinds of factors: * Cultural conceptions of the individual and the degree to which individuals are viewed as responsible for their condition and their behavior * Most western societies are typically viewed as individual-centric * The degree to which external forces are viewed as responsible for their condition and their behavior * In many cultures, what you do and what happens to you may not originate with you but with other forces. These forces could be attributed to one or more gods, to broader natural forces, to specific spirits, or to sorcery ad witchcraft. The moral source, so to speak, may in part be related to individuals but indirectly. * The kinds of social divisions that exist in a particular society and what those social divisions are held to mean – social class/social stratification, gender, race/ethnicity, religion and other divisions. * Refers to a moral source that is society itself the way in which society creates conditions that make some peole more vulnerable to disease than others or that forces some people into choices (with health consequences) that others do not have to make. * Physical Symbolism of the Disease * If the appearance of the disease looks like the embodiment of a culturally defined malevolence of some kind, people may react to it regardless of whether or not the victim is initially held to be at fault. Alternatively, the appearance of the disease may be seem like evidence that the person must be at fault or is some way selected for punshement, triggereing a kind of after-the-fact blame. * All of these can lead to the stigmatization of people with a particular illness or disease. * Stigma: the discrediting, social rejection or staining of types of people who are viewed as blameworthy in one way or another. It is the social construction of spoiled identity for classes of people viewed as undesirable by some social standard. The exclusion and abuse caused by stigma may even be sanctioned by law. * Illness Behavior * Two kinds of sick roles:   * A set of roles for people who are ill * A set of roles for the other people who interact with the sick person, whether as a healer or family member or even a classmate. * Illness behavior is produced or socially constructed within the framework of a culture. It involves an entire production, in which many players act out their roles and in doing so, work together to produce a result that comes out as the way of a particular illness takes form, and the consequences of that, in a given society. An important result of this and other culturally shaped interactions is to reproduce the culture.

Manufacturing Materials and Technologies Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Manufacturing Materials and Technologies - Essay Example In most industries carbon fibre reinforced polymers is replacing aluminium and steel. Some of the vehicle manufacturers are making use of Carbon fibre reinforced polymers in their some modals. However, some other vehicle manufacturers like Ferrari, have tested carbon fibre reinforced polymers and other composites and evaluated that aluminium is better due some properties. Carbon fibre reinforced polymers are several advantages over conventional materials. It is strongest composite material and the material formation can be altered to suit various types of applications. Several layers of carbon fibres are applied to make the carbon fibre reinforced polymers strong enough to support ant type of application. Carbon fibres can be used in combination with aluminium, Kevlar, glass fibres and other metals to make the materials durable and attain more density to mass ratio. Unlike metals Carbon fibre reinforced polymers show low thermal expansion behaviour. It has less impact of hot or cold weather. Moreover, carbon fibre reinforced polymers has better thermal insulation properties as compared to metals (Sauder et al. 2002: 503). Aluminium, copper and steel are known bets for thermal conductivity. It is has very less density. When it comes to tension bearing capability, carbon fibres can bear an immense tension. None of the materials has the capability to bear such tension as that of carbon fibres according to the density of the fibres. Carbon fibre reinforced polymers are non corrosive materials. Theses materials can sustain the harshest corrosive atmosphere. In this way, the materials are good for the chemical industries. These materials can replace metals which are highly corrosive and weakens the strength of the material. Theses polymers are good conductor of electricity (Selzer and Friedrich 1997: 595). Carbon fibre reinforced polymer is very light material yet strong enough for any purpose. It is 10 times stronger than

Caring for Children and Adolescents Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Caring for Children and Adolescents - Assignment Example The idea that one of the best ways to combat the dangers associated with teen drinking is to step up enforcement is certainly a tempting one. Firstly, it comes from and invokes a great deal of time-honored tradition – the idea of using punishments for prescribed acts has been a fundamental part not just of many of the most important legal traditions in the world, but is also still heavily used in the parenting of children of a wide variety of ages. It simply makes sense that if the consequences for being caught drinking are significant, they will out-weigh Furthermore, there is a legitimate argument for the idea that having no or minimal enforcement for a law or policy, such as forbidding teen drinking, implicitly condones such actions, and that to demonstrate seriousness about fighting teen drinking, we must make the consequences of doing so severe. These arguments are especially valid when discussing one of the root enablers of underage drinking: adults willing to sell or pr ovide alcohol to minors. As drinking under the legal limit is (obviously) illegal, every time a teenager drinks there is always an adult who was willing to sell liquor to them or give it to them despite their young age, or who failed to do due diligence by guaranteeing identification was true and accurate. The adults who do this have been trusted by society because they are considered mature enough to understand the consequences of their actions, so if they are mature enough to by alcohol they should be mature enough to ensure it does not reach the hands of under-age drinkers; if they fail to do so then they should be prepared to face the consequences of their actions, even if they are serious. Finally, putting constraints on associated activities, like establishing a curfew, can give law enforcement justification for interrupting dangerous behavior and getting teenagers home safe. There are many reasons to consider enforcement improvements could reduce the harm from teenage drinkin g.

Men should be allowed to have more than one wife. Agree or disagree Essay

Men should be allowed to have more than one wife. Agree or disagree - Essay Example The main reason why men prefer polygamy is mainly due to greater wealth and resources than any other in the society. Cultural acts influenced polygamy where it outnumbers the monogamous ones by quite a large number. There is a behavior commonly practiced in the western countries where by men divorce and later remarry. This is termed as a serial polygamy. Many anthropologists refer that habit as monogamy because no one gets married to more than one woman at once. In this essay, I will disagree with polygamous marriage, which could either be a married man having an affair with several women, or officially marrying several women. Polygamous family has many negative effects as compared to the monogamous family. First, it consumes a lot of the family’s money or wealth to cater for their daily needs of the large number of wives and children. The daily upkeep of women and children is more expensive. Polygamy leads to the man having many children in a short period. Again, clashes duri ng the distribution of wealth especially when the head of the family dies increase. Distribution of wealth brings forward chaos and may lead to death to some members of the family. Problems come forward, war takes its course between the wives and even the children, and usually the last married wives face problems in distribution. When the man dies before educating all his children, it may lead to some of the children involved in crimes and drug abuse in order to sustain their living. On the side of monogamous family, there is no problem because the family is small and manageable and there is a written will showing the wealth distribution (Zeitzen, 2008). In a monogamous family, it is hard for one to get a sexually transmitted disease outside wedlock, caused by either one of them. Many monogamous families are stable because they can cope with their daily life. On the other hand, due to the cause of not satisfied fully, one may go outside the wedlock and infected and the disease can w ipe them all. Polygamy is an outdated way of living leading to women die of childbirth and children die of diseases. Again, in polygamous families, jealousy is a problem and they do not mingle outside their families. Monogamous family utilizes the minimal wealth for the family needs where the expenses are minimal (Anonymous, 2004). Polygamy is an act, passed on by time, and people should try to avoid it because it has many effects to the society. If a man goes contrary to the wishes of one wife, or they disagree on a certain issue, the wife may react abnormally hence causing damages. Again, it has led to young children getting married when they are young. A person may be five times older than one of his wives. This in most cases is perceived as an act of exploitation. Those who are in abject poverty commonly practice this habit (Milton, 2009). Parents should look forward, open their eyes, and avoid this in the future and educate their own children. In addition, the rich exploit the poor by grabbing their piece of land and because of money the poor lacks justice. Further, I do support monogamous family because whenever an issue arises, both of them can sit down and solve the issue in the right way. In addition, they practice family planning and produce fewer children whom they can take care of well and in the right way. Most monogamous famili

The Nature of Theory Why we need to be able to think in theoretical Assignment

The Nature of Theory Why we need to be able to think in theoretical terms - Assignment Example Most of the time, people think within the box suggesting the idea that they tend to understand matters simply based upon the utilization of their sight and their hearing sense. It could be noticed though that simply thinking within this box limits the capability of people to see only what they can and not that of those that they could perceive. It has been mentioned through time by psychologists and philosophers that a person who is able to think outside the box and see the whole context as well as the elemental factors contributing to the occurrence of an event or the emergence of a particular matter, is someone who could possibly be able to give birth to the options of the different procedures of development that the whole population of the human society could actually be thankful for. The question is, how could theoretical thinking be handled well One is that of the application of strategic thinking. It is innate among humans to be fascinated by the different things that they particularly see around them. It could not be denied then that through the years, this particular fascination within the different elements that could be seen in the human environment actually developed into the many discoveries and inventions that humans produced. Through passing civilization of humans, it could be observed that the people were never contented with what they already have or what they have already accomplished. This is especially true in terms of science and technology as well as in arts and literature. It is indeed undeniable that people recreate the things that are already existent within their own society. The fact that they have already been able to see what they could do regarding a certain type of field, they intend to even do better the net time that they deal with the same invention. Yes, humans never get tired of reinventing everything there is in the environment. Why is this so Human intelligence has always been noted by philosophers as the primary factor that makes the human creation different from that of the other God-made creations. The humans' ability to innovate their own achievements to even better results for the present generation to see, has particularly noted them to be those who are capable of reinventing themselves to be able to evolve from generations to generations. It is through this that people become more aware of the world around them, they cared more than ever with the political agendas, the social issues as well as other informations that concern their interests. True, the changing situation in the society and the demand towards progress requires that human intelligence be perfected in a way that it particularly caters to the needs of the entire humanity. The human brain's ability to store and restructure informations that were accepted by it through the years of an individual's life is particularly a proof that the application of humans' intelligence could still be perfected as generations are still to come along. On Personal Evaluation of Learning Process As a person, having a consumer style knowledge individual has paid much benefit for the author of this paper. The willingness to comprehend with the informations that are being presented to me accordingly actually allows me to

Critical Review on Mcnair chapter 2 from his An Introduction to Essay

Critical Review on Mcnair chapter 2 from his An Introduction to Political Commun - Essay Example He has considered three elements to be important for the establishment of democracy which include rational choice, constitutionality and participation. The author has also discussed the importance of public opinion by calling it a ‘public sphere’ and considered it the collective thoughts and opinions of people about political leaders. Lastly, the book highlights the role of media in the process of political communication. The chapter two of the book ‘Politics, democracy and media’ vividly explains the three features of politics, media and democracy with respect to political communication process. The author has identified several aspects that make up the democratic process. The first among the three elements of a democratic regime is constitutionality which is known as the set of rules and procedures that explain the election process and the conduct of people participating in the process. The second element is participation which represents the number of peo ple that have been legally permitted to vote. For instance, the segments of people that have been bestowed with the right to vote are considered to be eligible to participate in voting process. It means that the societies that have deprived its majority of people from a giving a right to vote are not democratic in its essence. The third factor explaining the democratic process is rational choice which includes not only having the right of choosing between the two political parties but also exerting the right as well. The chapter two of McNair’s book explains another important aspect with respect to political communication which is public opinion. McNair defines public opinion as the private thoughts and opinions of general public regarding the political processes surrounding their country. It is believed to be an important characteristic of a democratic process that it taken into consideration the public opinion of people as manifested by the vote they cast in a collective ma nner favoring one political party. In other words, a democratic government comes into being as a result of the votes given to them by the majority of people in a country representing their public opinion. The author has used the term public sphere for public opinion also which means the arena of social life that gives rise to the formation of public opinion. The book gives a comprehensive understanding of another significant factor playing its part in the democratic process; media. There are five major characteristics of an effective media that is characteristic of a democratic process. Firstly, the media should be able to truly inform the citizens of a country about what is happening around them. It implies explaining the role of media as the force monitoring the activities of a society. Secondly, the media has an educative role that explains the facts of the society by making the people aware of the meanings of various things occurring around them. Thirdly, the media is said to be playing an important role in forming public opinion by providing them with information about the opinions of general public through the platform of media. Fourthly, the media publicizes the part that governmental and public institutions are playing in the interest of general public. For instance, media has been playing an important role in highlighting scandals of various corporations and political organizations thus enabling the citizens to form an opinion for or against them. It hints on the objectivity of media that does not rely on biases and prejudiced