We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
--Viktor Frankl, author, neurologist and psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor (1905-1997)
(172:4.2) For a moment they sat down by the treasury, watching the people drop in their contributions: the rich putting much in the receiving box and all giving something in accordance with the extent of their possessions. At last there came along a poor widow, scantily attired, and they observed as she cast two mites (small coppers) into the trumpet. And then said Jesus, calling the attention of the apostles to the widow: "Heed well what you have just seen. This poor widow cast in more than all the others, for all these others, from their superfluity, cast in some trifle as a gift, but this poor woman, even though she is in want, gave all that she had, even her living."
Viktor Emil Frankl was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist. A Holocaust survivor, he was the founder of logotherapy (literally "healing through meaning")–– a meaning-centered school of psychotherapy, considered the Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy–– following the theories developed by Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler. Logotherapy is part of existential and humanistic psychology theories. He is the author of over 39 books; he is most noted for his best-selling book Man's Search for Meaning based on his experiences in various Nazi concentration camps.
