The Power of Paradigms: Life Lessons from Viktor Frankl

Viktor Frankl labored 12 to 14 hours a day in the bitter cold concentration camps as grey skies hung above him. On the outside, it appeared that everything good in life had been taken from him; his wife and his parents were dead, and the manuscript with his life’s work was gone. Treated like a beast, he had every reason to give up.

Yet despite the external challenges, Frankl was armed with something within him that would do more than help him survive the camps. In fact, he would thrive and help others facing the same nightmares do the same. That “something within” gave him the resources to face his unimaginable trials with a smile, as if they were his unique tasks to fulfil, his opportunity to exercise virtue, develop character, and support those around him in the process.

Exhausted as he was at the end of the day, he would reach out and comfort his fellow prisoners, counsel those on the brink of suicide, and even tell jokes to bring a glimmer of cheer into the constant gloom. He would encourage his fellow inmates, assure them they still had something to live for, and inspire many to rise above the horrors and tap into an inner freedom their Nazi captors could not take from them.

As we look at how Frankl was able to defy the pressure of his environment, to change its very definition, and rise above to express nothing short of human greatness, it is worth considering how he achieved that nigh impossible feat. For with those insights, we too, could be equipped to rise above life’s inevitable trials and perhaps even touch the same space of inner greatness Frankl did.

What was that inner something that allowed Frankl to rise above his tribulations? It was his paradigm.

Let me explain:

You may have heard the term “paradigm shift” before. It became popular in the 1990s to refer to behavioral attitudes and entered the common lexicon with Stephen Covey’s bestseller, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. But it was originally a term coined by physicist Thomas Khun to explain the phenomenon of how the same set of data can be perceived differently, depending on how one looks at it. You may have seen the rabbit/duck image Khun used as an example to explain how scientific norms could be viewed differently.

Rabbit or Duck?

Paradigms are how we view, perceive, and interpret the world around us. You could call them a theory of how we look at the world. They are cognitive structures built on past beliefs, ideas, and facts learned or examined in life. Moreover, they are the most powerful driving force behind all our behaviours and decisions. As renowned leadership expert, Covey puts it, "If you want small changes, work on your behavior; if you want quantum-leap changes, work on your paradigms." Consider the illustration offered in his excellent book “The 8th Habit” to see just how powerful a paradigm is in shaping our behavior.

In the mid-19th century, before germ theory, the paradigm of the time was that “miasmata” or “bad air” was the leading cause of most diseases. The theory suggested that waste materials would spread through airborne vapours and cause disease. This worldview heavily influenced individuals' actions to protect themselves against illness. Seeking pure air, rich people would seek refuge in the countryside. Others avoided vigorous exercise or hot baths, fearing the pollutants entering their pores.

As you can see, without the correct theory, or in other words, without the correct paradigm of perceiving the world, entire nations were more likely to run from the wind than they were to wash their hands. Later, once germ theory was accepted by the public, society was influenced to take different actions to support their overall health. Germ theory revolutionized the world as we knew it. And really, all that shifted, was our collective paradigm.

This is how powerful a paradigm can be. It cuts at the roots of all change. It is one of the foundational ideas of cognitive behavioral therapy, which helps us understand the relationship between our thoughts and how they influence our behavior. In fact, this idea of the power of paradigms shaping our behavior is a highly researched topic in cognitive and social psychology, as well as social learning theories. The evidence overwhelmingly illustrates how our ideas and perceptions shape our behavior.

Viktor Frankl’s Paradigm

How did Frankl view the world? What was his paradigm, the paradigm that gave him the inner resources to tackle the trials of the camps?

Well, he had a theory of humanity that was quite different from Freudian psychology and the philosophies of determinism and nihilism, which essentially said that humans were like animals and the greatest motivating force was pleasure. Our past determined us, and that life was, in short, meaningless.

On the contrary, Frankl’s theory of humans was a more holistic one that said that we were fundamentally free, not free to do whatever we want, but free to choose our response in any given situation. In his paradigm, he also saw that the greatest motivating force was meaning, to serve something beyond the self and to express values like love and compassion. A paradigm that makes us responsible, and in turn, where there was a purpose to our lives, whether we knew it or not.

This theory of us, human beings, this paradigm, is what he called the Noetic dimension. It was a holistic theory of humanity that saw humans were not just a body, not just a mind, and that within us, there was something so much more. That Noetic dimension was a spiritual dimension. This dimension contained the inner resources of love, compassion, to know right from wrong, a desire to serve, and even sacrifice ourselves and our own comforts in the light of helping another.

And this was Frankl's worldview as he entered the camps. It’s what governed his thoughts, inspired his behaviour, and is the foundational theory that governs logotherapy, the unique research-based therapeutic approach he developed which ignited the field of positive psychology.

This holistic view of what it means to be human is not isolated to Frankl and the field of logotherapy. It is found in philosophical and religious traditions from the East to the West. Furthermore, this holistic approach finds positive results in modern medicinal approaches such as the Body, Mind, and Spirit Model (BMS) - an interventional approach that integrates the whole person into medicine.

With this in mind, as we look at our current global challenges such as economic insecurity, climate crisis, and alarming rates of depression and anxiety amongst young people, it’s worth asking ourselves, are we using the right paradigm to approach these global problems?

Are we seeing ourselves as free? Or merely doomed by our past? Do we see the world as inherently meaningful, with a purpose beyond us? Do we believe we are more than just bodies, more than just minds, and that there is a Noetic dimension to life?

Perhaps after seeing how Frankl's paradigm helped him overcome his challenges, we might want to consider what could happen if we adopted a similar theory of what it means to be human.

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

Viktor Frankl -“Man’s Search for Meaning”.

With love and meaning,
Adam