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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through "The Case for a Tragic Optimism" (through page 179).

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Why were dead men thrown on trains transporting prisoners to different concentration camps?
(a) This was a cruel joke of the SS who wanted to horrify the other riders.
(b) If their number was on the list, their life was considered less important than their number.
(c) They were there to take up space, so that the prisoners would not have much room.
(d) They were sent to spread disease to the other prisoners on the train.

2. What kind of event does the author attend with the camp's chief officer?
(a) A seance.
(b) A meeting where SS officials discuss punishment.
(c) A private meal.
(d) A medical presentation on Measles.

3. Why does Dr. Frankl describe that he sits next to corpses "crawling with lice" but they did not bother him?
(a) He was happy, sitting near these corpses, thinking about the lives that he was able to save as a doctor.
(b) This was a space where he could find short periods of solitude.
(c) He was thankful, as he looked at these corpses, that he had not yet died.
(d) He mentions this to illustrate the ideas that he was so emotionally detached that he simply didn't care who was near him.

4. What were the exceptions to the "cultural hibernation" in camp?
(a) Writing and music.
(b) Religion and writing.
(c) Politics and religion.
(d) Art and music.

5. What is the author's tone of voice in this, the second section, of the book?
(a) He uses vulgar language to describe the hatred he still feels for the SS.
(b) He writes in clinical terms about prisoners mental states, as a doctor, not a former prisoner.
(c) He is now emotionally detached as he remembers his earlier emotional life.
(d) He describes his life before living in the concentration camp in exaggeratedly nostalgic terms.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Frankl write that Freudian psychotherapy deals with spiritual issues?

2. What does Frankl suggest happens to "self-centeredness" in logotherapy?

3. What did Frankl try to reconstruct, that he lost when he arrived to Auschwitz?

4. Frankl writes that "every age has its own collective neurosis." What does he characterize as the neurosis of his day?

5. Why was the author not bothered by sitting near lice-infested human corpses?

(see the answer key)

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