View a FREE sample

This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What choice does the author claim that people can control in difficult circumstances?
(a) "People, even in these horrible circumstances, can control the way that they treat others."
(b) "We can all always choose our breathing patterns, which influence our mood, and that influences our actions."
(c) "Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, or independence of mind..."
(d) "In any circumstance... man can choose his own reaction, we can all choose to focus on love."

2. What caused former prisoners to feel bitterness?
(a) That they lost the company of their former prisonmates.
(b) The fact that they lost nearly all of their material wealth, and had to start anew.n
(c) The lack of response from people in prisoners' former hometowns.
(d) That the SS also went free.

3. What two kinds of people does Frankl say exist?
(a) Loving and fearful.
(b) Decent and indecent.
(c) Strong and weak.
(d) Spiritual and non-spiritual.

4. What does Frankl suggest is the meaning of life?
(a) Creative work is the purpose of life.
(b) Charitable work or work that advances the common causes of humanity.
(c) Love.
(d) It is different for each individual.

5. What did Frankl try to teach a former prisoner who felt that he could trample crops in a field because he had been through so much himself?
(a) "No one has the right to do wrong."
(b) "The way that you behave when nobody is watching speaks loudly of you."
(c) "By respecting nature, we learn to respect ourselves."
(d) "Morality is measured in small moments."

6. What does Frankl relate about an American diplomat who, after years of psychotherapy, went to logotherapy?
(a) The diplomat, who was suicidal, and understood this as the result of his difficult infancy, finally learned to focus on the future, and decided not to take his life.
(b) The diplomat learned from logotherapy that his problem was that he understood his job added to the suffering of others, and for that reason he quit.
(c) After years of exploring the instinctual roots of a spiritual problem, in logotherapy, his desire to change jobs was taken seriously.
(d) The diplomat decided that he no longer needed therapy because his life already was full of meaning.

7. What does Frankl claim is the nature of meaning?
(a) Love is the true meaning of life.
(b) It does not emerge from existence, but confronting existence.
(c) It is not important because nothing has true meaning.
(d) It is found in suffering, like when he was a prisoner.

8. How does Frankl's understanding of individual meaning differ from that of Jean-Paul Sartre?
(a) Sartre believes there is no meaning. Frankl believes it is crucial to life.
(b) Sartre believes that meaning is collective. Frankl believes it is individual.
(c) For Sartre, it is invented. For Frankl it is found.
(d) Frankl took the idea from Sartre, and his definition is the same.

9. How important is the idea of individual choice for Frankl?
(a) Frankl considers this unimportant and inconsequential to happiness.
(b) For Frankl, individual choice can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom.
(c) Frankl believes that man is an accidental product of his environment.
(d) Frankl understands individual choice as a myth, since the concentration camps show that we react profoundly by stress.

10. How does logotherapy deal with spiritual issues?
(a) As unnecessary because there is no single meaning.
(b) Logotherapy does not deal with these issues.
(c) As instincts.
(d) Seriously, in spiritual terms.

11. How did fellow prisoners respond when someone stole potatoes?
(a) Nobody could figure out who he was.
(b) They turned him in to the SS for extra soup.
(c) When they realized this could be done, they began to organize to steal collectively.
(d) Rather than turn him in, they chose to be punished.

12. What does Frankl argue is the meaning of life?
(a) Humility.
(b) Service.
(c) Love.
(d) It varies.

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

14. What did Frankl speak to his fellow prisoners about when their morale was low?
(a) Love.
(b) Hope.
(c) Hygiene.
(d) Death.

15. What happened to the senior block warden who had a dream that he would be free on March thirtieth?
(a) He died on March thirty-first.
(b) He had another dream on March thirtieth that they would be freed on July third.
(c) He committed suicide a month prior.
(d) He fell ill on March thirty-first and died a month later.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Frankl write about those with very difficult circumstances, such as being diagnosed with a terminal illness?

2. How does the existential vacuum manifest itself?

3. What happened, according to the author, to the instinct to violence in the prisoners?

4. What is the name of the school of therapy that Frankl stands for?

5. What does Frankl claim is the most important part of suffering?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 954 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample