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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What characterizes the second phase of a prisoner's mental state?

2. What happens when the author was outside of the camp fences burying dead bodies?

3. How does the author describe the Capos?

4. How is humor characterized in camp life?

5. Where does the author claim that most of the extermination took place?

Short Essay Questions

1. Who were termed "Moslems" in camp? What consequences did being called "Moslem" have?

2. Due to the difficult conditions and the need to fight for survival, which prisoners does Frankl claim were most likely to survive life in the concentration camp?

3. What does Frankl claim is the difficulty of his attempt at a methodical presentation of the psychology of the prisoner?

4. How did the Capo alter the normal reactions of those prisoners assigned to clean latrines?

5. What were the initial conditions of camp life for the prisoners that arrived to Auschwitz with Frankl?

6. What were the beatings like in the concentration camp? What does Frankl argue was the worst part of these?

7. Frankl writes that because of the harsh realities of camp life and the "constant necessity of concentrating on the task of staying alive," some of the prisoners "regressed" to a more primitive form of mental life. How does he see this manifest itself?

8. As a new prisoner in camp, what decision did Frankl believe "marked the culminating point of the first phase of [his] psychological reaction"?

9. According to Frankl, what characterizes the prisoners' thinking when they first arrive at camp?

10. What does Frankl write about the sense of humor that developed in the concentration camp?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Frankl describes the search for meaning as a human's primary psychological motivation. Do you agree or disagree? Why?

Essay Topic 2

Dr. Gordon W. Allport writes that Frankl "sometimes asks his patients who suffer from a multitude of torments great and small, 'Why do you not commit suicide?'" How does Frankl understand suicide? What does he advise people who feel that they do not have meaning in life, or those who plan on committing suicide because they find they can no longer expect anything from life?

Essay Topic 3

Frankl writes, "The term 'existential' may be used in three ways: to refer to (1) existence itself, i.e., the specifically human mode of being; (2) the meaning of existence and (3) the striving to find a concrete meaning in personal existence, that is to say, the will to meaning." What does Frankl write about existential frustration and the existential vacuum?

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