Concept
The last freedom
The last freedom is Frankl's conclusion from the camps: everything can be taken from a person but one thing, the last of the human freedoms, to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances.
Frankl observed, as a prisoner and a doctor in the camps, that in conditions designed to remove every choice, prisoners still differed in how they met them, and the difference was not strength or luck; some gave away their last bread. From this he drew the claim that organises his psychology: circumstances can be total and the attitude toward them still free. For a reader who has learned how automatic the mind is (the fast system, the emotional hijack, Haidt's elephant), the last freedom is the necessary other half. The automatic processes are real, and they do not have the last word. A popular line often credited to Frankl, that between stimulus and response there is a space, does not appear in his writings, but it follows from his idea: if the attitude is still free, there is a moment between what happens and what you do, and habits such as naming a feeling or questioning a fast judgement widen it. Frankl found his freedom in the worst place a person can be; the practice is to find that moment at a dinner table and in traffic, where the stakes are smaller and the reflex just as fast.
A real-life example
A father in Bursa meets his teenager's silence at dinner with the same sharp question every evening. He notices the moment between the silence and the question, names his hurt to himself, and asks about the day instead. Two evenings later the boy talks for ten minutes.
How to use it
- 1Find your most automatic reaction and put a pause before it: a breath, a named feeling, a chosen reply.
- 2When circumstances cannot be changed, remember the one thing that can: the stance you take toward them.
- 3Practise the pause where the stakes are small, so it is there when they are large.