ABSTRACT
This was how they ‘chose to respond’. We use the term deliberately. In his multi-million selling book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (see Bibliography), Stephen Covey recounted the story of Viktor Frankl, a Jewish psychiatrist imprisoned in the Nazi death camps. Though tortured and abused, Frankl came to realise that he retained the ‘last of the human freedoms’ – he could choose how to respond to his treatment at the hands of his captors. He later reported that he used his imagination to ‘see’ himself lecturing his students back at home, commenting on what he was learning from his imprisonment. It is a grim story, but one we fi nd inspirational; in the most adverse conditions one person realised that he had a choice of how to respond to what he was subjected.
