My writing sample for my summer internship.

I want to send in more than this, but I also want to apply as soon as possible so this is the one writing sample I'm sending:

The Process of Becoming Human In Victor Frankl's "Man's Search For Meaning" By: Sarah Kester

My mom brought home a paperback copy of Victor Frankl's "Man's Search For Meaning" she had found at a used book store the other day. I knew nothing about it other than what I had heard about it in a monologue about rape from a character in the independent film "Brief Interviews With Hideous Men" in which a man describes how something like rape can be looked at as a positive experience, because (as he compares it to Frankl's experience as an inmate in a concentration camp) when one ceases to be viewed as a person, as in the case of rape, they are somehow able to become more fully human. At least, that's what I thought he was trying to say, but I didn't grasp the full implications of what he was saying and the way he said it did come off as strange, even when finally revealing himself to have been the victim of the rape. I thought it was outrageous for this man to be talking about rape as being a positive psychological experience, even while comparing it to the dehumanization suffered by Frankl at the hands of the nazis.

And when I sat down to read the book in all its graphic horror, I thought to myself, "What gives someone a frame of reference in order that they might be capable of understanding suffering they themselves have never known? More personally, how does a 27 year old American girl from the suburbs relate to the naked brutality suffered by a Jewish man describing his experiences in Aushwitz? How can anyone who has not experienced that kind of horror possibly ever really understand it?"

It was not until I had finished the book that I realized how easily I was able to relate to Frankl's experience, despite never undergoing something so painful. In "Man's Search for Meaning" Frankl describes how survivors of the concentration camps went inside themselves so far psychogically at some point during their torturous experiences that they suffered many "emotional deaths," which would prove necessary for their survival, though some of them would have parts of themselves die so completely they could never be resurrected, if only in the sense that they shut down their emotions to survive and refused to talk about their experiences after leaving the camps, even many decades later. They said that people would never be able to understand how they felt then or now and as I read this, I thought, "They were right."

How does a person when hearing about suffering so intense that the threat of death is a constant; one struggles to do the most basic things like put their shoes on or get out of bed, because of starvation, despair and sickness. Tortured and abused daily, deprived of your most basic rights as a human being, facing every evil in which all you possess is your "naked existence" (22) and going from the phases of initial shock to apathy to despair and depersonalization are things that most of us have trouble relating to. Even those of us who have faced our own demons and know what it means to be completely objectified and turned into something less than human through experiences such as rape, abuse, torture, murder or war.

And yet, Frankl understood how important it was to tell his story, because he knew that each person's suffering is comparable to a room being filled with gas; the kind his family and friends were sent to to be exterminated. No matter the size of the room, if enough gas is put into the room it fills it completely. Such is the relative nature of suffering. It is such a personal experience that it cannot be viewed in terms of size except relative to the size of the room it is filling. That is how one is capable of understanding another person's great grief despite never having experienced something at that level. That is why when someone is going through their own personal hell they can liken it to being a prisoner of war or in some sort of bondage and be able to relate to the experience of Frankl, who literally faced that kind of suffering.

They shaved the heads and bodies of the women, men and children in Aushwitz so they would all look the same, thus making it easier for a nazi to see them as all the same without their individual humanity. A mass of nameless faces that can form into one enemy which can be easily exterminated.

Maybe that is the definition of evil. It can be likened to the gas filling the little or big room. It does not care that you are a human being. It has no substance. It is completely hollow and void of meaning and as such it has come to strip you of yours. It fills a room with emptiness where there once was life.

There are so many examples in the book about how the inmates were dehumanized, but one that particularly made an impact on me was when Frankl described how a guard had discovered that a bout of cannibalism had broken out, because chunks of flesh were missing from a dead body and he found them being cooked by the inmates, who had forsaken almost everything except their survival instinct.

At other moments, Frankl describes how the ones most likely to survive in camp were those who refused to surrender their humanity, if only it meant finding it in escaping psychologically as through joking with each other, putting on cabarets to entertain themselves; even skipping meals because they wanted so much to do something to cheer themselves up and especially through daydreaming and fantasy.

Frankl described an experience of spiritual transcendance in which he thought of his wife in moments when alone and it filled him with such an ability to transcend his current suffering that he realized that a person can lose themselves in dreaming of a loved one and so escape the pain they are experiencing in a way that they can't through any other method of escapism.

These things may seem like an abnormal reaction, but Frankl points out that an abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is completely normal. Under severe stress and emotional deprivation or when experiencing a strange situation, it is completely normal to have an abnormal psychological reaction.

Ultimately, it is this holding on to one's humanity even under conditions in which one's basic survival is threatened that provides the meaning man searches for. There is no impersonal meaning to life. It is completely personal in the way that each person is completely human.

After his freedom from the concentration camp was given to him and though most of his family had been killed, Frankl writes of reacting to his new freedom by stating: "I called to the Lord in my narrow prison and he answered me in the freedom of space.

How long I knelt there and repeated this sentence memory I can no longer recall. But I know that on that day, in that hour, my new life started. Step by step I progressed, until I again became a human being" (142).

Through his experience, he was able to become fully human. Stripped of his humanity by the Third Reich he was able, when given his freedom again, to understand what it means to be fully human. This suffering was necessary in order for him to reach this realization and to gain insight into the meaning of life.

One who has suffered is able to gain insight about themselves and their experiences through the autobiographical accounts of someone in an extreme situation of abuse and brutality such as experienced by Frankl and that's how people are able to connect with each other, through their similar psychological reactions to deprivation. Without that common humanity there is no meaning to the experience and no true love, the ultimate salvation from despair.

Home Sweet Home

When I was in my Psychology of Women class we had a woman come talk to us from Stand! Against Domestic Violence. She told us her story and said on her myspace now she had the quote, "I'm not your bitch. Don't hang your shit on me" from none other than Madonna. I just mentioned this, because sometimes in order to be truly free you have to go away and start a new life somewhere. It is wonderful to be a woman without shame with the whole world waiting for her. I want to go to South Africa and Ireland after Prague.

That's right. I said FRIED CHEESE!!!! Cheese that has been fried!!!!

I know it's early to say, but I feel like I've really turned a corner when it comes to how I eat and I feel free from the eating disorder finally. Something happened and my whole thinking about food changed. My whole thinking about my body changed. I feel so free.

That's the tricky thing about eating disorders. You have a completely different way of looking at food and your body than a "normal" person. It's a whole eating disorder mentality. That's one thing you notice and are able to recognize after you've gotten past it and there's no magic trick that I can say will break you of that eating disorder mentality. I don't know what it is. I just know that there's no use trying to help someone if they're still in that mindset and no amount of stuffing food in them is gonna work to bring them out of it. It really is a choice you make between living and dying and maybe it's not even a conscious choice.

Another thing you notice after you've finally made that choice is how different the way an anorexic or a bulimic thinks shows up in the way other people talk to you. People mean well. Sometimes they have the best intentions, but they really don't understand, because they've never viewed food the way an anorexic or bulimic has and sometimes the things they say sound ridiculous. They'll tell somebody with an eating disorder, "Just eat healthy."

Oh, is that the trick? Is that all there is to it? Because for the past six years I've been eating two bowls of peas and a yogurt everyday or binging on an entire pizza and throwing it up until my throat's sore and I feel numb and tired, because I cared so much about my health.

It's pretty funny the things people have said to me. This man (who was a psychologist) told me, "You know you'll probably never be obese even if you gained a little weight. You won't be like those fat people you see at Costco."

First of all, what the hell are you talking about? Secondly, huh? You don't tell someone who is scared to gain 1 pound that they'll probably never look like Jabba the Hut, because they already feel like Jabba the Hut.

But it's not their fault at all. They just can't comprehend what it's like to have this death grip on life in which you're so scared of losing control and falling off the edge into forever that you just can't let go. But the moment you do just let go you are finally able to free yourself of that mindset and you realize how much time has gone by that you wasted holding onto something that is just gonna give you an illusion of control.

There's nothing you need to control that you can do by starving yourself or making yourself throw up. It's just a way of coping when the world overwhelms you. Saying, "Why don't you just eat?" to someone with an eating disorder is like telling someone with a heroin addiction why don't they just put the needle down and go out and be like everyone else. It doesn't work like that. They're sick and need treatment, but even still, until they accept that fact on their own, no treatment will ever work.

It's a choice you make.

Anyway, there are so many pretty girls in Prague. There are so many pretty girls that come from that part of Europe. I wonder how much eating disordered thinking influenced by the media and Western society has effected them. I hope not much.

And how could a country that brought us the dish in the photograph be so easily effected by that? Yes, that is fried cheese and yes I'm gonna eat the hell out of it. Yum.

New Chapter

I don't understand how one place can be so good, but I have yet to hear anything negative about Prague other than that the language is indecipharable (I was listening to it on Czech radio the other day and I think it sounds more complex than Russian), the traditional Czech cuisine is not exactly vegetarian-friendly and it gets cold there. Like, really cold. Not like "coldest winter I ever spent" Mark Twain San Francisco cold. But none of those things seem that bad, either.

I was thinking about the fact that I'll be 29 by the time I get my Bachelor's Degree. It's publishing that I want to go into so I've been looking for internships (unpaid and something I can do this summer before Prague and it's almost June!!!!!), but I only found one publishing internship near where I'll be living. It's at a small publishing house in Alameda. I'm gonna apply for it, I think. This could be disastrous, simply because of my lack of experience, but I have pretty good writing skills so I'll keep my fingers crossed.

I went through a period recently that was probably the hardest time I've ever been through in terms of how I felt about myself, but I got through it and I'm so ready to have a great summer. Also, I no longer have an eating disorder!

Best movie just recently viewed on Netflix: "Cherish" starring Robin Tunney. So far I've only seen two Czech films: "Zelary" (which only had partial subtitles and wasn't terrible considering I didn't understand most of what was going on) and "I Served The King Of England," which was quite good. Let me know if you know of any good Czech films.

Getting It Back On Track Or Ending It...

This blog is supposed to be about moving to and living in Prague, but I haven't done much about that lately and so I haven't had much to write about except personal things that are maybe too personal to be shared in a blog, but hopefully will have more to write about soon. I actually haven't even sent my papers to Empire State College yet for financial aide. :(