Definition
Inner life is the term used for the interior world — memory, imagination, reflection, love, and spirituality — that Viktor Frankl observed to be a significant factor in endurance among concentration-camp prisoners. He recorded that prisoners of a more sensitive, contemplative disposition, accustomed to a rich intellectual and emotional inner world, sometimes bore the physical hardship of the camp less badly than more robust-seeming prisoners.
This is a careful clinical observation, not a claim that suffering was easy for anyone. Frankl reported it as a pattern he saw, and as one of the few resources captivity could not directly confiscate.
Why it matters
How it works
Frankl described moments in which a prisoner could, by an act of inward attention, retreat from the surrounding deprivation. The most extended example in his memoir is his recollection of his wife — holding her image in his mind, conversing with her inwardly — and his realization, in that moment, of love as a source of meaning that persisted whether or not she was still alive.
The inner life also encompassed the use of memory and imagination to inhabit, briefly, a world other than the camp. None of this removed the suffering. Frankl is precise that it did not. But it gave the mind something to hold, and it connects directly to his larger claim that meaning can be found even in conditions one cannot change.