“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” — Viktor Frankl
One of the most persistent misconceptions about human behaviour is the belief that we act primarily through conscious choice. We like to imagine ourselves as rational agents who carefully assess situations, weigh options and make decisions accordingly. Yet anyone who has spent time in therapy, whether as client or practitioner, quickly encounters a more complicated reality. Much of what shapes our lives occurs outside of conscious awareness. We react before we reflect. We repeat patterns we claim to dislike. We find ourselves having the same arguments, making the same mistakes and returning to the same relational dynamics despite our best intentions to do otherwise.
This is what makes Viktor Frankl’s observation so enduringly powerful. His insight is not merely a statement about self-control or positive thinking. Rather, it points towards a profound psychological and philosophical truth: human freedom is found not in the absence of influence but in our capacity to become aware of it.
I often meet people at the point where their usual explanations for their lives have stopped working. They may understand intellectually why they struggle with intimacy, authority, conflict or self-worth, yet this understanding has not translated into meaningful change. They know that their reactions are disproportionate. They recognise the familiar patterns. They can often trace them back to earlier experiences. Nevertheless, awareness alone can feel frustratingly insufficient. If insight were enough, many people would leave therapy after a single session.
The challenge is that understanding the origins of our behaviour is not the same as experiencing freedom from it. Long before we develop the capacity for conscious reflection, we learn how to survive. Through our relationships with parents, caregivers, teachers and peers, we develop implicit assumptions about ourselves and the world around us. We learn what is required to belong, what must be avoided to remain safe and which parts of ourselves are welcomed or rejected. These adaptations are rarely conscious decisions. They emerge through repeated experiences and gradually become embedded within our way of being.
The psychoanalyst Carl Jung captured this elegantly when he observed that “until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate” (Jung, 1953). Jung’s insight remains remarkably relevant because many of the difficulties people bring to therapy are experienced precisely as fate. Individuals speak as though they are victims of an internal inevitability. They describe anxiety that appears without invitation, relationships that repeatedly fail in familiar ways, or self-defeating behaviours that seem resistant to reason. The common denominator is a sense of powerlessness.
Psychotherapy seeks to challenge this sense of inevitability, not by denying the influence of the past but by illuminating it. The therapeutic process creates conditions in which previously unconscious patterns can become available for reflection. What once felt automatic begins to reveal itself as patterned. What appeared inevitable starts to look understandable. The shift may seem subtle, but it is profound. When a person recognises that their response is shaped by an old adaptation rather than a present reality, a small but significant space emerges.
It is this space that Frankl invites us to consider.
The existential philosophers understood that human freedom is not absolute. We do not choose the circumstances into which we are born, the families that shape us, the losses we endure or the social structures within which we live. To speak of freedom without acknowledging these realities risks becoming naïve. Yet thinkers such as Frankl, Sartre and Kierkegaard were concerned with a different question: given the conditions we inherit, what remains possible?
Frankl’s answer was forged in circumstances that few of us can fully comprehend. Having survived the concentration camps, he witnessed firsthand the extent to which external freedom can be stripped away. Yet he concluded that even under such conditions, there remained an inner dimension of freedom connected to one’s capacity to choose a stance towards experience (Frankl, 1946). This is not a romanticisation of suffering. Rather, it is a recognition that while human beings are shaped by circumstances, they are not entirely reducible to them.
Modern psychology increasingly supports this perspective. Neuroscientific research has demonstrated the extent to which behaviour is influenced by unconscious processes, emotional memory and automatic neural pathways. However, it has also highlighted the brain’s capacity for neuroplasticity and change. Daniel Siegel (2010) argues that mindful awareness allows individuals to observe internal processes rather than become wholly identified with them. In therapeutic terms, the ability to notice a reaction creates the possibility of responding differently. Awareness does not eliminate conditioning, but it alters our relationship to it.
This distinction is crucial because genuine freedom is often misunderstood as the absence of constraint. In reality, psychological freedom is more accurately understood as the capacity to engage consciously with our constraints. The goal of therapy is not to remove every emotional trigger, eradicate anxiety or transcend vulnerability. Such ambitions are both unrealistic and, arguably, undesirable. The aim is to cultivate sufficient awareness that we are no longer entirely governed by forces we cannot see.
The philosopher Hannah Arendt argued that human beings possess a unique capacity for what she called “natality” — the ability to initiate something new (Arendt, 1958). This idea resonates deeply with therapeutic work. Every meaningful act of change begins with an interruption of the familiar. A person who has always avoided conflict speaks honestly. Someone who habitually seeks external validation tolerates uncertainty. An individual who has organised their life around fear chooses to act despite it. These moments may appear insignificant from the outside, yet they represent the emergence of something fundamentally new.
What makes such moments possible is the space between stimulus and response. Without that space, we remain trapped within repetition. With it, we gain access to choice. Not unlimited choice, and certainly not effortless choice, but enough choice to alter the trajectory of our lives.
Perhaps this is why Frankl’s words continue to resonate across generations. They speak to a tension at the heart of the human condition. We are undeniably shaped by our histories, our relationships and our circumstances, yet we are not wholly determined by them. Between what happens to us and what we do next lies a space. Therapy, at its best, helps people discover that space, inhabit it more fully and recognise that within it lies the possibility of both responsibility and freedom. The task is not to become someone else. It is to become sufficiently aware that we can participate consciously in the ongoing creation of ourselves.
References
Arendt, H. (1958) The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Frankl, V.E. (1946) Man’s Search for Meaning. Boston: Beacon Press.
Jung, C.G. (1953) Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 10: Civilization in Transition. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Siegel, D.J. (2010) Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation. New York: Bantam Books.
Sean Kelly, MBACP — integrative psychotherapist and counsellor working in London W1, Hastings & St Leonards, and online. Registered member of the BACP.