Man's Search for Meaning 19

Occasionally a scientific debate developed in camp. Once I witnessed something I had never seen, even in my normal life, although it lay somewhat near my own professional interests: a spiritualistic séance. 

I had been invited to attend by the camp's chief doctor (also a prisoner), who knew that I was a specialist in psychiatry. The meeting took place in his small, private room in the sick quarters. A small circle had gathered, among them, quite illegally, the warrant officer from the sanitation squad. 

One man began to invoke the spirits with a kind of prayer. The camp's clerk sat in front of a blank sheet of paper, without any conscious intention of writing. 

During the next ten minutes (after which time the séance was terminated because of the medium's failure to conjure the spirits to appear), his pencil slowly drew lines across the paper, forming quite legibly "VAE V."

 It was asserted that the clerk had never learned Latin and that he had never before heard the words "vae victis"—woe to the vanquished. 

In my opinion, he must have heard them once in his life, without recollecting them, and they must have been available to the "spirit" (the spirit of his subconscious mind) at that time, a few months before our liberation and the end of the war. 

—from Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning