Man's Search for Meaning

In the first section of Man's Search for Meaning, Austrian-Jewish psychiatrist Viktor E. Frankl (1905-1997) remembers his incarcerations at four WWII-era concentration camps, including Auschwitz. In Frankl’s estimation, his own survival under horrific conditions affirms the tenets of logotherapy, the psychological framework he developed before his internment. The goal of logotherapy is the individual's discovery of meaning in life. This meaning may change daily or even "hour by hour," but, as Frankl, quoting Nietzsche, likes to say, "He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How” (why Frankl would quote with approval the Nazis’ favorite philosopher is an open question).

In the second section of this book, Frankl explains how show more therapists can apply the principles of logotherapy in their practices. This section is dated, especially in its descriptions of treatments for phobias and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

This book has been hugely influential, but there is something about Frankl's dispassionate concentration camp memoir that doesn’t sit well with me. For example, after recapitulating a pep talk he delivered to his starving, freezing, demoralized fellow prisoners (he calls this interaction "collective psychotherapy"), Frankl writes, "But I have to confess here that only too rarely had I the inner strength to make contact with my companions in suffering and that I must have missed many opportunities to do so" (84). I am surprised by this admission and am not quite sure what to make of it. It seems that Frankl was, in fact, rather detached from the experiences of others, especially their suffering. I would think that under the principles of logotherapy, engagement rather than detachment would be the goal. Moreover, on the first page of the narrative, Frankl states that his purpose is to demonstrate “how everyday life in a concentration camp [was] reflected in the mind of the average prisoner” (3), but I think that the author forgot about his thesis sentence along the way. Frankl would never have considered himself an “average prisoner,” and how would he know what average prisoners thought if he didn't typically engage with them?

Frankl acknowledges only in passing the incredible luck that allowed him to survive while others perished. Instead, Frankl attributes his survival to his sensitivity to beauty and his belief (in vain, it turns out) that someday he will see his beloved wife again. Implied in this attribution is the idea that the millions who did not survive the camps (especially those who chose suicide over continued degradation) failed because they did not appreciate beauty or love someone deeply. This is utter nonsense. Frankl writes, “The best of us did not return” (6), but I am not convinced he really believes it.

This thought-provoking book is well worth reading and discussing. show less

This edition is split into 3 sections. The first section, “Experiences In A Concentration Camp” comprises 83 of the most powerful pages I have ever read. Powerful, upsetting, beautiful, horrific, haunting. I read it in a single sitting.
If you have any interest or wish to be a better person, you should read it. At least once. Probably multiple times. I intend to.

The second and third sections, respectively entitled “Logotherapy In A Nutshell” and “The Case For Tragic Optimism”, were both hard work. I’m not usually one to finish a book just because I started it - I almost stopped during section 2, except for the goodwill engendered by the first section.

Thank God I stuck with this book. It really didn't begin for me until Page 97.

I came so close to shutting the book and passing it along to someone else, but my stubbornness did me good this time around. It wasn't that the first half was bad—it was more that I wasn't needing to rehash yet another non-fiction account of a concentration camp (especially one that isn't incredibly well written). Before I started the book, I had a strong feeling this one would be a mind and life changer, so I trudged through it. All 96 pages of it.

By the time I had read the first couple paragraphs of Page 97, I was hooked. Not only does Dr. Frankl's logotherapy, of which I knew nothing about before picking up this book, resonate with me personally—it is show more exactly what my adult child needs at this exact moment of his life.

I have always had a resistance to regular psychotherapy—not because of it's well meaning intent, but because I felt a long term delving into the past and a focus on the wrongdoings of the parents creates a tendency toward victimhood. My natural inclination is more in the behavioral therapy and perspective shift arenas.

Once you read this book—and you MUST read this book—you'll understand why I gave it 5 stars despite the fact that the first half of it bored me to sleep each night. show less

Half holocaust memoir, half introduction to logotherapy.
As a holocaust memoir it doesn't have the excruciating detail of death camps many other famous ones have. Frankl was at Auschwitz for a time, but gets shipped around between camps. He's also a lot more philosophical about man's cruelty to man, and more relativistic about culpability - stressing at one point that a certain camp had an SS officer who bought people medicines out of pocket while the capos (fellow jews) were needlessly sadistic. He spends a lot of time meditating on multiple examples of the title's thesis; that man is always searching for and in need of meaning in life. This later becomes one of the ways he separates his version of psychology from the bigger names of show more his time in the logotherapy section.
I see some parallels with Arendt's banality of evil and Zimbardo's prison experiment in this, which is notably different than some other memoirs.

It's strange that logotherapy seems all but forgotten now, considering that its existentialist principles seem more relevant to a currently faltering psychology profession, criticised exactly for missing the search for meaning in life (as compared to treating various symptoms of the malaise of suffering from purposelessness). show less

This is not merely a man's recollection of the horrors he endured whilst imprisoned in German concentration camps during World War II. If that is the only thing you extract from this book, you did not pay proper attention.

The book primarily consist of two parts, opening with the author's experiences in concentration camps which not only leads to, but also supports, the second part focusing on logotherapy - a type of psychotherapy which has been called the Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy. Opposing the doctrines of Adler's will to power and Freud's will to pleasure, logotherapy focuses on will to meaning and is based more in existentialism, which really appealed to me. The two parts of the book should be gazed upon as two show more fundamental pillars supporting an arch - the meaning of the book.

Dr. Frankl's words on suffering are definitely what stood out the most to me, and they are among the things you'll be exposed to in this first part of the book. The author does a great job separating himself from the proceedings, not making it about him specifically, but just as much his observations. He applies this style throughout this chapter as he takes said observations and use them as a groundwork for applying psychological terms, which makes it very engaging instead of just telling stories of horror. For example, Frankl asserts that most inmates go through three phases, with the first being the initial shock of being in a concentration camp; the second is a phase of apathy as a sort of coping mechanism when "accustomed" to camp life; the third being the psychology of the inmate if liberated and freed, which could lead to depersonalization, disillusionment, bitterness, and other states of mind.

I was treated with many compelling and noteworthy instances in this book which truly made me think about life. Dr. Frankl puts forth a very striking analogy between gas chambers and human suffering in that if a certain amount of gas is pumped into a chamber, no matter its size, it will be filled. The suffering fills the human no matter its size, great or little, therefore suffering is absolutely relative. That, to me, was a very powerful way of painting a picture of our sufferings, and that we should not judge other's suffering or empower our own to be greater than that of others. Whilst meaning cannot be boiled down to a general recipe for all of us, the author writes that we find meaning every day in how we approach opportunities, suffering, relationships and more. What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you, as Frankl said in a little speech to his comrades in Auschwitz. This was also the place where, one night, he was awakened by another prisoner who had a nightmare. Usually, our instinct would be to wake someone, which Frankl was about to do as well, but he then stopped. Realizing that what horror the prisoner dreamt of could match the living horror of the concentration camp.

The second part of the book, entitled "Logotherapy in a Nutshell" which indeed is a bit too "nutshelly" - too much of an overview. It tends to just rapid fire the different concepts of logotherapy at you in mind-numbing succession. This may differ depending on the reader, as I believe someone with great knowledge of psychology would see it as a light breeze, however, my level is more rudimentary. It could've done with dwelling a bit more on each concept, fleshing it out a bit more, putting some space in-between all the technical terms, so you get more of a grasp of each section. All of this does not mean it is without merit, far from it, just take it slow, as there's still golden nuggets to put in your pocket, and each concept is interesting. Some of them can just be a bit hard to digest. I particularly enjoyed the parts on love, collective neurosis, and the existential vacuum to mention a few.

My edition of the book also featured a 1992 preface by Dr. Frankl, or Number 119,104 as his "name" was in the camps, and ends with a small chapter based on a lecture he presented in 1983, focusing on tragic optimism. Each of the two are worthy additions to the book, functioning as both the opening, and the drawing of the curtains, as if the start and end of a great presentation.

"Man's Search for Meaning" just falls short of having a grandiose impact on me, not necessarily because of shortcomings, but what I've read and been exposed to prior to my unfolding of this book, so I always already familiar with some of the concepts, only told differently. With that being said, I will still highly recommend reading this book as it still is very applicable in today's pleasure-seeking digital world, which became glaringly obvious to me during the Covid lockdowns. This was when a sizeable portion of people ran out of things to watch on their arbitrary streaming platform to entertain and paralyse them, suddenly they were left with themselves, their own existential vacuum.
They could very well have benefitted from reading this book and its many gripping moments, and thus I will end with a few words of wisdom from Dr. Viktor E. Frankl: "[...] A human is a finite thing, and his freedom is restricted. It is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand toward the conditions. As I once put it: As a professor in two fields, neurology and psychiatry, I am fully aware of the extent to which man is subject to biological, psychological and sociological conditions. But in addition to being a professor in two fields I am a survivor of four camps - concentration camps, that is - and as such I also bear witness to the unexpected extent to which man is capable of defying and braving even the worst conditions conceivable." show less

“What a person actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.”

These words speak very deeply to me. I see how often I have mistaken happiness as a kind of freedom from unpleasantness, or a beatific, relaxed sense of peace. I have usually then observed how little happiness I experience! When I see how much deeper happiness comes from the creative movement within myself to discover and define my world, I reflect that I have led a very happy life.

Franks’s voice is straightforward and economical. He moves quickly from one idea to the next, with utter conviction. He was certainly a gifted therapist due to his willingness to see healing as the patient’s show more work, not the doctor’s skill. I may not read this book again for its lyricism, but I will certainly refer to its solid wisdom. show less

This book is definitely in both my MUST READ and ALWAYS RECOMMEND categories -- a book that will spark all readers to consider the life they have lived so far and their own ability to alter the future. But, though the book is less than 200 pages long, it is NOT an easy read, which keeps me from awarding five stars.

Author Viktor Frankl (1905-97) was an internationally known psychiatrist, author, and survivor of multiple World War II concentration camps. He is considered the founder of logotherapy, a branch of clinical psychology that focuses on each person exploring their own personal "meaning of life."

The book, which Frankl remarkably wrote in just nine days, is divided into two parts:
• The first section recounts his experiences and show more observations from the concentration camps. He candidly recounts a range of horrors he witnessed and tries to explain why he believes some people were destined to survive, while others were not. While these stories are painful to read (and I had to take a break at times), for me, this was the MOST compelling part of the book.
• The second section is more of Frankl's explanation of logotherapy as a therapy technique. It is dense and reads much like a textbook.

But the reason I will recommend this book is the value I see in Frankl's treatment approach. Because instead of concentrating on a person's past traumas and explaining their impact on current behavior (as many types of therapies do), Frankl asks patients to concentrate on the future, using the power of their mind to reshape and reframe their lives. In this, he seems very forward thinking, especially since he came up with the basics of logotherapy in the 1930s, long before medical science recognized the value of "positive thinking" in treating diseases of the body. Well, this book convinced me that it appears "positive thinking" can also help treat many conditions of the mind. show less