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Viktor E. Frankl - Man's Search for Meaning

Updated: Nov 4, 2020



Author: Viktor E. Frankl


Title: Man's Search for Meaning


Details: Rider Books, 2004, 154 pages



Someone in my work talked about this book, and I instantly thought I need to read this. My interest in the book is because of the stories my Nana told me from the second world war, how people were hiding Jewish families, what people had to endure.


So, the book. I mean a sensational book, a book that helped me to understand some of my mental health reactions. Over 10 million copies sold worldwide, it had been translated into 24 languages.

Part 1 of the book is a personal account of a Jewish doctor, Frankl, who lived in a Nazi concentration camp as a prisoner and survived the terrors, inmates had to encounter daily. In part 2, Frankl talks about logotherapy. The way Frankl is writing about his experience of the death camps at times is really detailed; you can almost walk the barracks, the fields and feel the devastation and loss of life. While the story and the book's environment are horrific, the deeper meaning Frankl is giving to the reader is invaluable.

The story of the Holocaust in the book is touching you to the core, bringing all kinds of emotions to the surface and simultaneously the book's deeper message; finding the meaning of life is also showcased artistically in the book.

Frankl saw three possible sources for meaning; work (doing something significant), in love (caring for another person), and in courage during difficult times. He also talks about the different mental states, stages the inmates were living through, from the delusion of reprieve, apathy, and disillusionment following the inmates' liberation.

In the second part, he talks about logotherapy in detail; his approach based on motivation is that individuals’ main motivational force in life is to find meaning. According to his approach, life has meaning under all circumstances, even the most miserable ones, and that we have the opportunity to find freedom and meaning in what we do, no matter what we experience. One of my favourite quotes from the book is when Frankl talks about’ ‘When we are no longer able to change the situation – we are challenged to change ourselves’. He also talks about suffering, that in its own right suffering is meaningless, we give meaning by the way in which we respond to situations. Often, we cannot change our circumstances, but we can change our attitude towards it and the choices we make to in order to survive a specific circumstance will make us grow.

About the author

Further details about the author can be read on the source below;

Viktor E Frankl was a Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at the University of Vienna Medical School. Born in1905, he received the degrees of Doctor of Medicine and Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Vienna. During World War II, he spent time in Auschwitz, Dachau, and other concentration camps as a prisoner. He was the founder of logotherapy. In 1941, he started writing the first version of his book The Doctor and the Soul (Aerztliche Seelsorge) in which he lays down the foundations of his system of psychotherapy, Logotherapy, and Existential Analysis. Later, upon arrival at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, he will be forced to throw away the unpublished manuscript. He died in 1997.

He is most known for being a Holocaust survivor, but in reality, this represented a short period in his long life. By the time he entered the concentration camps at 37 years old, he had already spent much of his adult life as a psychiatrist and neurologist, specializing in the treatment of suicidal patients. He had also developed his own psychology theory called Logotherapy (Greek for “healing through meaning”). His lasting contribution has been to the field of psychology, with his recognition of meaning as a factor in mental health and his advocacy that the psychologist’s role was to help their patients find meaning.

Frankl was so interested in psychology that he began taking adult night classes when he was in junior high school. He was an honour student prior to beginning his self-directed education and his grades subsequently dropped. He studied philosophy and learned hypnosis at the age of 15. Frankl had his first article published when he was 18 and by 22, he was lecturing on the meaning of life.

In 1930, at the age of 25, he organized free youth counselling centres in Vienna that successfully combated the epidemic of teen suicides occurring around the time of report cards. Within a year, suicides dropped to zero.

Frankl and his family were forced to move to the Terezin Ghetto, also known as Theresienstadt concentration camp. Even when they were all living in the ghetto with restricted freedoms, he worked with suicidal patients. He organized a suicide prevention group to serve as “shock absorbers” for new detainees arriving at the train station.

Frankl spent three years in four camps: Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, Kaufering III, and Türkheim. He lost his father in the Terezín Ghetto, his brother and mother at Auschwitz, and his wife in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. His sister, Stella, escaped to Australia. He was devastated when he returned to Vienna and found nothing left of the life he once knew and the people he loved. He focused on reconstructing his manuscript about Logotherapy, which had been taken from him at the first camp.

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