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Man's Search for Meaning

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If you were assigned to read this book in school years ago, maybe you can't remember what all the fuss is about. At last count, 152 Amazon reviewers gave this book an average of 5 stars. It is undoubtably on the short list for "Books that Changed My Live" for countless people. I suggest that the real wisdom to be found in this book comes not on the first reading, but upon re-reading (luckily, the book is short and moves quickly, too). All of the self-help books out there, from Deepak Chopra to Stephen Covey to Dr. Phil, are mere twaddle compared to this book. There is more truth and wisdom in one sentence of Frankl than in many volumes of other books. Do yourself a favor and buy this book (and pass a copy on to a friend afterward). You will immediately see positive changes in your life. And don't be dissuaded by the context, believe it or not, this is a life-affirming book that happens to take place in a concentration camp.

After years of hearing others praise this book, I finally read it for myself, and found it is worth reading! Dr. Victor Frankl, an author-psychiatrist, experienced first-hand the horrible atrocities that were forced upon the Jews in Nazi Concentration Camps, and lived to tell about it. He shares the truths he learned as a prisoner, including man's search for meaning in life, and his ability to survive extreme physical and emotional hardships, despite the odds. In the process he developed a new approach to psychotherapy, known as "logotherapy." At the root of the theory is the value of helping others find their unique purpose or mission in life.

What was the key to the survival in the Nazi death camps? It wasn't survival of the fittest in the traditional sense of those who were the most physically robust of the human species. Rather it tended to be those individuals, described below, who found inner survival strength as follows:

(1.) Those who had a meaning in life, a sense of purpose, or intent to accomplish a goal. It was Dr. Frankl's desire to survive the death camps so that he could write and publish his experiences and truths learned through his suffering.

(2.) Those who had a spiritual belief in God and a faith that there was a divine plan for them. They believed God would help them through their difficulties. Dr. Frankl said: "In spite of all the enforced physical and mental primitiveness of the life in a concentration camp, it was possible for spiritual life to deepen."

(3.) Those who had an intellectual life to fall back on (in their thoughts) during the monotonous, strenuous, and most painful times of endurance. He states: "Sensitive people who were used to a rich intellectual life may have suffered much pain... but the damage to their inner selves was less. They were able to retreat from their terrible surroundings to a life of inner riches and spiritual freedom." This was something their oppressors were not able to take away from them.

(4.) Those who held on to the cherished bonds of loved ones. Dr. Frankl often found strength by carrying on imagined conversations with his beloved wife who had been taken to another death camp. His ability to communicate his love for her in his thoughts, and receive back her love, gave him the incentive to hold on to life during the toughtest of times. Unfortunately his wife was not able to survive, but he didn't know this at the time. (Perhaps it was her Spirit he was communicating with afterall.)

I was impressed with the description Dr. Frankl gave of a few of the prisoners, who despite being in a starving and sickly state, managed to go around offering aid and moral encouragement to others. Such individuals often gave of their meager piece of daily bread to keep another fellow prisoner alive. Such selfless service in the face of death, was truly admirable.

In the second half of Dr. Frankl's book he distinguishes the difference between his theory of logotherapy and that of traditional approaches to physcho-analysis. At the core of his theory is the challenge to help individuals discover for themselves their reason for being, even a worthwhile goal. He quotes Nietzche who said: "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how." Dr. Frankl says: "The meaning of life always changes, but it never ceases to be." This book can be a great resource for readers to evaluate their own purpose in life, and perhaps in the process choose a path that is worthwhile not only to them but that will benefit others as well.

Never buy this product.

If you think that you are going to experience Viktor Frankl's wisdom in his own words, you are sadly mistaken. This entire boxed set is narrated by some toffee nosed marble mouthed nobody who leaves you completely flat and uninspired.

What a terrible disservice to Frankl's work and experience.

How would one survive in the Nazi concentration camps? Ask Austrian Psychiatrist Dr. Victor Frankl. Having spent a few years in the death camps the images he explains in the first half of his book is just unthinkable. The torture these people endured during these times are simply hard to believe.
Frankl's graphic details of the killings, beatings and other inhumane activites makes the read wonder if there is any hope for them. This is the same type of question people ask when they loose clarity in their purpose. When there is a sudden change in their life, one may ask "What am I going to do now?"
Frankl's introduction to logotherapy is fairly basic. No matter who or where we are, we can always choose our own attitude. Further, he says that everybody who finds their purpose will persevere to leave their legacy. Whether it is in business, family or a particular mission, once your purpose is discovered you will get to your destination.
Frankl's phylosiphy helped him and others during the war to make it out of the camps before the Americans invaded Germany and the camps were raided. He believed he was designated to do better things and being a department head in a university is just one of them. Some of the details are a bit difficult to stomach, but his story is nothing less than compelling!

Frankl tackles a lot of ground in a short space, looking deeply into the profound question of meaning in our lives from the perspective of a Nazi concentration camp survivor.

The first half of this book is a recounting of the authors' experiences as an inmate in various Nazi death camps. My skin crawled reading about the brutality and inhumanity he tells us of. I've heard and read a lot about the concentration camps before, but this first hand experience was very powerful. Frankl had already developed his psychological theory before the internment, so he tells us how his experiences essentially confirmed his view that humans have a need to find personal meaning. He recounts numerous stories from the camps of how hope for the future kept him and his comrades alive. Frankl describes how the prisoners were able to create dreams and plans for the future in order to stay sane and keep their will to live in an environment where it was very easy to give up. What I got out of his recounting of the horrors of the death camps was that even though the Nazi's took away almost all of the basic human necessities we are used to in life, and brutalized their prisoners, they weren't able to control the minds of those imprisoned. We each have the ability to control our own thoughts no matter what the situation - this is our power.

The second half of the book delves into Frankl's formal psychological theory he terms "Logotherapy". He says traditional psychotherapy looks into our past to find cures for current psychological problems. His Logotherapy on the other hand he says helps people through finding hope for the future by getting in touch with the meaning in their lives. I felt his argument was in some ways simplistic in that he suggests those who are depressed and/or suicidal have lost a personal meaning to life - and that they need to find it. That much is probably already evident to the suicidal patient - they already know they have nothing to live for. Telling them to "go find meaning to your life" is surely good advice, but kind of obvious. How do you do it? Frankl does have some suggestions however.

I felt that overall this was a compelling read that challenges the reader to consider what role personal meaning has in their life.

This book was touching to the point that it was painful to read at times. Yet, the overall message of this book is wonderfully exhilarating. Whatever meaning you find in your life is your life. If that meaning gives you hope, you will have hope. If that meaning gives you despair, you will find despair. This is a fantastic piece of existential work! The whole idea in this book reminds me a bit of the concept of the self-system in Toru Sato's genius book "The Ever-Transcending Spirit". Now "The Ever-Transcending Spirit" is a much newer book but it is another truly excellent book that takes these things one step further by integrating these ideas with the psychology of relationships as well as transpersonal experiences. I recommend this Frankl and Sato's book very very much! They are both outstanding!

In "Man's Search for Meaning," Victor Frankl provides an introduction to existentialism and logotherapy. Based on his experiences in the concentration camps during World War 2, he says that life's meaning comes from within and that life does not cease to have meaning just because of suffering.

He asked fellow prisoners why they did not commit suicide and he got responses such as they had a talent to be used, or a loved one waiting, or they had memories worth preserving. But how many people try to avoid death and don't commit suicide because they fear death?

Frankl says that if there is a purpose in life at all, there must therefore be a purpose in suffering and dying. I don't think agree with that line of reasoning. If life is purposeful, then isn't death likely to be unpurposeful? Maybe there are "purposes" in suffering and dying but are they necessarily in our interest? The purpose of murder might be revenge, but that meaning doesn't benefit the victim. "Without suffering and death, life cannot be complete," he writes on page 76. WHAT?! Could some cases of searching for meaning in suffering and dying be rationalization? Frankl says to search through suffering and find how good can come of it, making the suffering more bearable. "Suffering ceases to be suffering the moment it finds meaning," he says. But I think it would be better still for good to come on its own and not through suffering. Finally, I think Frankl's statement that death gives life meaning contradicts his other beliefs. He is against suicide and helped his fellow prisoners to find meaning in life so they would keep living, yet he says life isn't complete without death. So if in his day, technology and medicine allowed man the option to live forever, would Frankl turn this down and allow himself to die? Wouldn't this be the same as commiting suicide?

Frankl's Logotheraply proposes that many neuroses are caused by a failure of the sufferer to find meaning and sense of responsibility in his existence. Logotherapy is based on the belief that search for meaning is the primary motivation of man and not a "secondary rationalization" of instictual drives, defense mechanisms, reaction formations, or sublimations. He backs this up by saying that people live and die for their beliefs and values.

He says that life is so valuable that it is worth living no matter how great the suffering may be, and finding meaning can pull man through any amount of suffering. He's against mercy killings and euthanasia for that reason. So if someone has a wasting, uncurable, terminatable illness, they should live out their natural life, he says. Or if someone has Alzheimer's disease, knowing who no one is, including themself, eats their meals through a straw, and has their diaper changed by a nurse-- they should be kept alive as long as possible. He says that we shouldn't confuse how much a person contributes to society with how much they are worth to it. Personally, I found insufficient information in the reading to convince me that there is a difference. The inference of these ideas is that human life is sacred and all humans are equal. What about animals? They can feel pain too. On the other hand, there are some humans who are in some condition that's it's like they don't even know they are alive, such as retardation, being comatose, etc and there are humans who do not want to be alive. As Frankl himself writes in the same book, being useful is equated with being meaningful and vice versa. So shouldn't we all seek to be useful in society to make our lives meaninful?

As he noticed in the concentration camps, hope and courage were what kept people in the camps alive. Those who lost hope and courage would commit suicide or succumb to disease. Frankl quotes Nietzche, "He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how." In "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People", Stephen Covey noted that our ability to do anything is determined by knowing what to do, how to do it, and why to do it. Frankl's book stresses the "why"-- the motivation, the reason and meaning, to live.

He says that people shouldn't focus on what they expect from life, but rather what life expects from them. To Frankl, the meaning of life is different for each person. To ask for a general, abstract meaning of life is like asking a chess Grandmaster what the greatest move in the world is, he writes.

The last part of the book is devoted to a very brief intro to logotherapudic methods. "Hyper-intention" is how fear can bring to pass what we are afraid of or how trying too hard for something can prevent it from happening. To alleviate this problem, the author proposes to simply relax the hyper-intention. For example, to cure sleeplessness, try to stay awake. To achieve sexual orgasm, don't worry about it and instead focus on your partner. He says many neurotics aggravate their problems by trying to fight them. By learning to laugh at themselves, he says, neurotics can be on their way to a cure.

As for the pursuit of happiness, Frankl urges the reader to pursue a REASON to be happy, just as to make someone laugh you must give him a reason to (tell him a joke). He notes that these days many people have enough to live by but nothing to live for-- they have the means but no meaning. In the future, as automation puts more time in people's hands, many will be in the "existential vacuum", faced with the lack of meaning in their lives when they aren't occupied with work or labor.

Overall, I think this is an insightful book but I disagree with certain parts.

Jewish German psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl, fathered the "Third School of Viennese Psychiatry," known "logotherapy." This book introduces his philosophy as he tells the gripping account of his three years in the Nazi death camps World War II.

Frankl wrote seventeen volumes in German on the principles of logotherapy which he weaves into this short book, so it is difficult to summarize his philosophy in a review! Nevertheless, most basic to logotherapy is Frankl's strong conviction that man is responsible. I agree. Unfortunately, the great defect of Frankl's system is the lack of objective ground given for this responsibility! Humans are responsible, yes. But to what or who? Frankl fails to answer this. Logotherapy is then essentially a humanized moralism-better than the nihilism which was bred by Neitzsche,but still short of what men really need.

The following paragraph represents the strength and contribution of logotherapy to the field of psychiatrics: "We who lived in

concentration camps can remember the men who walked through huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

This is also the essence of the proactivity which Stephen Covey commends in Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, the book in which I first learned of Frankl. In and of itself, this concept is good. But concepts cannot be divorced from a world-view. And a world-view which isn't built on objective reality is faulty.

According to Frankl, the basic motivation in man is "the striving to find a meaning in one's life" - notice he says a meaning, and not meaning. He didnt' believe it was possible to define meaning generally for all people: "The meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day, and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment."

Frankl's attempt to relieve the "existential frustration" of human beings fails to deliver right here; for though a subjectively perceived meaning may help a person endure suffering (as it did him), this meaning may have no objective ground in reality, and thus be REALLY meaningless after all, leaving the person deluded and deceived. Frankl says, "self-actualization cannot be attained if it is made an end in itself, but only as a side-effect of self-transcendence." But is not self-transcendence impossible if there is no objective reality which is transcendent?! Logotherapy leaves us to ourselvs after all.

According to Frankl's philosphy, one can discover meaning in life in one of three ways: "by doing a deed, by experiencing a value [such as love], or by suffering." Unfortunately, logotherapy fails to connect deeds, experiences, or suffering to anything objective; God is virtually absent.

Having said all of this, commendable in the book is Frankl's conviction that liberty be balanced with responsibility: "freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast." True.

I also commend Frankl's rejection of pure naturalism:

"there is a danger inherent in the teaching of man's 'nothingbutness,' the theory that man is nothing but the result of biological, psychological and sociological conditions, or the product of heredity and environment. Such a view of man makes him into a robot, not a human being. This neurotic fatalism is fostered and strengthened by a psychotherapy which denies that man is free." Thus, Darwin and Freud both suffer from Frankl's analysis.

Of interest is Frankl's description of logotherapy as a technique, where he discusses "anticipatory anxiety" and its cure, "parodoxical intention." This sounded a lot like reverse psychology to me!

I'm not a psychiatrist or the son of a psychiatrist,but I am a pastor, a theologian, and an amateur philosopher; and in my judgment, Frankl leaves us with some helpful principles, but they are like a beautiful superstructure with no foundation, and thus, shaky. Man's search for meaning will ultimately fail if it does't terminate in the purpose for which human beings are created,namely, "to glorify God and enjoy Him forever." Though Frankl has some good thoughts, I still prefer Saint Augustine who prayed to God: "Thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee." That is where meaning in life is ultimately found.

An unforgettable book from a man who lived a remarkable life. You will never permit yourself to whine again after reading this truly inspiring work.

This was indeeed a sad story of the holocost, but it also showed the extremes of courage and humanity among the ones trying to survive. It is definatly a book of love, tragedy, strength and the courage, for which I recommend highly. It is indeed a tough book to put down.