إذا تناولت أى كتابٍ في العالم، فكم تبلغ نسبة أن يكون صاحبه قد تم اعتقاله من قبل؟
اممم فكم تبلغ نسبة أن يكون المعتقل نازًيا؟
وكم تبلغ نسبة أن يكون ذاك الكاتب طبيبًا نفسيًا؟
والآن كم تبلغ نسبة نجاة ذلك الكاتب الطبيب النفسي من المعتقلات النازية؟
وكم تبلغ نسبة أن يتمكن ذلك الطبيب من الاهتداء إلى طريق للعلاج النفسي بسبب تلك التجربة ويكتب عنها كتاب ليوضحها بطريقة مبسطة؟
وكم تبلغ نسبة ترجمة ذلك الكتاب إلى العربية؟
وأخيرًا كم تبلغ نسبة وقوع مثل هذا الكتاب بين يديك؛ لتقرأه؟
فإن كنت من النسبة الضئيلة جدًا المتبقية بعد كل هذه الفلترة، فلابد أنك من المحظوظين :)
،،
ذاك الطريق للعلاج النفسي الذي يتحدث عنه الكتاب يدور حول بحث الإنسان عن معنى لحياته، وفيما معناه: أن تمتلك لحياتك معنًى يصيرُ الأخير ملهمك والأمل المستقبلي الدائم الذي يرسل يديه لَكَ لتتمسك بها حين يضيق العالم بك على اتساعه وتزورك هواجس ومخاوف لا تدرى من أى مصدر جاءت، تتمسكُ حينها بالمعنى ليُخبرك أنه مازال يوجد ما يستحق.
المعني؛ ذلك المعنى اللطيف القوى معًا الذي تتشربه ذاتك وتؤمن به ويمكِّنك من إجابة ذاك التساؤل الوجودي: لماذا خلقك الله؛ أنت بالذات؟
إن الذي يحيا حياته بمعنى ف ذاته ويُكسب أفعاله وأعماله معنًى يخدم ذاك الأساسى، فإنه ليأتي قبل مفارقة روحه لجسده ليَعدّ باطمئنان ورضا الأشياء التى خلفها وفعلها واستمتع بها في حياته القصيرة ، بدلًا من الندم على حياة طويلة مرت بلا معنى

While reading Man's Search for Meaning, I could not stop thinking: why can't I be a psychologist now? By the time I reached page 103, I wanted to highlight passage after passage, or at least add them to my favorite quotes on Goodreads to preserve their impact forever.

Frankl divides his inspiring book into two parts. The first describes his experience living in Nazi death camps and how he dealt with the doom and decay that always surrounded him. He laces his story with astute, dispassionate observations about his emotions and the suffering of those around him. The second section explores a type of therapy that arose from his time in the death camps: logotherapy. Logotherapy focuses on helping people find meaning in their lives, to give them a greater sense of purpose and to push them past the obstacles they face. He writes that people can discover meaning in three different ways: 1) by creating a work or doing a deed, 2) by experiencing something or encountering someone, and 3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering (this last option is only meaningful when the first two are unavailable).

Overall, I would recommend this book to those interested in psychology, or those who want to read an inspiring tale by someone who survived the Nazi death camps and used his experience to transcend himself. Frankl veers into the spiritual side in the second portion of the book, which might perturb a few people, but for the most part he keeps his ideas open to everyone. For the rest of the review I'm just going to write down all of the book because it was so good a few of the quotes about logotherapy that stood out to me, so I can reference them later on. Feel free to read or skip.

(about man and meaning) "As each situation in life represents a challenge to man and presents a problem for him to solve, the question of the meaning of life may actually be reversed. Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by becoming responsible. Thus, logotherapy sees in responsibleness the very essence of human existence."

(about transcending the self) "By declaring that man is responsible and must actualize the potential meaning of his life, I wish to stress that the true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system. I have termed this constitutive characteristic 'the self-transcendence of human existence.' It denotes the fact that being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself - be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself - by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love - the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself. What is self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence."

(about how we mistakenly use money and sex to replicate meaning) "Moreover, there are various masks and guises under which the existential vacuum appears. Sometimes the frustrated will to meaning is vicariously compensated for by a will to power, including the most primitive form of the will to power, the will to money. In other cases, the place of frustrated will is meaning is taken by the will to pleasure. That is why existential frustration often eventuates in sexual compensation. We can observe in such cases that the sexual libido becomes rampant in the existential vacuum."

Of course I would love to include a few more passages, but I want to avoid writing down the entire book. Perhaps I will purchase a copy, then.

A fantastic book by, quite frankly an amazing human being. The first part of the book is his recounting his time in the camps regarding his psychotherapy and life philosophy. The 2nd part is his explanation of his philosophy on life.

It’s an astounding book, full of meaning for those searching for it on how we determine our reactions to our circumstances and how this reaction can when pushed far enough, can mean the difference between life and death.

I will leave you with two quotes that spoke utterly and deeply to my soul:
“Everything can be taken from a 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.”

“Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord’s Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.”

Reading this book in high school changed my life. I grew up in an abusive home and was in constant survival mode. After reading this book I realized that I had a choice. I could let my circumstances dictate my attitude or I could choose my attitude, which could then change my circumstances.

Becoming an adult is the hardest thing we ever do. Being an adult means accepting responsibility for your thoughts, actions and character. I realized that I can choose my thoughts and actions regardless of my past or present after reading this book. I finally understood that work and life are good.

As I discipline my attitude, I have more opportunities for service. I can teach with love and have compassion for all around me. I can serve with a humble attitude, which gives my existence meaning. This book enlightened me and helped me to expand my ability to practice patience. I am more positive. I understand that all humans are striving everyday.

What I think and choose to do are under my control. I can choose an attitude with a long term perspective and motivate my life to a higher meaning. This is the ultimate book on self motivation.

n  “Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any ‘how'.”
— Friedrich Nietzschen

Man's Search for Meaning is a 1946 book by Viktor Frankl chronicling his experiences as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps during World War II and describing his psychotherapeutic method, which involved identifying a purpose in life. According to Frankl, the way a prisoner imagined the future affected his longevity. Part One constitutes Frankl's analysis of his experiences in the concentration camps, while Part Two introduces his ideas of meaning and his theory called Logotherapy.

Honestly, I was very skeptical about this book. I thought it was just another self-help book full of cliché quotes. However, after a few pages, Professor Frankl proved he is different. He saw war and Nazi death camps differently. If Freud believed humans are after pleasure and Adler believed humans are after power, Dr. Frankl believed humans are after meaning. He looked at all his misfortunes and sufferings through the eye of an explorer. For him, life was a quest for meaning:

“Dostoevsky said once, "There is only one thing I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings." These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their sufferings was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom—which cannot be taken away—that makes life meaningful and purposeful.”

Frankl had lost his wife, brother, and parents tragically at concentration camps, but instead of faltering, he decided to help others--and thus--to help himself find the meaning of his own life. He was a hero of his own life, for he not only found the meaning of his life amongst the turmoils of his life but also helped thousands of others to find their meaning in life as well.

n  “Everything can be taken from a 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.”n

According to him, “The meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system. The meaning of life always changes, but it never ceases to be. It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but right action and right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.”

He is neither pessimistic nor optimistic but realistic. He doesn't want to lead his reader up to the garden path by deceiving them that everything is good. Frankl opens our eyes to the truth that life is indeed complex and difficult to bear, but one should find meaning in their existence and bravely face all the sufferings, for sufferings are necessary for humans to grow.

n  “But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.”n

Instead of retelling the horribleness of the war or complaining about how SS agents were cruel, Frankl logically and unbiasedly examined humans as a creature free from any country, race, or gender. He believed that the meaning is not just the inner self, but the reflection of ourselves in the outer world that can be achieved through the eye of faith and love. For Frankl, “Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance… Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true.”

When he had a chance to flee from Nazi agents to the States, he encountered a Hebrew quote, "Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the land." His American visa lapsed, and he lived almost a century (1905-1997).
He believed addiction and suicide are a sign of the fall of our age, “For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.”

In my personal opinion, I stand beside Frankl and hail for life, meaning, and suffering. I'm not unfamiliar to the emptiness and inner crisis, but I had touched the meaning of existence and had seen how my life enriches by courageous action of embracing challenges and sufferings.
Man's Search for Meaning is a book that everyone should read--even if it is the only book or the last one they read. Each line of the book bears a precious understanding of life and for me, it was a treasure of pure wisdom and a sign of the beauty and divine meaning behind living.

I read this book for the first time during my senior year in high school. The year prior, I had gone to Germany for spring break with some fellow classmates. During the trip, we spent a day visiting a former WWII concentration camp in Dachau. As one might expect, this visit had a profound effect on me. I had of course read and knew about the atrocities that occurred under the Nazi regime, but to actually see a camp in person is a deeply haunting and disturbing experience. Perhaps for this reason, Frankl's book affected me even more deeply than it otherwise might have.

The book is divided into two parts. The first section recounts in vivid detail Frankl's horrifying experiences as a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp. Frankl, a former psychiatrist, also describes his observations of other prisoners and what he felt to be the main way in which people tried to cope with the insurmountable obstacles they faced. He found that those who could find meaning or purpose in their suffering were the ones who also seemed better able to find the strength to go on. As I recall, Frankl personally found his purpose in the hope of someday being able to see his wife again - a hope that was strong enough to get him through the daily horrors he faced.

The second half of this book is devoted to the therapy he developed based on the search for meaning, which he calls logotherapy. The basic premise is that those who can find meaning in their suffering are better able to cope with what would otherwise be a struggle too hard to bear. As one who majored in psychology, I found this section as fascinating as the first.

I have read this book at least three times now, and it is one of the few books I can say truly changed my life. I am ever grateful that I have the wisdom of this book to fall back upon when needed.

Several years ago, at a very young age (in my 20s), I became ill with a disease that left me bedridden and barely able to speak above a whisper. Now 36, I am still bedridden and fighting the same battle. It is Frankl's reminder to find meaning and purpose in suffering (which I found in the love of my fiancé and my hope of recovery) that has helped me to get through each difficult day. As Frankl tells us, "Everything can be taken from a 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."

I highly recommend this book!!

In this book, Dr. Frankl explains the experience during his time in the one of the concertation camps in Auschwitz which led to his discovery of Logotherapy, his own version of modern existential analysis. Frankl distinguishes several form of neurosis and traces some of them (the noogenic neurosis) to the failure of the sufferer to find meaning and a sense of responsibility in his existence. Central theme of existentialism: to live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering.

The process of selecting Capos was a negative one, only the most brutal of the prisoners were chosen for the job. Capos were trustees and had special privileges over all prisoners. A certain number of prisoners were transferred to another camp but mostly their final destination were the gas chambers. The selection process was the signal for a free fight among all the prisoners or of group against group. Three phases of the inmate's mental reaction to camp life include:
1. The period following his admission
2. The period when he is well entered in camp routine
3. The period following his release and liberation

Cold curiosity predominated somehow detaching the mind from its surrounding which came to be regarded with a kind of objectivity. At that time one cultivated this state of mind as a means of protection. Apathy, the blunting of the emotions and the feeling that one could not care anymore were the symptoms arising during the second stage of the prisoner's psychological reactions and which eventually made him insensitive to daily and hourly beatings. Apathy the main symptom of the second phase was a necessary mechanism of self-defense. The close connection between the state of mind - his courage and hope or lack of them - and the state of immunity sometimes upon sudden loss of hope and courage can have a deadly effect.

Logotherapy focuses on the future, on the meaning to be fulfilled by the patient in his future. The patient is actually confronted with and reoriented toward the meaning of his life. Mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish or the gap between what one is and what one should become. Existential vacuum manifests itself mainly in a state of boredom.

Logotherapy sees in responsibleness the very essence of human existence. Self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence. Suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning such as meaning of a sacrifice. Man has both potentialities that is being a saint or a swine within himself which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions. Tragic optimism is when one is and remains optimistic in spite of the tragic triad. A triad which consists of pain, guilt and death. Three main avenues on which one arrives at meaning in life:
1. By creating a work or doing a deed
2. Experiencing something or encountering someone
3. Turning a personal tragedy into triumph

At the concentration camps, Dr. Frankl faced a lot of atrocities despite all the them he decided to turn his personal tragedy of losing his entire family, being treated as a prisoner and another Jew to be sent to a gas chamber into a triumph by focusing on his field of education and discovering Logotherapy.

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In the film Ikiru ("To Live"), master filmmaker Akira Kurosawa tells the story of Kanji Watanabe, a Japanese bureaucrat with stomach cancer. Finding that he has only one year left to live, he initially slides into depression and then into riotous night-life. All that is changed, however, when he meets Toyo, a young girl who takes pleasure in making toys for young children - it gives her a purpose in life. This wakes Watanabe up to what he is missing in his life: and he makes it his purpose to build a playground in the city, cutting across all the bureaucratic tangles. The most haunting image in the movie is of him sitting on a swing in the playground, singing, immediately prior to his death.



I was thinking of this movie all the time I was reading this book.

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I had heard a lot about it before I actually got around to reading it - and to tell the truth, I was a bit underwhelmed, especially by the second part. Yet I will give it four stars, because I think Viktor Frankl has astutely identified the main reason for existential angst - the lack of meaning in one's life in modern times.

It seems that Dr. Frankl has been engaged in what he calls "logotherapy", where the patient is asked to concentrate outward rather than inward. As opposed to Freud who wanted people to dig deep into their psyches to locate childhood neuroses, Frankl asks them look into the world they live in to find the root of their existential crisis. The root of his philosophy is that most of man’s existential crisis rises from a search for meaning in life. In this, it is opposed to two other famous theories from the Viennese school of psychotherapy – Freud’s, based on the quest for pleasure and Adler’s based on the quest for power.

Frankl has his gruelling experiences in Nazi concentration camps to prove his theory. This comprises more than half of the book, and is really a torture to get through – not because of bad writing, but because he convinces us to accompany him on that nightmare journey. There is no hope, no mercy and no shred of human dignity in these hells on earth. The inmates are stripped of all their possessions including clothes, underfed to the level of starvation and overworked to the extent that many fall down dead from sheer exhaustion. Apart from this, they live in constant fear of being selected for the gas chambers.



What happens to people in this situation? They lose hope, and many of them give up on life. Others become cruel exploiters themselves (the Capos, the guards who are chosen from the ranks of prisoners themselves). Some try to survive by being smarter than others: and yet others find that extra something to pull them through – a meaning for their suffering, something to look forward to in life even in the midst endless misery. They become the rare beacons of light in the pitch darkness. Most of them don’t survive, because of their altruism – as Dr. Frankl says, “the best of us didn’t come back”.

The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity—even under the most difficult circumstances—to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal.

For Frankl, it was the image of his young wife and his love for her which suddenly gave him a purpose in life.

A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth—that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.

He kept on having conversations with her in his mind; even though he knew that she may be dead (she was, in fact). This gave him conviction to go ahead even when death stared him in the face. Dr. Frankl genuinely believes that it is this which helped carry him through, and on the whole, I find myself agreeing with him.

Such a purpose does not necessarily mean salvation – but it does give one the power to endure it until it all ends. Viktor Frankl tells us the story of a young woman, whose vision of a tree branch through the window of the hut in which she lay dying, gave her sustenance.

This young woman knew that she would die in the next few days. But when I talked to her she was cheerful in spite of this knowledge. “I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard,” she told me. “In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously.” Pointing through the window of the hut, she said, “This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness.” Through that window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. “I often talk to this tree,” she said to me. I was startled and didn’t quite know how to take her words. Was she delirious? Did she have occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. “Yes.” What did it say to her? She answered, “It said to me, ‘I am here—I am here—I am life, eternal life.’”

-----------------------------------

One curious fact I noticed was that Frankl’s concept of ‘self-transcendence’, which seemed remarkably close to Joseph Campbell’s concept of the ‘Hero’s Journey’. Also, the three paths which he mentions - through achievement, through selfless love and through cathartic suffering (when unavoidable, not masochistically cjosen) – are applicable to the godhead from three different religions. The path of achievement of the Greek hero: selfless love to the level of dissolution of one’s self in god, that of Radha and Mira Bai for Krishna: and the suffering which cleanses, the way of the cross, the passion of Jesus Christ.

TO COMPOSE a brief synthesis of Viktor Frankl’s lucid insights on a prisoner’s self-transcendence over the inhumanity of the Holocaust is the purpose of this brief essay.

From 1941 until 1945, the Jews were held captive and systematically massacred in the concentration camps under the Nazi territories. The covert methods of this genocide included starvation, heavy manual labor under severe conditions, torture, hanging in the gallows, then mass murders, gas chambers, and crematoriums—methods that, by the final stages of the war, had already decimated approximately 11 million people.

Upon captivity, all possessions were taken away from the prisoners, names replaced by numbers, not a strand of hair left unshaven on their bodies. They were forced to toil like animals, despite their serious malnourishment, and slumber in abominably small bunk beds like stacks of corpses.

Nothing was left of the prisoners’ lives but their hope for liberation and their nakedness to the inevitability of death surrounding them. But amid the gamut of terrors, for three years, Frankl, who was a psychiatrist before the occupation, investigated the camp’s psychology and secretly jotted down notes on scraps of paper that served as the manuscript for his own psychotherapeutic theory: that is logotherapy (logos is Greek for meaning).

In his book Man’s Search for Meaning—an autobiography about his Holocaust experience and an introduction to the concepts of logotherapy—Frankl postulated that “the sort of person a prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, not the result of the camp influences alone.”

Numerous prisoners, after recognizing the impossibility of surviving under the camp’s environment, either ran into the electrically charged fences to commit suicide or simply awaited death to come over their beds. They found no meaning in prolonging their unjustifiable suffering.

But Frankl observed there were a few prisoners who “never lost their ideals in the depths of degradation” and possessed a humor that offered necessary self-detachment and reprieve from the conditions. They endured their suffering honorably and remained as though undaunted in the face of the camp’s thoroughly abject reality.

These odd behaviors, however small in number, Frankl concluded, suffice as proof that the “work of choosing” and the “will to meaning” become the “soul’s weapon in the fight for self-preservation.” As long as there is a deep sense of meaning that fortifies the spirit, an individual can suffer without despair and not become subject to decay.

Logotherapy presupposes that man’s inherent will to meaning and freedom of choice are the authors to his own personality: “Man is more than psyche. […] Man is a self-determining being, man decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment.”

The antithesis of surrendering to the machinery of the base instincts is the discipline of making conscious decisions in each moment. Between stimulus and response is a space of freedom that is solely determined by the individual’s volition.

بهش پنج تا ستاره رو میدم چون هردو تا موضوعی که کتاب و در بر گرفته بود مور پسند بود
هم قسمت اولش که درمورد اردوگاه هایی بود که فرانکل توش قسمتی از زندگیشو سپری میکرد و خاطرات تلخشو برای ما بازگو میکرد
هم قسمت دوم که درمورد لوگوتراپی صحبت شده بود و بدون اینکه فروید رو رد کنه کنارش اومده بود شیوه خودش هم بیان کرده بود که به نظر خیلی خوب توضیح داده بود
اصلا کتاب خسته کننده ای نبود
باعث شد چندتا چیز به اطلاعاتم اضافه شه هم درمورد نازی ها هم از لحاظ روانشناسی :))))
.
در کل این بود که تو که داری رنج میکشی قطعا این سختی که داری تحمل میکنی یه معنی و مفهومی هم داره برات که هیچکس جز خودت نمیتونه به این مفهومه برسه .
.
از همه مراجعینش هم میپرسیده چرا خودکشی نمیکنی؟
و تو جوابشون میفهمیده که داستان از چه قرار بوده و هست و خواهد بود
حقیقتا حال کردم با این بشر!

“A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the "why" for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any 'how'.”
- Viktor E Frankl

I read an interesting article in the NYTimes a couple weeks ago that lead me to finally pick this book up. Actually, a couple good articles. The first was titled 'Love People, Not Pleasure' and it was about how "this search for fame, the lust for material things and the objectification of others — that is, the cycle of grasping and craving — follows a formula that is elegant, simple and deadly: Love things, use people." The author uses an inversion of this formula that DOES lead to happiness: Use things, Love People (also quoted by Spencer W. Kimball). This article + another recent one from the Atlantic titled 'There's More to Life Than Being Happy' made it clearly evident to me that I needed to finally dust off my yellowed, Goodwill copy of Man's Search for Meaning, plug in my earbuds and experience this book that the Universe clearly wanted me to read this week.

  

So, imagine a renowned Jewish therapist writes in 1946 (in 9 days) about his experiences at and survival in Auschwitz, and then adds his own psychotherapeutic method (Logotherapy), finding happiness by finding a meaning, a responsibility, a love, and ultimately self-determining. Perhaps it is a consequence of Frankl's work surrounding me in other writings, in popular psychotherapy, in various internet Memes and articles OR perhaps it is just a consequence of my own resilience to my own suffering that this book wasn't much of a revelation. I was like ... yup, makes a lot of sense. Good job. I think it is a great book for what it is. I just don't always get super-excited by self-help psychology books. This one is on the better end of the bell curve for this type, but I guess my problem is with the type. Other than that (minus 1-star for my type bias) it was a great book.

Throughout history humanity has always been in search of purpose and meaning to our existence on this earth. One of the oldest jokes in the world is the young person asking the ancient one, “What is the meaning of life?” and receiving some sort of reply like, “If you find out, you let me know, okay?!”

Viktor Frankl’s classic work was originally published in 1946. I own a 1984 paperback edition of the book which had already been through seventy-three editions in English alone, not to mention nineteen other languages. I mention this because all other facts I quote will come from my copy of the book, unless stated otherwise; for more recent information, the reader is encouraged to look up Dr. Frankl and this seminal work in psychiatry on-line and see all the further developments which have occurred in subsequent years. It is truly staggering the influence this book has had.

The first half of the book is devoted to the good doctor’s life-transforming experiences as a ‘guest’ in a Nazi concentration camp. Perhaps I should not jest—even lightly—about such a serious matter and yet I suspect our author would not mind. He was a man of incredible insight and wisdom. Humor was a resource he well-appreciated; encouraging his patients to use it as a part of therapy.

Prior to this I had never read past the first half of the book; I was only interested in the autobiographical portion of the book. As I have mentioned in previous posts, a surfeit of psychology books in college, both undergraduate and graduate level, left me with no taste for further reading on the subject. More is the pity because Dr. Frankl’s book is as much philosophy and religion as it is dry scientific studies and theories on human behavior patterns. His extraordinary experiences coupled with a brilliant mind would not allow his thinking to be pigeon-holed as many contemporary books on the subject seem to be.

Without further rhetoric on my part, here are some of my favorite parts and quotes from Man’s Search For Meaning:

‘I think it was Lessing who once said, “There are things which must cause you to lose your reason or you have none to lose.” An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.’ (p32)

‘Strangely enough, a blow which does not even find its mark can, under certain circumstances, hurt more than one that finds its mark.’ (p36)

‘Some men lost all hope, but it was the incorrigible optimists who were the most irritating companions.’ (p46)

‘In spite of all the enforced physical and mental primitiveness of the life in the concentration camp, it was possible for a rich spiritual life to deepen. Sensitive people who were used to a rich intellectual life may have suffered much pain (they were often of a delicate constitution), 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. Only in this way can one explain the apparent paradox that some prisoners of a less hardy make-up often seemed to survive camp life better than did those of a more robust nature.’ (p47)

‘I understood how a man who has nothing left in the world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way—an honorable way—in such a position a man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment.’ (p49)

(Dr. Frankl lost his entire family to the gas chambers. In the above quote, he is describing how he used the image of his wife—already dead, although he did not know it—to inspire, uplift and keep him alive through the long days of his captivity.)

‘To draw an analogy: a man’s suffering is similar to the behavior of a gas . . . Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the “size” of the human suffering is absolutely relative.’ (p55)

‘Does this not bring to mind the story of Death in Teheran? A rich and mighty Persian once walked in his garden with one of his servants. The servant cried that he had just encountered Death who threatened him. He begged his master to give him the fastest horse so he could make haste and flee to Teheran, which he could reach that same evening. The master consented and the servant galloped off on the horse. On returning to his house the master himself met Death, and questioned him, “Why did you terrify and threaten my servant?” “I did not threaten him; I only showed surprise in still finding him here when I planned to meet him tonight in Teheran,” said Death.’

‘Everything can be taken from a 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.’ (p75)

‘If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death.’¹ (p76)

‘(What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you.) Not only our experiences, but all we have done, whatever great thoughts we may have had, and all we have suffered, all this is not lost, though it is past; we have brought it into being. Having been is also a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind.’ (p90)

‘A man’s concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease. (His) suffering may well be a human achievement, especially if the suffering grows out of existential frustration. . . . Logotherapy regards its assignment as that of assisting the patient to find meaning in his life.’ (p108)

One of the most interesting treatment techniques which Dr. Frankl offers his patients is something he calls “paradoxical intention” based on, ‘the twofold fact that fear brings about that which one is afraid of, and that hyper-intention makes impossible what one wishes.’ (p126) He goes on to describe a man he cured of profuse sweating by instructing the man to imagine increasing his output of sweat under stressful situations.

While our author believes in responsibility for one’s actions (he advocates a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast) he also believes in every person’s free will to determine their own future at all times. He cites a case of a well-known Nazi mass-murderer who made a stunning turn-around later in life; he has no sympathy for pre-determinism. ‘How can we dare to predict the behavior of man?’ (p134)

Whether we are aware of it or not and regardless of our willingness to admit to it, we all have agendas in our reading. For myself, in the past I was often unaware and/or dishonest about my own reasons for selecting this or that book. However, what I find most enlightening now is when I begin a book for one purpose and finish it for quite another.

In the case of Man’s Search For Meaning I began the book in search of arguments to refute George Orwell’s conclusion of the novel 1984 and finished this present work in total fascination with Logotherapy and its associated theories and treatments.

Dec 21, 2017: Edited for errors