Man's Search for Meaning

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl (based on 82 customer reviews)

(Mass Market Paperback)
Edition: 1
Author: Viktor E. Frankl
Publisher: Beacon Press

List Price: $6.99
Amazon's Price: $6.99

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Most useful review as voted by customers:
89 out of 92 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 3/5/07

A powerful book that can reshape how you think

Dr. Frankl's book is divided into two parts. In the first part, he eloquently describes how he survived a Nazi concentration camp during World War Two. He took this terrible "opportunity" to learn how people survive crises and deprivation and continuously life-threatening horror. This section will be valuable to anyone, and especially to those of us who have survived tragedy and trauma of any kind (in other words, just about anyone again). The bottom line beyond survival is not about learning to collaborate or being physically strong or not "rocking the boat," although those can be factors; the main road to survival a horror is through holding onto core beliefs and values, and an image of yourself in a better future, toward which you strive.

The second part of the book describes the philosophy of life and the existential theory of psychology that Dr. Frankl derived from his experiences. I am a practicing clinical psychologist and, while Dr. Frankl probably would not label my brand of psychotherapy as his "logotherapy," I credit this book as providing me with a framework that had been missing in my work. Through my education, I learned many techniques that were useful to me, and I read about many theories of psychology and psychotherapy that were interesting, but I ended up with a set of tools but no toolbox to put them in. "Man's Search for Meaning" gave me the toolbox, or the framework that tied everything else together. Read it; it will challenge you and probably change you.

44 out of 48 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 9/7/06

Fascinating and thought provoking

There is something to be said of a person who can go through a horrific journey such as the atrocities of Auschwitz and recall it with such clarity in order to help others. I was completely emotionally overwhelmed by the first half of the book-which is a narrative of what he experienced and fascinated with the next half which is an explanation of logotherapy.
This is not an overly long or hard book to read in spite of some of the subject matter. My version was a thin paperback that I finished in a few days. It took me longer to fully appreciate because I hung onto each page and felt a responsibility to make sure I understood his journey and how he came to his conclusions.
I recommend this book for anyone.

24 out of 24 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 4/2/07

A new approach to life

This book is a true classic in that it speaks to every generation. Even though it was written in the immediate post-Holocaust period and was one of the first personal accounts of the Nazi death camps, Frankl's brief account has new meaning today. In today's world, many people are constantly pursuing pleasure in the form of wealth, success, or sexual fulfillment. Although there is nothing intrinsically wrong with these, Frankl's point is that life must have meaning. A person can inject meaning into even the most degraded life conditions by clinging to his values. But without meaning, life can drag on, seemingly without end. The "purpose-driven life" is the only life that leads to true fulfillment.

21 out of 22 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 2/20/07

"He who has a 'why' to live for can bear with almost any 'how'."--Nietzsche

This book was read many years ago at a time when this reviewer felt nearly crushed under the weight of family and personal troubles. It is not light and diverting reading; indeed, in part it is terrifying. Yet the memory of it has persisted across all these years.

A prominent psychiatrist in pre-World War II Vienna, Doctor Frankl found himself suddenly stripped of all money, possessions, position, respect, and ultimately, his family--including his pregnant and beloved wife. After confinement in some of the smaller concentration camps, he ultimately arrived at Auschwitz--the lowest circle of the man-made Hell that was the system of concentration and extermination camps (in German, 'Konzentrationslager' and 'Vernichtungslager'). There, his medical skills were not employed until nearly the end of the war. Instead, he was employed at hard labor just like the rest of the men in his prison block who were marched every day to their work site before dawn and marched back late at night.

The most striking thing about Frankl's account of his imprisonment (to me at least) was not the backbreaking work, the all-pervading fear, nor even the constant, maddening hunger; but the unrelenting degradation of the prisoners in order to get them to accept the Nazi's judgment of them as sub-human. For example, when carrying heavy tanks filled with human sewage for disposal, almost inevitably some would splash prisoners full in the face. Any move to wipe one's face, or even show instinctive grimaces of disgust would be punished by the Capos (trusted prisoners, chosen mostly for their brutality) with a prompt beating from a club or whip. Because of this, the normal reactions of prisoners to being befouled were soon suppressed. Every attempt possible was made to degrade the prisoners by the (frequently delighted) SS guards and the Capos. Subjected to this treatment, some prisoners gave up hope and committed suicide by running into the inner electric fence that encircled the camp. Others would lie motionless in their bunks in their own waste--ignoring pleas to get up from fellow prisoners, and blows from guards alike--smoking up all of the cigarettes they might have been saving for barter.

Faced with this, Frankl combated this potential demoralization in himself and others by leading the prisoners back to their own humanity. "Every freedom may be taken away from a man but one; the freedom to choose what attitude he will take towards his conditions." Despite every attempt to rob them of human dignity, prisoners still had a choice. Would they take an attitude of 'I die tomorrow; you die today' and behave as starving beasts--stealing other prisoner's food, for example; or would they show that they were neither animals nor things, but human beings? Some Amazon reviews of an earlier edition of this book seemed to imply that Frankl had judged those who despaired and died to be weak, or that he was somehow 'better' than they for having survived. Those reviewers can only have done this by forgetting what they had read. Frankl instead writes with sorrow that "the best of us did not survive", warmly remembering comrades who ended their days offering comfort and sometimes their last bit of bread to fellow prisoners.

We live in an age when the feeling that one's life is meaningless is rampant even compared to the recent past. Many compensate by drowning themselves in their career; working fourteen hour days, always gabbing into their cell phone, and carrying their laptop everywhere so they can do some work even in what would be an idle moment. Others escape into escapist and/or authoritarian religion, gladly handing over the miserable burden of their freedom and the need to find meaning to someone else. (Frankl--an observant Jew throughout his life--was not anti-religious I should point out. He writes that a therapist's attempts to debunk genuine religious or spiritual views are an unethical attempt to force the therapist's views on a client.) Still others use alcohol and/or drugs (including perfectly legal drugs)as a response to a sense of life's meaninglessness or futility.

Frankl writes that our struggle--even our despair--over finding meaning in our lives is not an psychiatric illness, or even a precursor to one. Potential readers of this book will not find "The Meaning of Life". What they will find is the story of a man who was compelled to develop the tools to find his own meaning, his 'why'--at a time when his life depended on it in a way seldom seen in life and history. Hopefully, these tools will benefit others as they have benefited me. As someone wrote of Ralph Waldo Emerson, "He did not try to lead others to himself, but to themselves."

18 out of 21 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 3/20/07

OUTSTANDING!

The author was sent to Auschwitz. After a while, disgust, horror and pity went numb; you could not feel them anymore. Apathy was the second stage: a "protective shell" to preserve one's life. Under-nourishment, absence of sexual urge came third. Thus, he began to reconstruct the manuscript he lost in the disinfection chamber. People with intellectually rich life were able to retreat "within," away from their terrible surroundings. Love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Salvation of man through love and in love (p. 57) He answered YES to the question of the ultimate purpose of existence (p. 60). Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even under tremendous stress. Outside influences are not the only cause of a person's behavior. Only the men who allowed their inner hold on their moral and spiritual selves to subside, eventually fell victim to the camp's degenerating influence (p. 90). Any prisoner who lost faith in the future was doomed: to let go of the spiritual hold on life, caused one to die. Frankl's views truly turn Maslow's hierarchy upside down (this suggestion of mine used to send my former fiancee into fits of rage, who loved Maslow's view because it "justified" her lack of control in her life and her innate inability to grow spiritually and mentally).

15 out of 17 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 4/23/07

An Emergency Manual for Thinking for those Suffering

I was originally attracted to this book on the recommendation of syndicated radio talk show host Dennis Prager, who characterized it as "one of the best ten books ever written." I'm not sure that I would agree with this statement, but agree that in the massive history of book publication, in certainly ranks within the first one thousand.

Victor Frankl was a WWII concentration camp survivor and founder of the third Viennese school of psychotherapy, namely "logotherapy." (The first, of course being classic Freudian psychoanalysis, and the second the Adlerian variation of this).

The book is divided into two parts. In the first part, Frankl relates his experiences as a concentration camp inmate, and the internal psychological devices he used and taught to other inmates to cope with it. Even a non-psychologist would be interested in it, especially those who perceive themselves to be suffering unjustly (such as any jail inmate). These ideas later coalesced into a separate school of psychotherapy, logotherapy. The second section of the book is apted referred to by the author as "logotherapy in a nutshell."

I would characterize this book as one which you would want to read sometime before you die. It is concise and relatively short (179 pages in my paperback edition), and is thus a relatively fast read.

9 out of 10 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 7/13/06

A must read!

I'm surprised there aren't a lot more reviews on this book. It might just be the best book I've ever read (and it's really short and easy to read).

Viktor Frankl is an amazing man- a psychiatrist who lived in the concentration camps during WWII, and not only made it through and came out alive, but went on to touch many people's lives.

The first half of the book, Viktor takes you through his experiences as a prisoner of the concentration camps. It's a unique perspective because he's really getting into what happens mentally to the prisoners and guards. Why do some continue to have the will to live despite everything? Why do others give up and let themselves die? Why do some prisoners show incredible cruelness toward their fellow prisoners, while some of the guards show compassion and kindness? Everything seems to hint to the fact that we are not just a product of our experiences. Even in a concentration camp where it seems like every freedom is stripped of the prisoner, the prisoner is still free on some level to make choices about his own will to live and his own character. So what is it that causes different men in the same situation to make different choices?

The second part of the book delves into the answers he came to for all of those questions, as Viktor explains his psychotherapy (or "logotherapy"). I'm not going to get into all of it now, because I'd rather just recommend you read it yourself. I am sure you will not be dissapointed!

5 out of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 6/16/06

fabulous book about an incredibly important topic

Frankl touches upon the most fundamental aspect to some of the psychiatric problems (and non-psychiatric) that face us today: life lacking meaning. his genius and foresight that is seen as he details his experiences and perspective while in the camps is a feat, or rather a level of magnitude, to which we should all aspire. I read the book in 1 1/2 days, it was a truly compelling read. I hope it affects everyone else as positively as it affected me. Happy (or at least "meaningful") reading.
-S.

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