I always value belonging to a community and network of readers. This title, Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor E Frankl, was recommended to me by my daughter via a coworker of hers. I thank them both for this insightful read. I borrowed an e-copy from the Brooklyn Public Library (be warned, there’s a waiting list) and I’ll probably purchase a hardcopy for future reads.
Viktor Frankl survived four concentration camps. His book, Man’s Search For Meaning, was first published under a different title in 1949, and then in English in 1959 and has been translated into 24 languages, selling over 16 million copies. The book explores why he believes how he survived.
Mind you, even though the author first tells us his experience and doesn’t go into great detail, because he says that’s been covered in countless accounts and he just wants to give the reader background for his analysis in the second part of the book, his account is still chilling, a horror. It still saddens and confounds me how humans can be so cruel and indifferent to one another.
The author brings detailed, thoughtful analysis to his experience – of all the suffering one endures, all the cruelty, where the one thing you have left is how you choose to react to one’s hardship. Do you keep your dignity and remain humane and unselfish or do you try to survive at all costs, losing yourself in the process, becoming nothing more than an animal. The author developed a form of psychoanalysis called logotherapy, where you search for the meaning of human existence and man searches for that meaning. His experience in the concentration camps reinforced his theory, that once a person has a reason to live, or hope, then the hardship of how to survive becomes doable.
Frankl believes this is how he survived, looking to the future. He thought he was at his lowest enduring the cruelty of the camps. But when he returned home, he found out he lost everything, his parents, his brother, and his wife. Even with this loss of being left alone and suffering through a 3-year ordeal in concentration camps, he strongly believed in reconciliation and not revenge – Frankl’s quote, “I do not forget any good deed done to me, and I do not carry a grudge for a bad one.” When asked the meaning of his life, Frankl agreed it was to help others find the meaning of theirs.
Viktor Frankl was born in 1905 and died in 1997. Almost the entire span of his life he wanted to help people. He decided he wanted to be a doctor at age three and as a teen, he was fascinated with psychology, experimental psychology, and psychoanalysis, particularly about the meaning of life. He is recognized as establishing logotherapy as a form of clinical psychotherapy. Viktor Frankl was a truly remarkable, exceptional human being. Please give this title, Man’s Search For Meaning, at least one read and share it with others!