This is my first blog post! Please find below a short summary of the book Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl.
Viktor Frankl (1905-1997), a Viennese psychiatrist and neurologist, gave the world “Man’s Search for Meaning,” a thesis on human purpose created from his experience as a prisoner at four Nazi concentration camps. As a psychiatrist, he offers both his own intrapsychic experience and observations of other prisoners. The vivid text gives a precious, durable opportunity to bear witness to both the outward terror of the Nazi Holocaust and the interior visceral experience of life and death in a Nazi concentration camp. What a meaningful gift it is to bear witness to his experience through his powerful text. Photos and prosaic accounts do not approach the soul-touching power of Frankl’s writing. Through the horrific trials he experienced and witnessed – a world in which nearly all that is “human” is stripped away – he hypothesizes what it truly means to be human. He answers the question – when everything is dehumanized, what is left of human experience?
The inalienable dignity of purpose and meaning
One of Frankl’s central observations is that human dignity remains – despite starvation, lack of sleep, abuse, illness, and suffering – when there persists the “last inner freedom” of the ability to “choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.” Frankl made this observation in witnessing “those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost,” as they decided to “not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self.” Frankl observed that the majority of prisoners were dejected and believed “that the real opportunity of life had passed,” and “did not take their life seriously and despised it as something of no consequence . . . preferring to close their eyes and to live in the past.” These prisoners found life meaningless. Frankl observed, by contrast, individuals who approached an “exceptionally difficult external situation” as an opportunity to find meaning and growth beyond themselves. These prisoners clung to an essential, inviolable purpose locked within the human experience.
Logotherapy’s meaning-making
In the horror of Auschwitz, Frankl observed the potential resilience of a person’s sense of meaning, even in facing death. From this, he developed a psychotherapeutic philosophy (called logotherapy) centered on the power of meaning as a tiny burning flame in a torrent of rain and wind. Human life has unconditional meaning and unconditional inherent dignity. Each person’s value remains with them. Even if the person has diminished future potential, the value they created in the past is incontrovertible and remains as a permanent impact in the world. In Frankl’s logotherapy, humans find meaning in three ways – by creating and doing, loving and living, and growing from adversity. The latter is similar to the concept of post-traumatic growth – the ability to choose to be proud of and “ennobled” by one’s suffering, rather than diminished.
This book itself is a demonstration of the power of meaning-making through adversity. Beyond the powerful historical account, Man’s Search for Meaning is deeply personally affecting by inspiring a reckoning with the meaning found in one’s own life. The many forms of meaning provide fertile fields for growing happiness in life.
Your local library system likely has this book available, including for free as an ebook. The Miami-Dade Public Library System offers the ebook through the Axis360 service. My favorite website to buy used books is www.abebooks.com.