Man's Search for Meaning

Author: Viktor E. Frankl
Genre: nonfiction, psychology
Publication info: Washington Square Press, 1984 (first published in English in 1959, and it has gone through many editions)
Pages: 221 (including bibliography)

This book makes me want to shout for joy!

Undoubtedly you've heard of this book. I think I first heard about it when I was in fourth or fifth grade, and it wasn't until now that I finally read it. I can see now that I was missing out on something great. If you are one of those people, like I was, who says, "I've heard that's a good book. Maybe I should read it," I say, Yes, you definitely should!

Most people know this book as one man's harrowing account of his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp. It is certainly that, but it is also much more. It is not so much a story of what happened to him and his friends but an explanation of what he learned from those experiences—and how he took what he learned and created a revolutionary school of psychiatry called logotherapy.

Logotherapy is the therapy of meaning. The preface to the edition I read explains logotherapy as a sort of Freudian analysis turned on its head. Whereas Freud and his followers would have you search into your childhood for some kind of trauma—usually sexual in nature—and confront that to solve your problems, Frankl and his school asks you to dig deep for a meaning in your life—a purpose for living. Frankl himself, for example, often thought of his wife while in the camp. In fact, he talked with her, and doing so kept him going even while everything around him was so terrible.

Frankl's utterly realistic approach is refreshing. During my short-lived stint as an English major, I took a couple classes on literary theory, and I quickly grew frustrated with the psychoanalytical technique of finding sexual symbolism in everything. But instead of having us look at our frustrations in base, animal desires, logotherapy has us look at our existential crisis, our search for meaning. We are humans first, animals second.

I suppose one of the greatest lessons to learn from this book is that no matter what our circumstances are, we can choose how we respond to them. It's hard to imagine circumstances more appalling than what Frankl faced. He really had nothing but his own life, and that just barely. But he found a meaning in his life and chose to live for it. All of us can do the same.

The book has two major sections. The first is the story of his time in concentration camps. It is disturbing and heartbreaking, but the way he writes about it will surprisingly give you hope. The second part summarizes the practice of logotherapy. Since that part is more abstract than the first, I thought it would be harder to read, but I actually really enjoyed it. It's grounded in reality as I mentioned, and the way Frankl understands life and people is very reassuring. It was at the end of these more abstract parts that I wanted to shout for joy.

I think everyone would benefit from reading this book. Viktor Frankl was a brilliant man, but I think his real greatness was his warm, caring insight into the nature of human beings. Read this book. Isn't it about time you did?