Man's Search For Meaning

Rating:
Summary: A God-send
Review: This is an awesome book, written by a survivor of Auschwitz death camp in Nazi Germany, and a man who is surely one of the most gifted and insightful psychiatrists who has lived. Indeed, a psychiatrist who has personally faced such extremity, is a psychiatrist worth listening to.

Frankl is a man of faith, and he explains that there exists a deep, spiritual core within each of us which cannot be crushed or taken away from us - no matter how grim or awful our external circumstances may be. He says that from the soul's reckoning, tragedy can be the greatest opportunity for triumph. While in the camp, even though Frankl had no idea how many hours, days or years he had left to live, he realised that during the moment now, he had a choice whether to be free, or whether to be imprisoned. That is, to be free in his spirit. During his experience in Auschwitz, Frankl literally found himself on the bottom line, and from there, he made the most amazing discovery of all. He discovered the truth of his own spiritual awakening.

The most effective way I can convey the Frankl's message, and the profundity of his work, is to share some quotes from the book itself. Frankl says...

"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."

... "One of the main features of human existence is the capacity to rise above such conditions, to grow beyond them."

... "Often it is just such an exceptionally difficult external situation which gives man the opportunity to grow spiritually beyond himself. ... To be sure, a human being is a finite thing, and his freedom is restricted. It is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take stand toward the conditions."

... "Even the helpless victim of a hopeless situation, facing a fate he cannot change, may rise above himself, may grow beyond himself, and by doing so change himself. He may turn a personal tragedy into a triumph."

Frankl closes the book with a profound, bedrock refutation against Sigmund Freud's theory, and also against materialists' theories that human beings are 'conditioned' by their external surroundings. He quotes Freud, who had asserted, "Let one attempt to expose a number of the most diverse people uniformly to hunger. With the increase of the imperative urge of hunger, all individual differences will blur, and in their stead will appear the uniform expression of the one unstilled urge."

Frankl replies, "Thank heaven, Sigmund Freud was spared knowing the concentration camps from the inside. His subjects lay on a couch designed in the plush style of Victorian culture, not in the filth of Auschwitz. There, the 'individual differences' did not 'blur' but, on the contrary, people became more different: people unmasked themselves, both the swine and saints. ... We may predict the movements of a machine, of an automation; more than this, we may even try to predict the mechanisms of the human psyche as well. But man is more than psyche."

Frankl's conclusions are profound: "The self transcendence of human existence ... denotes the fact that being human always points, and is directed, to something, or Someone, other than oneself."

Overall, this is an extraordinarily profound and unique book which, at times, proves quite heavy and difficult to digest, but once one gets in tune with the author's message, then its truth and light becomes fully clear, apparent and undeniable.

Certainly not a light read, yet highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: The most important book I've ever read
Review: Of the many thousands of books I have read this is the most important. Frankl survived Auschwitz and derived meaning from the experience. Can we do any less in the face of our own small problems?

The book, to a large degree, is based on a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche, "He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how." It's true, and Frankl's life proves it.

Frankl doesn't provide a road map for finding the meaning in every experience. He does something better. He asks us to ask ourselves what our experiences mean. We already know, if only we will stop to think. My favorite example is that of a man who greaves the loss of his wife. Frankl asks him why he greaves. The man answers that he greaves because he loved his wife. Frankl asks him, "Isn't that a good thing?" A light goes on in the man's mind, he nods, and gets up and leaves. Frankl's book can make a light go on in all of our minds. All we have to do is spend a couple of hours reading this wonderful book.

Rating:
Summary: Very Inspirational Thinking
Review: We really do only have one constant and irrevocable freedom--the freedom to choose our attitude in any situation, no matter how grave. This gives one a silver lining in any situation. Frankl shows us that the true test of one's existence comes only in the times of deepest suffering. The use of the word suffering is used so loosely in pschycological texts, in the context of our own lives, most of our suffering only construes to be the everyday problems of our existence. Recognizing this connection gives the reader a better understanding of the ideas of transendence, existence and love. A very enlightening school of thought that is well supported and easily understood through Frankl's many examples from his own practice. An excellent read!!!

Rating:
Summary: Enlightening.
Review: Can a man who experienced the incredible horrors of concentration camps in World War 2 produce a book that continues to both touch and instruct the soul nearly six decades after those experiences? The answer is simply yes. The author paints a remarkable picture. The first half of the book recounts his experiences in Nazi concentration camps. The fact that he survived at all is nothing less than miraculous. In the second half, Dr. Frankl writes of logotherapy. Different from other better known forms of therapy, logotherapy focuses on meaning in one's life. It is this which he believes is what deep down we all strive for more, far more, than anything else. There are intriguing concepts such as paradoxical thinking, etc. A remarkable book written by a truly remarkable man. I wholeheartedly recommend Man's Search for Meaning.

Rating:
Summary: a "why" to live...
Review: An American doctor once asked Viktor Frankl to explain the difference between conventional psychoanalysis and logotherapy. Before answering, Frankl asked the doctor for his definition of psychoanalysis. The man said, "During psychoanalysis, the patient must lie down on a couch and tell you things which sometimes are very disagreeable to tell." Frankl immediately replied by saying: "Now, in logotherapy the patient may remain sitting erect but he must hear things which sometimes are very disagreeable to hear." By this he meant that in logotherapy the patient is actually confronted with and reoriented toward the MEANING of his life. The role of the therapist, then, is to help the patient discover a purposefulness in his life. Frankl's theory is that man's search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a "secondary rationalization" of instinctual drives. Whereas Freudian psychoanalysis focuses on the "will to pleasure" and Adlerian psychology focuses on the "will to power" it can be said that Frankl's logotherapy focuses on the "will to meaning." Does man give in to to conditions or stand up to them? According to Frankl, the strength of a person's sense of meaning, responsibility, and purpose is the greatest determining factor in how that question will be answered. He believed that "man is ultimately self-determining" and as such, "does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment."

The first (and largest) section of this book is the searing autobiographical account of the author's experience as a longtime prisoner in a concentration camp. These camps claimed the lives of his father, mother, brother, and wife. Frankl's survival and the subsequent miracle of this book are a testimony to man's capacity to rise above his outward fate. As Gordon W. Allport states in the preface, "A psychiatrist who personally has faced such extremity is a psychiatrist worth listening to."

I agree, and highly reccommend this book. As the sub-title says, it is an "introduction" to logotherapy, and anyone who wants to go deeper into the principles and practical application of Frankl's existential psychiatry should go to his excellent "The Doctor And The Soul".

Frankl was fond of quoting Nietzsche's dictum..."He who has a WHY to live can bear with almost any HOW."

Rating:
Summary: A real story about concentration camps
Review: Besides presenting his Logotherapy in a nutshell, Viktor Frankl tells us about the horrors of concentration camps and how some people survived - and why. A fascinating book on human behavior.

Rating:
Summary: Nice superstructure, weak foundation
Review: Jewish German psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl, fathered the "Third School of Viennese Psychiatry," known "logotherapy." This book introduces his philosophy as he tells the gripping account of his three years in the Nazi death camps World War II.

Frankl wrote seventeen volumes in German on the principles of logotherapy which he weaves into this short book, so it is difficult to summarize his philosophy in a review! Nevertheless, most basic to logotherapy is Frankl's strong conviction that man is responsible. I agree. Unfortunately, the great defect of Frankl's system is the lack of objective ground given for this responsibility! Humans are responsible, yes. But to what or who? Frankl fails to answer this. Logotherapy is then essentially a humanized moralism-better than the nihilism which was bred by Neitzsche,but still short of what men really need.

The following paragraph represents the strength and contribution of logotherapy to the field of psychiatrics: "We who lived in

concentration camps can remember the men who walked through huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from 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."

This is also the essence of the proactivity which Stephen Covey commends in Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, the book in which I first learned of Frankl. In and of itself, this concept is good. But concepts cannot be divorced from a world-view. And a world-view which isn't built on objective reality is faulty.

According to Frankl, the basic motivation in man is "the striving to find a meaning in one's life" - notice he says a meaning, and not meaning. He didnt' believe it was possible to define meaning generally for all people: "The meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day, and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment."

Frankl's attempt to relieve the "existential frustration" of human beings fails to deliver right here; for though a subjectively perceived meaning may help a person endure suffering (as it did him), this meaning may have no objective ground in reality, and thus be REALLY meaningless after all, leaving the person deluded and deceived. Frankl says, "self-actualization cannot be attained if it is made an end in itself, but only as a side-effect of self-transcendence." But is not self-transcendence impossible if there is no objective reality which is transcendent?! Logotherapy leaves us to ourselvs after all.

According to Frankl's philosphy, one can discover meaning in life in one of three ways: "by doing a deed, by experiencing a value [such as love], or by suffering." Unfortunately, logotherapy fails to connect deeds, experiences, or suffering to anything objective; God is virtually absent.

Having said all of this, commendable in the book is Frankl's conviction that liberty be balanced with responsibility: "freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast." True.

I also commend Frankl's rejection of pure naturalism:

"there is a danger inherent in the teaching of man's 'nothingbutness,' the theory that man is nothing but the result of biological, psychological and sociological conditions, or the product of heredity and environment. Such a view of man makes him into a robot, not a human being. This neurotic fatalism is fostered and strengthened by a psychotherapy which denies that man is free." Thus, Darwin and Freud both suffer from Frankl's analysis.

Of interest is Frankl's description of logotherapy as a technique, where he discusses "anticipatory anxiety" and its cure, "parodoxical intention." This sounded a lot like reverse psychology to me!

I'm not a psychiatrist or the son of a psychiatrist,but I am a pastor, a theologian, and an amateur philosopher; and in my judgment, Frankl leaves us with some helpful principles, but they are like a beautiful superstructure with no foundation, and thus, shaky. Man's search for meaning will ultimately fail if it does't terminate in the purpose for which human beings are created,namely, "to glorify God and enjoy Him forever." Though Frankl has some good thoughts, I still prefer Saint Augustine who prayed to God: "Thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee." That is where meaning in life is ultimately found.

Rating:
Summary: A meaningful and important book
Review: I have read few books that contain as much wisdom in as few pages as Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning". As a professional psychologist, Frankl's unique point-of-view within the Nazi concentration camps allowed him to observe phenomena that others would have missed. The theories that he refined while imprisoned, termed "logotherapy" (meaning-therapy) are a wonderful way a looking at ourselves and our problems. Logotherapy focuses on the importance of finding meaning in our lives and our activities - the very factor that Frankl noted was the most valuable in surviving the camps.

I cannot give a higher recommendation from this book. It is profound, moving, informative - and under two-hundred pages. Without a doubt it is worth the handful of hours required to read it.

Rating:
Summary: a messenger to mankind
Review: Frankl presents the horrendous conditions of Auschwitz with the matter-of-fact tone of a sympathetic but objective observer, much like a clinician who cares deeply about his patients but does not allow his emotions to interfere with his analysis. He shows the reader a wide range of human behavior under extreme duress, including examples of the best and worst in our nature. It is hard to imagine anyone reading this first part, his condensed description of surviving the death camps, without being moved, without becoming deeply thoughtful, even stunned, in the face of man's inhumanity to man, and conversely of what it can mean to be truly human.

The book continues with Frankl describing his philosophy of psychiatric treatment, "logotherapy", that is, therapy based on discovering meaning in one's life. Based in large part on his observations in the camps, Frankl developed a method of treating depression which rejected the Freudian approach of dwelling on the past, wallowing in childhood traumas, in favor of focusing on the future, discovering personal meaning in one's present context. The idea of proper context is important here. Frankl enjoins against the notion of a One True Meaning of Life. The analogy he uses is that of asking the chess grand master, "What is the best move in the world?" It's an absurd question as it stands, of course, as every move must be evaluated in light of a particular game, the current layout of pieces, the personalities and strategies of each player, etc. Similarly, the constellation of meanings that lend our lives substance and power can very well change over time. The content of the answer is not as important as asking the right question: "For me, in this place, at this time, what gives or can give my existence the most meaning?" [that's a paraphrase, not a quote] Acting always in accordance with the honest answer to this question is, in Frankl's view, the most sustainable route to happiness throughout our lives.

Rating:
Summary: Search no more.
Review: This book was everything it's title suggests. This coming from a person who has sworn off reading anything with existential undertones (although I still enjoy Woody Allen flicks). I encourage everyone to read this book. It was very refreshing to read something that had a positive answer for the " existential vacuum" (finding no meaning in ones life). In a "nutshell" it is... that EVERYTHING has meaning....even suffering. Simply put, but I was not convinced of this until I read Victor Fankl's MAN'S SEARCH FOR MEANING.