Man's Search For Meaning Book Summary

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Brief Summary

Viktor Frankl’s story of tragedy and horror in Nazi concentration camps is the backdrop for an exploration of logotherapy, or the idea that man is motivated by the search for meaning. In his exploration of his life and his therapeutic principles, Frankl explains the ways meaning can be found in life, the crises that can occur from a lack of meaning, and the value of tragic optimism. He insists that our attitude can alter the way we view the world, no matter our circumstances.

About the Author

Viktor Frankl was a Jewish psychologist from Vienna. He survived four concentration camps and went on to publish more than thirty books on clinical psychology and psychotherapy. He is the founder of logotherapy.

Topics

Biography & Memoir Philosophy

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Man’s Search for Meaning is the story of Viennese psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s experience finding the meaning of life while imprisoned in a series of Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Frankl discusses his own experience and the experience of other prisoners to create a psychoanalytic model called “logotherapy,” which centers on finding meaning and purpose in life. The main idea of Frankl’s manifesto is that humans can survive nearly anything, and are able to find meaning and purpose in even the most atrocious and disturbing conditions. He is certain that our primary focus in life is finding meaning, and that your attitude about life shapes your experience of it. He also makes the claim that we are obligated to take on the tasks that life sets before us, even if they seem impossible or are rooted in suffering.

Frankl established himself as an eminent psychoanalyst at a young age but chose not to escape the concentration camps because of his family.

Viktor Frankl grew up in Vienna at the beginning of the twentieth century. He was interested in psychology at a young age. He wrote to Sigmund Freud when he was only sixteen to share some of his ideas about psychology and the mind. Freud was interested in Frankl’s thoughts and had one of the boy’s papers published. This helped establish Frankl as a preeminent thinker in his field - by age thirty-nine, he was the head of neurology at Vienna’s Jewish hospital. Frankl began to fear for his life when the Nazis closed his hospital in 1939.

The US consulate knew about Frankl’s work and offered him a rare opportunity. He was sent a visa in 1942, long after most people were given a chance to escape the Germans. Frankl was working on a manuscript at the time and wanted to finish his book in America. But after a discussion with his father damaged Jewish synagogue, Frankl realized he could never abandon his family. He let his visa application lapse and was deported alongside his pregnant wife and parents in September 1942.

From September 1942 until 1945, Frankl was moved between four different camps: Theresienstadt, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Kaufering and Dachau.

In the camps, Frankl witnessed three stages of reaction for both prisoners and guards: denial, apathy, and acceptance.

Frankl’s stages of response to life in concentration camps are in some ways similar to the stages of grief, though he leaves out anger, bargaining, and depression. There is also a fourth stage, which comes after being released from the camps, in which prisoners slowly reacclimate to “normal” life. Frankl explains his reasoning for the three stages based on his own experience in the camps.

The process begins with denial. Prisoners don’t want to believe the conditions in the camps are as bad as they suspect. Frankl writes about being greeted by the healthiest prisoners, which only increased the denial - it’s easy to believe it won’t be that bad if these senior prisoners can make jokes.

After experiencing the horrors of the camps, most prisoners begin to...