Man's Search for Meaning

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Emil Frankl
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Man's Search for Meaning was the last of the books we read for the South Hill Library's Heart of Spirituality book discussion group, and I thought it was the best of the books we read this year. Viktor Frankl is the founder of the "third Viennese psychotherapy" which he named Logotherapy. (The other two were Adlerian and Freudian.)

In this book the author briefly but movingly tells of his experience in Nazi concentration camps and his observations about how people reacted to their internment. He came away with the conviction that those who managed best while under such horrendous conditions were those who had something beyond themselves to live for: God, their family, perhaps their work. Frankl himself wanted to live so that he could publish his theory and he pictured himself while in Auschwitz how he would lecture and write about his experiences there. He also held onto the thought of his wife.

One of the important lessons Frankl took away from his experience in the camps was the realization that although you often cannot control what happens to you, you can always control how you respond to your situation. He responded by feeling a sense of freedom.

2011 No 65

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