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| Man's Search for Meaning | 
| Author: Viktor E. Frankl
Publisher: Beacon Press
Category: Book
List Price: $6.99
Buy New: $2.79
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Avg. Customer Rating:  73 reviews
Sales Rank: 191
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 165
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.1
Dimensions (in): 6.6 x 4.1 x 0.6
ISBN: 080701429X
Dewey Decimal Number: 302
EAN: 9780807014295
ASIN: 080701429X
Publication Date: June 14, 2006
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| Customer Reviews:
A must read classic September 4, 2008
For Frankl, if life has a meaning, it has to be found in suffering. And he knows what suffering is.
A brilliant student who writes essays on Schopenhauer, Psychology and Philosophy when he is still in high school, reduced to a beggar child in WWI and excluded from Alfred Adler's circle, without any reason at the age of 19.
At 23 he already enjoys international recognition for his free work with suicidal youth in Vienna.
In 1938, already a respected psychiatrist, he is invited to live in the US, but prefers to stay close to his old parents, only to be deported, 4 years later to a Jewish ghetto in Prague, where his wife is forced to abort their child and where his father dies from exhaustion 6 months later. Sister Stella manages to escape to AUS. In 1944 the whole family is separated and send to different concentration camps. Only when freed by US troops in April 45, he comes to know that all were killed, including his brother and sister in law. He is kept alive to take care, as a doctor, of other sick prisoners. "Man's search for meaning" was written in 9 days in 1946, and sold 9 million books until his death in 1997, and is considered one of the ten most influential books among lifetime readers in America today.
"Man's search for meaning" makes an analysis of the psyche of a concentration camp prisoner.
What becomes of man when everything is taken from him? To Frankl what one becomes is the result of an individual choice, the choice of weather to behave with dignity and according to moral values or renounce to his freedom of choice, dignity and self respect and behave and become like a scum and an animal.
Suffering is part of life as much as death. The meaning and purpose of life lies in making use of suffering to exercise our freedom of choice, to chose how to take and accept suffering and in this way grow as a human being. Unavoidable, unescapable suffering is in fact a blessing. We must be worth our suffering. Man is free to chose to transform suffering into growth, guilt into change and life's transitoriness into action.
Just as life has a meaning, even under the most miserable of conditions, so does a human being have value independently of its usefulness to society.
The meaning of life in general is less important than the specific meaning of one's life at a specific moment, because that meaning may change every moment. We have to decide every moment what we want to be.
Logotherapy, the psychoanalytical method he devised, concentrates on the responsibility one has for his own life. Responsibility to one's conscience or to society. It identifies the what and the who, one's responsible for. And no one can be responsible for someone else's acts.
Man is free to chose to transform suffering into growth, guilt into change and life's transitoriness into action.
No 2 persons can be compared, No 2 lives are the same.
Sometimes we have to take action, sometimes, we have to accept things the way they are. We all have to suffer, no one can suffer for us. We are alone in the Universe for this task. We have to face suffering bravely and don't cry more than is necessary. Those who see us in our suffering (family, friends or God) expect us to do it with pride and not miserably.
The meaning of life lies outside man. Lies in the people s/he loves and the causes s/he serves.
We cannot know someone completely but through love. Only love sees the potentialities and is able to help realize them.
Sex is only an expression of that love.
A person that has fulfilled the meaning of his life, actualised his potentialities and suffered with dignity, is a person that looks back on his life with pride and does not envy youth.
A masterpiece of great dignity August 20, 2008
While I have never really warmed up to the second part of Frankl's book, the "Experiences in a Concentration Camp" section has to be one of the finest examinations of meaning under terrible circumstances ever written. Frankl is insightful, unpretentious, incisive, elegant, brilliant. The first section is an existential masterpiece.
I guess my difficulty with logotherapy is that meaning as experienced and conveyed by Frankl feels like it gets reduced down when put forth as a psychiatric theory.
But part one is just brilliant beyond any attempt to review it.
A book of hope July 30, 2008
"Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor E. Frankl I had this book in my home library for a number of years, but had misplaced it somehow. Wanted to keep a copy to read again and to share. It is a "book for the ages." Frankl not only survived the horrible conditions of the Nazi prison work camps,but gives whoever will read his words great hope for the overcoming of whatever evils may beset us as human beings.
This Book is a Pure and True Path to Freedom July 27, 2008
Beautifully written. Easy to comprehend. A very meaningful book. The Doctor presents a good mix of his psychological thesis balanced with very moving and sometimes heart chilling personal accounts and testimonials. Written to inspire the best in anyone, it will definitely open the readers mind to all types of new ways of thinking about and looking at the world and especially at mankind. It contains the formula for a great personal philosophy. I would recommend this book to anyone, but particularly those who have been affected by trauma and or suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). I have yet to come across a book as inspirational. It is one of my favorites and I have given it as a gift to many whom I love. 5 Stars!
"Et lux in tenebris lucet" - and the light shineth in the darkness. July 24, 2008
Viktor E. Frankl teaches us that light can be found in each individual struggle to find meaning within - even through the worst pain, suffering and dehumanization; even in the darkest corners of history...
The book is split into two parts: Experiences In A Concentration Camp and Logotherapy In a Nutshell.
Part one is an account of his experiences in the concentration camps (Auschwitz and several others). Frankl gives us a picture of the sequence of three psychological reactions the prisoners experience to the process of imprisonment and freedom. Despite the horrifying circumstances, we begin to see an optimism budding in the sea of bleakness: a unique sense of meaning in some of the prisoners which helps them to cope with the day to day horrors of camp existence - a meaning which holds their spirits up even though their bodies are broken. This part of the book is unbelievably sad, yet the message it carries about the human condition is truly empowering.
In part 2, we are given a brief overview of Frankl's theory of logotherapy, a form of psychotherapy which helps patients find meaning in their lives - no matter what their circumstances.
The wisdom contained herein is so rich that after having only finished it last night, I know that I will be re-reading it for the rest of my life.
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