From the perspective of a member in a culture consumed in the "existential vacuum", Frankl's experiences and logotheraphy discussion offers a call to action for those prepared to live a meaningful life. This book will change you.

What can a person expect of life in a concentration camp? Is there a chance you can find meaning in living that torture? This is a truly inspirational book that reminds you that not everything is lost, that you can find light in the most terrible conditions. It's not new age, it's a story of survival and hope.
The second part of the book is about logotherapy. Victor Frankl was the creator of this discipline and it basically addresses the question of meaning in people's lives.

I read this book regularly for inspiration. Frankl found a way to confront the greatest evil of the last century, which for him was very personal, and survive. In the midst of it he discovered that we most long for meaning in our lives, and so he developed a therapy that helps people search for it.

The beginning part of the book about life in the camps simply cannot be forgotten. And then, when he tries to make sense of it, ordinary readers realize that whatever they have suffered there is a way forward. Frankl used tragedy to help others. A person can't be more noble than that.

Lawrence J. Epstein, author of "At the Edge of a Dream: The Story of Jewish Immigrants on New York's Lower East Side."

The following summarizes the true meanings the author wants us to absorb.
There are three avenues to arrive at the meaning of life. 1) Creating a work or or doing a deed 2) Experiencing or encountering something added to your life i.e. finding love 3) facing a fate one cannot change. You then rise above oneself, rising above what is expected. One grows from the experience, and experiences positive change.
Experiencing and surviving suffering is something to be proud of... not something to be ashamed of. We all learn and grow from our experiences.

well i learn psycology at the university and my professor has recommended it so i bought it through amazon.
this book will rock your world.and give you a different perspective of life and how man interacts in a hostile and unreal enviroment ...for more info of the book itself i recommend turning to a better source :) but as a reader i can say this book is worth the time and the money :)

This is a small book with a big subject - life and meaning - written in 1946 and first published in 1959. Only recently it has been published in English. It still rings true, written by a Nazi concentration camp inmate, Dr. Viktor Frankl. He originally wanted to be an anonymous author; however, his friends persuaded him to publish under his own name to give the book credibility. Readers could therefore also understand this is a psychiatrist's objective view of suffering, which is part of life, and why life and hope prevail in the darkest moments.

Part One, Experiences in a Concentration Camp is key to all he learned on the meaning of life. The horrible losses and inhumanity are seared into your mind, but when Dr. Frankl looks at the horror with educated eyes, he recognizes courage, objectivity and responsibility as vital for survival. This is a story of a man who was sent to the concentration camp with a belief that if he had to suffer and die, it would be significant: he would not suffer nor die for nothing.

Dr. Frankl reviews the fight for survival and his decisions that somehow help him survive. He notes that prisoners go through three phases, 1)shock: the period following his admission 2)apathy: the period where they they become well entrenched in camp routine, and 3)the sense of loss, where they lose everything but hope. He digs down deep in his own soul to helps others to go on and have meaning in their life - not to give up and find the basic motivation to go on. He teaches despairing men "that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but what life expected from us." Dr. Frankl repeats, "if we have the "why" we will always find the "how" to go on."

This book shows each individual he is important and every decision he makes is impactful. Therefore, make the right decisions and be triumphant. Right decisions cause the least pain and give the most love for fellow man. It is what gives us hope and value as part of humanity.

Part Two, Logo-Therapy in a Nutshell, was not as interesting to me. It describes Frankl's philosophy of logo-therapy and reminded me of of mid-eastern religions as well as Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. It is a way (Frankl calls it "neo-dynamics") to have a goal in mind and achieve it no matter what obstacles and stress you are facing. The things that make life important and with meaning are different for each of us. All of us can have a meaning of life, but the "big picture meaning" is hard to understand. It takes us a lifetime of good and bad events and decisions to shape us.

Part Three, is a postscript on "Tragic Optimism" and states that despite the "tragic triad" (as it is called in Logo-Therapy) 1)pain, 2)guilt, and 3)death - how is it possible to say yes to life in spite of all that? Logo-therapy teaches there are three main avenues on which one arrives at meaning in life. The first is creating a work or by doing a deed. The second is by experiencing something or encountering someone, and the third is turning a personal tragedy into a triumph. He mentions using bad situations as a growth experience.

Overall a deep book but a good book on looking at life. It shows that each one of us can determine personal meaning and why it is important.

"Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete."

What is the meaning of life? Frankl try's to answer that through his experience as a prisoner in a concentration camp in Auschwitz (among others) and in his psychiatry practice after the war. Be it by grace, a miracle, or chance, he made it out alive. And now he is here to tell this powerful, optimistic story and help us with an age old question.

He try's to answer this question: " How was everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the mind of the average prisoner?" This would later influence psychotherapy. Even being surrounded by so much evil there was still kindness to be found in an occasional guard. The prisoners were not always kind to there fellow inmates: there were sellouts and CAPO's; Capo's were Jews that watched over their fellow captives for favors, food, and extended life. Who is to say what any one of us would do. With misery and suffering beyond comprehension, "having a why to live for enabled them to bear the how". I will never look at that last leftover pea the same way.

Writing on his concentration camp experience Frankl briefly discusses "logotherepy". In a later chapter he goes into detail: Logotherepy (which he coined), the "striving to find a meaning in ones life is the primary motivational force in man". In his practice he uses a form of reverse psychology. The last chapter is on optimism during tragedy.

Freedom is only part of the story, he writes: "I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast"

There are many quotables from Frankl, I will leave you with this: "Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips."

In the end, there is that need for a reason.

Wish you well
Scott

Read the book for my Philo I class and found it very interesting and certainly shed some light to our class topic about Nihilism. It is a very easy read, so I would recommend it to Philo students. For my purpose it is an appropriate read.

Frankl believed that man's deepest desire is to search for meaning and purpose - that neurosis is caused by "frustration in the will to meaning". Frankl's belief in meaning was formulated in the horror of a Nazi concentration camp. His essential optimism comes through in the following: "It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future...and this is his salvation in the most difficult moments of his existence, although he sometimes has to force his mind to the task...the [Auschwitz] prisoner who had lost faith in...his future was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and become subject to mental and physical decay...he simply gave up...lying in his own excreta, and nothing bothered him any more".
My own book "The Optimistic Jew: a Positive Vision for the Jewish People in the 21st Century" (www.theoptimisticjew.com) is an attempt to encourage the collective mind of the Jewish people to once again believe in its own future (and stop wallowing in its past) lest we end up lying in our own historical excreta with nothing bothering us anymore.

Viktor Frankl's journey and his amazing survival techniques in the Auschwitz death camps prove to be one of the most meaningful books ever written. If there was 1 book that everyone should read in their life this would be my choice. Forget all those meaningless self-help books on getting rich, getting in touch with your inner self and all that new age baloney that might enhance your life but if your life has no meaning, no foundation for growth than nothing will ever bring you true happiness. In the midst of our greatest struggles we learn our greatest lessons and a life without struggle is not a life with meaning.

This marvelous work does for the psychologically wounded what Peter Drucker's "The Effective Executive" does for the time-impaired. That is give people a feel for what tools to use to construct their own framework for achieving happiness (not someone else's concept of what another person's happiness ought to be).
Both "Man's Search for Meaning" and "The Effective Executive" should be taken up and re-read at least once a year (pardon me for offering so specific a prescription). Both works are short enough so they can be read quickly. But don't go too fast. Consider Speaker Newt Gingrich's advice when he recommended people go through "The Effective Executive" stopping at salient points (there are plenty of those) and making notes about how something relates specifically to one's life and incorporate that into one's operating system.
Dr. Viktor E. Frankl's logotherapy (or "meaning" therapy) springs from his experience in World War II concentration camps. His writing is refreshingly free from veiled (and sometimes not-so-veiled) invective of Holocaust literature. The terms "Jew" and "German" are scarely to be found. The Jewish identification is raised only when unavoidable to give a complete picture such as when Dr. Frankl's words give an Eastern European rabbi a new lease on mental health. Frank's statement about mankind's only two groups -- the decent and the indecent -- is telling.
Among other Frankl profundities --
-- Suffering is unavoidable.
-- Man in metaphysical tension is normal and worthwhile.
Perhaps his most important statement is that life is meaningful yet the meaning is different for each person and it changes more often than one might think. Keys to following this bouncing ball include taking responsibility and developing a sense of humor, according to our author.
Freedom is not an end in itself, Frankl correctly notes, although others (especially libertarian thinkers in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises) have suggested that it needs to be treated as such societally to that the road to happiness be as wide as possible for individuals. Recognition that life is meaningful is essential to a successful navigation of this road, no matter how wide.
Frankl: "Freedom is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness."
Frankl and many libertarians/classical liberals would agree that freedom and responsibility call for a delicate balance in the human mind. But who am I to say? Read Frankl, Allport and Fabry alongside Mises, Hayek and Rothbard and judge for yourself.
Something you can't miss about Frankl -- he refuses to be a dictator. He was persecuted through the caprice of at least one hideous dictator yet denied the enemy victory by not taking on the enemy's characteristics. This represents a high level of moral reasoning. Although Frankl isn't an explicitly religious author he has earned the title of "Rabbi Frankl" through such choosing.
The opposite of the spirit that animates Frankl and other greats (arrived at through attainment of true knowledge coupled with respect for all mankind) was wonderfully encapsulated by Stephen Crane is his story "Above All Things." Of this all-too-common unholy spirit of the imperialist, the dictator, the socialist "reformer," Crane wrote:
"...The stranger finds the occupations (read: lifestyles) of foreign peoples to be trivial and inconsequent. The average mind utterly fails to comprehend the new point of view...'How futile are the lives of these people.'...This is the arrogance of the man who has not yet solved himself and discovered his own actual futility."

I originally bought this book knowing nothing about Frankl, his experiences, or psychological theories. I simply read the description and a few of the overwhelmingly positive reviews here on Amazon and decided that it sounded interesting. What a life-changing book. Merely reading it at any given time has a marked positive influence on my attitude towards life.



What's most interesting about it, as Frankl says himself, is that what he's propounding are not abstract ideas developed by some academic at a university or in some research laboratory. He uses his direct experience in one of the most adverse circumstances possible--a Nazi concentration camp--to relate the ideas of logotherapy (his own school of psychotherapy) to the reader.



In a nutshell, the three most important tenets of logotherapy are as follows: (1) Life has meaning under all circumstances--even the most miserable ones; (2) Our main motivation for living is our will to find meaning in life; and (3) We have the freedom to find meaning in what we do, and what we experience, or at least in the stand we take when faced with a situation of unchangeable suffering. These principles are put directly to the test, and Frankl demonstrates their validity in a way that no social scientist has conceived of (or been able to) ever before.



From the afterword:



"Frankl was once asked to express in one sentence the meaning of his own life. He wrote the response on paper and asked his students to guess what he had written. After some moments of quiet reflection, a student surprised Frankl by saying, 'The meaning of your life is to help others find the meaning of theirs.'



'That was it, exactly,' Frankl said. 'Those are the very words I had written.'"

I originally bought this book knowing nothing about Frankl, his experiences, or psychological theories. I simply read the description and a few of the overwhelmingly positive reviews here on Amazon and decided that it sounded interesting. What a life-changing book. Merely reading it at any given time has a marked positive influence on my attitude towards life.



What's most interesting about it, as Frankl says himself, is that what he's propounding are not abstract ideas developed by some academic at a university or in some research laboratory. He uses his direct experience in one of the most adverse circumstances possible--a Nazi concentration camp--to relate the ideas of logotherapy (his own school of psychotherapy) to the reader.



In a nutshell, the three most important tenets of logotherapy are as follows: (1) Life has meaning under all circumstances--even the most miserable ones; (2) Our main motivation for living is our will to find meaning in life; and (3) We have the freedom to find meaning in what we do, and what we experience, or at least in the stand we take when faced with a situation of unchangeable suffering. These principles are put directly to the test, and Frankl demonstrates their validity in a way that no social scientist has conceived of (or been able to) ever before.



From the afterword:



"Frankl was once asked to express in one sentence the meaning of his own life. He wrote the response on paper and asked his students to guess what he had written. After some moments of quiet reflection, a student surprised Frankl by saying, 'The meaning of your life is to help others find the meaning of theirs.'



'That was it, exactly,' Frankl said. 'Those are the very words I had written.'"

This is the most influential book I have read. It stops you from envying those who have more than you and reminds you of those that have less. I am not a two year old dying of AIDS in Africa. It makes you count your blessings. I have bought dozens of copies for friends and acquaintances. All to good effect.

Please all my friends who are visiting this blog, I am sure you are here because you want to be successful. Me Too. I've read more than 100 self-help books, attended 20+ seminars, listened more than 30 audiobooks, and here is the MOST IMPORTANT rule for success - Do Something You Like. You Are Passionate About. You Will Do It For Free Anyways. This is the ONLY way, and Please Never Settle for Less. Here is WHY:

How do you define success? You can only be successful when you are being who you are. Period. Success cannot be measured by a yardstick as society always teaches us. There are times that what you really love to do doesn't look very promising, that your dad and mom tell you "Honey how about doing this instead that because this will secure you a job!". But, nothing can secure you a job if you nowadays. The only way to win is to be the BEST in your field. This is what important. What you do is not important AS LONG AS you are the BEST in what you do. And How can you be the BEST in what you do? You have to earn the competition with others who are doing the same thing as you. And, Psychologist Professor Tal Ben-Shahar at Harvard University said that you will find the things you love easy for you! And this is the secret for success! You are surely to win when you are doing something easy for you when others are not. They are struggling and you are enjoying. 8 hours feel like 1 hours for you but 16 for them. So, who will be more efficient, more creative, more energetic, more effective, more confident, more productive, more...more...? Of course YOU. And what's more important is that you will feel SATISFIED because you are actualizing yourself. - Self-Actualization is the HIGHEST pursue for human beings. You are being whom you are meant to be, fulfulling your meanings for this life. Meaning is all that matters! If you haven't got a chance to read Dr. Viktor E. Frankl's book "Man's Search for Meaning", I really urge you grab a copy. It is the pursuit of meaning that make Dr. Frankl survive the more than 3 years in concentration camps and became one of the most important thinkers and psychologists after Freud and Adler, as commented by The American Journal of Psychiatry. So, please do something you like. Your success lies in there. So is your meaning.