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History.
Psychology.
Religion & Spirituality.
Nonfiction.
HTML:Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl's memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Between 1942 and 1945 Frankl labored in four different camps, including Auschwitz, while his parents, brother, and pregnant wife perished. Based on his own experience and the experiences of others he treated later in his practice, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. Frankl's theory-known as logotherapy, from the Greek word logos ("meaning")-holds that our primary drive in life is not pleasure, as Freud maintained, but the discovery and pursuit of what we personally find meaningful.
At the time of Frankl's death in 1997, Man's Search for Meaning had sold more than 10 million copies in twenty-four languages. A 1991 reader survey for the Library of Congress that asked readers to name a "book that made a difference in your life" found Man's Search for Meaning among the ten most influential books in America.… (more)
WendyRobyn: Both personal accounts by Holocaust survivors. I feel the tone is similar. Frankl's book goes on to explore psychological implications of his experiences.
Perfectly written and structured. The background of Frankl was really eye opening and very detailed and it was only enhanced by the other side of the book which went into Logotherapy ( )
Some inspiring insight into how to thrive in the most extreme circumstances at the beginning. I couldn't sustain my interest once he got into psycho-babble. ( )
Half holocaust memoir, half introduction to logotherapy. As a holocaust memoir it doesn't have the excruciating detail of death camps many other famous ones have. Frankl was at Auschwitz for a time, but gets shipped around between camps. He's also a lot more philosophical about man's cruelty to man, and more relativistic about culpability - stressing at one point that a certain camp had an SS officer who bought people medicines out of pocket while the capos (fellow jews) were needlessly sadistic. He spends a lot of time meditating on multiple examples of the title's thesis; that man is always searching for and in need of meaning in life. This later becomes one of the ways he separates his version of psychology from the bigger names of his time in the logotherapy section. I see some parallels with Arendt's banality of evil and Zimbardo's prison experiment in this, which is notably different than some other memoirs.
It's strange that logotherapy seems all but forgotten now, considering that its existentialist principles seem more relevant to a currently faltering psychology profession, criticised exactly for missing the search for meaning in life (as compared to treating various symptoms of the malaise of suffering from purposelessness). ( )
This book does not claim to be an account of facts and events but of personal experiences, experiences which millions of prisoners have suffered time and again.
Quotations
He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How
Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning.
Man's inner strangth may raise him about his outward fate
Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you feel and do about what happens to you.
Life is meaningful and that we must learn to see life as meaningful despite our circumstances.
History.
Psychology.
Religion & Spirituality.
Nonfiction.
HTML:Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl's memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Between 1942 and 1945 Frankl labored in four different camps, including Auschwitz, while his parents, brother, and pregnant wife perished. Based on his own experience and the experiences of others he treated later in his practice, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. Frankl's theory-known as logotherapy, from the Greek word logos ("meaning")-holds that our primary drive in life is not pleasure, as Freud maintained, but the discovery and pursuit of what we personally find meaningful.
At the time of Frankl's death in 1997, Man's Search for Meaning had sold more than 10 million copies in twenty-four languages. A 1991 reader survey for the Library of Congress that asked readers to name a "book that made a difference in your life" found Man's Search for Meaning among the ten most influential books in America.
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Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl's memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Between 1942 and 1945 Frankl labored in four different camps, including Auschwitz, while his parents, brother, and pregnant wife perished. Based on his own experience and the experiences of others he treated later in his practice, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. Frankl's theory-known as logotherapy, from the Greek word logos ("meaning")-holds that our primary drive in life is not pleasure, as Freud maintained, but the discovery and pursuit of what we personally find meaningful.
At the time of Frankl's death in 1997, Man's Search for Meaning had sold more than 10 million copies in twenty-four languages. A 1991 reader survey for the Library of Congress that asked readers to name a "book that made a difference in your life" found Man's Search for Meaning among the ten most influential books in America.
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