Man's Search for Meaning By Viktor E. Frankl

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl is among the most influential works of psychiatric literature since Freud. The book begins with a lengthy, austere, and deeply moving personal essay about Frankl's imprisonment in Auschwitz and other concentration camps for five years, and his struggle during this time to find reasons to live. The second part of the book, called "Logotherapy in a Nutshell," describes the psychotherapeutic method that Frankl pioneered as a result of his experiences in the concentration camps. Freud believed that sexual instincts and urges were the driving force of humanity's life; Frankl, by contrast, believes that man's deepest desire is to search for meaning and purpose. Frankl's logotherapy, therefore, is much more compatible with Western religions than Freudian psychotherapy. This is a fascinating, sophisticated, and very human book. At times, Frankl's personal and professional discourses merge into a style of tremendous power. "Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is," Frankl writes. "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."

Gerald F. Kreyche, DePaul University
"Frankl is a professional who possesses the rare ability to write in a layman’s language."--This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

This one looks to be one of those books that everyone should read...I cant wait till my copy gets here!!!

-This is a book they "make" you read in BUD/S, along with Lance Armstrong's "It's Not About The Bike". This is pre-requisite reading in BUD/S Indoc.

-Ed Brown

Favorite quotes from this book:

Man’s Search For Meaning-

-All the familiar goals in life are snatched away. What alone remains is “the last of human freedoms”—the ability to “choose one’s attitude in a given set of circumstances.” The prisoners were only average men, but some, at least, by choosing to be “worthy of their suffering” proved man’s capacity to rise above his outward fate.

-All we possessed, literally was out naked existence. We knew we had nothing to lose except our so ridiculously naked lives.

-Make firm promises to yourself at the beginning of an endeavor, then have the integrity to live up to your own wishes.

-Sensitive people were able to retreat from the terrible surroundings to a life of inner riches and spiritual freedom. Only in this way can one explain the apparent paradox that some prisoners of a less hardy makeup often seemed to survive camp life better than did those of a robust nature.

-One evening, when we were already resting on the floor of our hut, dead tired, soup bowls in hand, a fellow prisoner rushed in and asked us to run to the the assembly grounds and see the wonderful sunset. Standing outside we saw sinsister clouds glowing in the west and the whole sky alive with clouds of ever changing shapes and colors, from steel blue to blood red. The desolate grey mud huts provided a sharp contrast, while the puddles on the muddy gound reflected the glowing sky. Then, after minutes of moving silence, one prisoner said to another, “How beautiful the world could be!”

-There were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers with threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance. It became clear that the sort of person a prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of external influence alone.

-A man who let himself decline because he could not see any future goal found himself occupied with retrospective thoughts…Instead of taking the camp’s difficulties as a test of his inner strength, he did not take his life seriously and despised it as something of consequence. One could make victory of those experiences, turning life into an inner triumph, or one could simply ignore the challenge and simply vegetate, as did the majority of prisoners.

-By this method I succeeded in rising above the situation, above the sufferings of the moment, and I observed them as if they were already of the past. Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.

-He who has a WHY to live for can bear with almost any HOW.

-Think of ourselves as those questioned by life, daily and hourly. Our answer must be in right action, and right conduct, to fulfill the tasks which life consistently sets for each individual.

-Your unique opportunity lies in the way in which you bear your burdens.

-Hope is not lost, even in suffering, the key is to see that life is still expecting something from you.

-I had no intention of giving up, or losing hope. For no man knew what the future might bring. Great chances sometimes opened up, quite suddenly.

-What you have experienced, no power on earth can take it away from you.

-Someone looks down on each of us in difficult hours; a friend, a wife, somebody alive or dead, or God, and he would not expect us to disappoint him. He would hope to find us suffering proudly.

-Those who knew that there was a task that they were fulfilling or waiting to fulfill were most apt to survive.


-Everyone as his own specific mission in life to carry out, therein he cannot be replaced nor can his life be repeated.

-Live as if you were living for the second time and is if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!

-Suffering ceases to be suffering the moment it finds a meaning.

-Living is not freedom from conditions, but freedom to take a stand toward those conditions, through this man is capable of defying and braving even the worst conditions conceivable.

-Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself, whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them.

-Human capacity includes the ability to creatively turn life’s negative aspects into something positive or constructive. What matters is to make the best of any circumstance and give it purpose.

-Happiness cannot be pursued, it must ensue. One must have a reason to be happy. Once the reason is found, one becomes happy automatically, even during suffering. If you have a purpose and a meaning, then you will not quit, even under the worst of circumstances.