Man’s Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy
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Few books in recent decades have had the continuing impact of Dr. Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning — the classic best seller now considered to be one of the most vital contributions to psychiatry since the writing of Freud. In it, Dr. Frankl gives a moving account of his life amid the horrors of the Nazi death camps, chronicling the upsetting experience that led to his discovery of his theory of logotherapy. A profound revelation born out of Dr. Frankl’s years as a prisoner in Auschwitz and additional concentration camps, logotherapy is a modern and positive approach to the mentally or mentally disturbed personality. Stressing man’s freedom to transcend suffering and find a meaning to his life regardless of his circumstances, it is a theory which, since its conception, has exercised a tremendous influence upon the entire meadow of psychiatry and psychology.
Here, Dr. Frankl not only describes the genesis and development of logotherapy but also clarifies its basic concepts, and in this revised and enlarged edition, has included a new chapter, entitled “The Case for a Tragic Optimism,” in which he updates theoretical conclusions of the book. The result is an invaluable work by one of the world’s preeminent psychiatrists.Amazon.com Review
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl is among the most influential works of psychiatric literature since Freud. The book starts with a lengthy, austere, and deeply moving personal essay about Frankl’s imprisonment in Auschwitz and additional 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 psychiatric help. 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; but, he is also that being who entered persons gas chambers upright, with the Lord’s Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.”
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I realize that this book probably has past significance for the meadow of psychiatric help. Parts One (Concentration Camp) and Two (Logotherapy) were originally published in Austria in 1946. The leader, rumor has it that a distinguished child psychiatrist, spent three years in Nazi concentration camps when he was in his late 30s. His education was circa 1920s-30s, at the University of Vienna (Freudian influences certainly abounded at that time.)
From a 2003 (and a layperson’s) perspective, this book touches upon many thoughts, and not in a particularly concise or unified way. These thoughts, from my perspective, are regularly the embryonic stages and “seeds” of thought regularly more specifically and fully expressed in future and current psychology. Fascinatingly, he questions pure Freudian theory–maybe this was honestly novel in 1946. Self actualization, self-transcendence, finding an authentic self are thoughts later espoused by Maslow, Dr. Phil MacGraw, and additional psychologists. Perhaps the book would have been more effective for me if I had read it in 1946, but I wasn’t born yet. I judge the best audience for it in 2003 are psychologists/psychiatrists–there are thoughts/”seeds” for graduate students to expound upon and renovate.
I much prefer The Diary of Ann Frank, or The Pianist, in terms of artfulness and my developing empathy for the characters, than Frankl’s to some extent detached professional espousal of Holocaust atrocities. A dated, sometimes rambling discourse. The 1984 postscript seems “cobbled onto” the original. There are 40 pages of bibliography that append the book-is this included for his
professional audience? Not uninteresting, but not worth revisiting.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
What’s proven here? That if you can convince youself you have something to live for: you will continue to live for it. So? If after getting hit on the head with a lead pipe 100x one is to receive ten million dollars, I suppose there are some who will suffer that pain, too, in the hope they will survive. They won’t.
Perhaps the real question is if there is *any* reward for enduring the cruelty of life that is worth the suffering. Most, if not virtually all, like relationships are based on a thinly or not-so thinly disguised basis of psychology mercantilism, if not outright economic dealmaking. Additional privileged pursuits: art, philosophy, philanthropy, so-called spiritual attainment are arguably better, but, really, are small more than panaceas not much different, in their essential purpose, than devoting one’s life to developing the perfect tennis game, for instance. They absorb one’s attention and distract one’s focus from the pain & dissolution to come, or even occuring, & keep one, perhaps, from ending it all at the very moment. In this manner, we all buoy each additional up, but for what? The question remains unanswered. Life is a concentration camp and we are all going to the gas chamber in the end. What do we do in the meantime. Is it worth it?
Frankl, like any reasonably intelligent person, delineates the central problem well: Why live? But like every additional professional philosopher or psychologist, he comes up with a reason (altho in this case the reason boils down to *find a reason*) because, well, what else is he going to do? The biological imperative compels us to go on with life at any fee. The alternative: that there is no reason to do so–that is simply too terrifying to contemplate, would violate species survival, and be considered unpublishable. Just once I’d like to see a thinker have the courage to face the essential question and not flinch, escape to a flight of fancy, take a leap of *faith* or otherwise dissemble.
Life is not worth living. Don’t blink.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
Reading this book was largely a waste of my time. Frankel does not set into the world a literary conduct experiment in an attempt to prove a hypothesis. Rather, he gives the hypothesis and then assumes the hypothesis to prove his beliefs. Frankel commits the cardinal sin of writing a persuasive work: he assumes his theory is right as a replacement for of proving it. He never even attempts to prove it. This man needs to learn the scientific method. As a persuasive work, this volume is woefully inadequate.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
I just want to see what a name else wrot
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
Man’s Search for Meaning is a tantalizing book. Champion E. Frankl wrote the novel after his experience in a concentration camp where he tested and made his psychotheraputic theories. It was a fleeting reader, not even 600 pages and while the first half was to some extent disturbing, it being about his exerience in the camp, but the second half is a small slow, it becomes monotonous and a small dull because it is about his development of Logotherapy. This book is excellent for the intellectual type but I do not suggest that any tom, dick or sue just pick it up to curl up with at the window seat on a rainy saturday. Thats just about it, nothing that exciting but what are you gunna do its about the haulocaust….
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5