Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E Frankl


‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ is a memoir by Viktor E Frankl, a Jewish Austrian psychotherapist and Holocaust survivor. It summarizes his observations of people, including himself, suffering in Hitler’s concentration camps and what psychological impacts the bitter experiences there had on them. He keenly studies the transformations of the minds of prisoners and classifies their mental and spiritual states over time into different stages with the help of his professional knowledge. He even explains how bizarre it turns out with certain prisoners finding it hard to cope with a free life when they manage to be free after many years of captivity in the camps, as torment had become their norm.

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He emphasizes that men (read men and women) need a purpose to life, something to live for, even if it’s something imaginary, to overcome the hardships of such environments and survive through the torture and agony. He says those who succumb to the suffering are doomed while those who find meaning in their pain manage to survive somehow. The book also introduces his psychotherapeutic method called Logotherapy, similar to Freudian psychoanalysis in some ways but with certain distinct differences; while the former analyses the past of the subjects, the latter studies their mind with a focus on its thoughts projected towards the future.

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