Man's Search for Meaning is a 1946 book by Viktor Frankl chronicling his experiences as an Auschwitz concentration camp inmate during World War II, and describing his psychotherapeutic method, which involved identifying a purpose in life to feel positively about, and then immersively imagining that outcome. Here's a poignant excerpt from one of my favorite parts of the book when Frankl has been in Auschwitz and other camps for several years and doesn't know the war is only weeks away from ending. He had decided to escape his camp near Dachau with a friend and was visiting some of his patients for the last time. apathy after becoming accustomed to camp existence, in which the inmate values only that which helps himself and his friends survive, and

Using his logotherapy analysis, a type of existential inquiry into meaning, Frankl examines how religion can help one actualize. Little is paid to the method of logotherapy, but he succinctly describes it as: will to meaning; meaning in suffering; freedom of will. At one points he writes the task of logotherapy to let conscious mind find religiousness. Frankl writes beautifully, although sometimes vaguely about happiness, meaning, religion, suffering and the preciousness of life. One of my favorite quotes from him is "happiness is the side effect of living out the self-transcendence of existence". Another is "Wisdom is knowledge+. Knowledge and the knowledge of its limits."

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The book is divided into two parts. The first section recounts in vivid detail Frankl's horrifying experiences as a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp. Frankl, a former psychiatrist, also describes his observations of other prisoners and what he felt to be the main way in which people tried to cope with the insurmountable obstacles they faced. He found that those who could find meaning or purpose in their suffering were the ones who also seemed better able to find the strength to go on. As I recall, Frankl personally found his purpose in the hope of someday being able to see his wife again - a hope that was strong enough to get him through the daily horrors he faced. The negative points of the book are two: first, who is an atheist can be bothered by the book, because it talks about the importance of God and faith. The second is that many points in the book have already been explained in other of his works, making this work by Viktor Frankl a bit repetitive.

The second part did sometimes challenge my brain cells with concepts like this: I never tire of saying that the only really transitory aspects of life are the potentialities; but as soon as they are actualized, they are rendered realities at that very moment; they are saved and delivered into the past, wherein they are rescued and preserved from transitoriness. For, in the past, nothing is irretrievably lost but everything is irrevocably stored.I had to read that one two or three times before I felt like I really grasped what Frankl was saying. And this one: Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!I assume it's to help give us motivation to avoid making a wrong choice, by thinking through the likely consequences of what we are about to do. But there are so many nuggets of wisdom in this short volume. A few things that really impacted me: We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. A lo largo de siete capítulos Frankl explica que el hombre no está solo dominado por una impulsividad inconsciente sino también está compuesto por una estructura inconsciente. Empieza hablando del Psicoanálisis de S. Freud al cual Frankl lo ve como una despersonalización del hombre, o sea, que destruye a la persona humana. Y plantea al psicoanálisis como materialista, mientras que desde la logoterapia plantea que “el interrogado es el propio hombre; a él mismo toca dar la respuesta; él es quien ha de responder a las preguntas que eventualmente le vaya formulando su propia vida”. El mismo hombre tiene como base fundamental la responsabilidad y el no ser impulsado.

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Psychology is a subject that inevitably stresses the position of the individual, and the psychology of a man who has lived through an experience where those with power held his life in utter contempt and enjoyed making it clear to him that his ongoing existence was completely at their discretion would hardly encourage him to seek meaning in ‘grand projects’ and such. But I don’t really like psychology and worry it gazes wistfully down the wrong end of the telescope. From all this we may learn that there are two races of men in this world, but only these two—the 'race' of the decent man and the 'race' of the indecent man. Both are found everywhere; they penetrate into all groups of society. No group consists entirely of decent or indecent people. In this sense, no group is of 'pure race'—and therefore one occasionally found a decent fellow among the camp guards." 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." Pytell, Timothy (June 3, 2003). "Redeeming the Unredeemable: Auschwitz and Man's Search for Meaning". Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 17 (1): 89–113. doi: 10.1093/hgs/17.1.89– via Project MUSE.

cele din urmă, lui Frankl ar putea să nu îi cadă bine faptul că pentru mulți dintre noi, apa nu mai încetează să fie udă atunci când aflăm că e un compus format din hidrogen și oxigen. Exemplul absolut odios al unei maimuțe care primește o injecție dureroasă spre binele mai mare al tuturor este unul grăitor - al modului în care religia murdărește spiritul uman, un spirit pe care marii gânditori, de la Diderot încoace ne-au arătat că trebuie să fie unul liber și secular, nu unul poluat de teodicee grotești și încorsetat de reguli stupide și nevolnice. Doar pentru că Frankl a fost un supraviețuitor al Holocaustului, el nu trebuie să rămână în niciun fel un autor de necontestat. În cele din urmă, Frankl greșește nu pentru că vorbește de religie, ci pentru că o face în numele altora. Cât despre sensul ultim, să sperăm că acesta nu constă în incantații ciudate și gimnastică mentală dedicată unei instanțe care, dacă există, nu ar avea nevoie de niciunul dintre aceste giumbușlucuri. Nu aflăm de ce trebuie musai să existe un sens ultim (de parcă ar exista o competiție între sensuri), și de cenu putem avea mai multe sensuri la care să ne raportăm. Dar dacă este să aleg, după cum

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Viktor Frankl is known to millions as the author of Man's Search for Meaning, his harrowing Holocaust memoir. In this book, he goes more deeply into the ways of thinking that enabled him to survive imprisonment in a concentration camp and to find meaning in life in spite of all the odds. Here, he expands upon his groundbreaking ideas and searches for answers about life, death, faith and suffering. Believing that there is much more to our existence than meets the eye, he says: 'No one will be able to make us believe that man is a sublimated animal once we can show that within him there is a repressed angel.' This work also touches on the psychology of the prisoner who has been released. At first, the new freedom seems unreal to them, "as in a dream." Frankl also concludes that there are only two races of men, decent men and indecent. No society is free of either of them, and thus there were "decent" Nazi guards and "indecent" prisoners, most notably the kapo who would torture and abuse their fellow prisoners for personal gain. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.Inspiring words; inspiring life. The central idea behind Man's Search to Meaning, as described throughout Part I of the book and extending to an academic discussion in Part II, titled "Logotherapy" is the idea of "Man's Will to Meaning" being the central and overarching goal of each person's life.