Man's Search For Ultimate Meaning (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "Arthur Schnitzler, Vienna's famous poet and a contemporary of Sigmund Freud, has been quoted as saying that there are really only three virtues: objectivity, courage,..." (more)
Key Phrases: unconscious religiousness, spiritual unconscious, existential vacuum, Sigmund Freud, United States, Max Scheler (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Viktor Frankl, author of the smash bestseller Man's Search for Meaning, offers a more straightforward alternative to traditional Freudian psychoanalysis: one's problems may be rooted in a failure to find a meaning in life beyond one's interior world. The basis for his interpretation, however, is not so straightforward. It lies in Frankl's existential analysis, plumbing for the reasons that people have repressed their consciences, their love, their creativity. By legitimizing a spiritual aspect of the human mind, Frankl has separated us definitively from the animal kingdom, but it is still up to each of us to rise to our human potential.

From Kirkus Reviews

These nine essays comprise a kind of sequel to the author's famous foundation work of ``logotherapy,'' Man's Search for Meaning, with a focus on a person's spiritual rather than existential striving. Vienna-based psychiatrist and neurologist Frankl, the author of 31 books, makes some profound observations about the nature of religiosity, awareness of which he believes must be incorporated into psychology. For example, he says that humans have a ``spiritual unconscious,'' that each person has a latent intuition and yearning for the transcendent, and that this is often activated when a person must deal with the ``tragic triad--pain, guilt and death.'' Unfortunately, Frankl's prose never quite brings his important subject to life; it's too academic, with a dearth of vivid anecdotal material or case studies. And it sometimes lapses into Latinisms and abstruse formulations, as in his reference to ``pre-reflective ontological self-understanding,'' when what Frankl really means is ``the wisdom of the heart.'' As important, the author's notion of the transcendent is so broad as to be almost meaningless; thus, he defines God as ``the partner of our most intimate soliloquies,'' a definition that seems to involve a kind of theological sophistry which has little if anything to say about a person's responsibility to others. At the same time, Frankl's notion of faith is black and white; he states, ``I personally think that either belief in God is unconditional or is not belief at all. If it is unconditional, it will stand and face the fact that six million died in the Nazi holocaust,'' as if belief could never coexist with doubt, as if any theology could ``stand and face'' the shattering reality of mechanistic mass murder. Frankl's question about ultimate meaning and a few of his observations are profound, yet much else in this sometimes rambling book disappointingly stops at the surface. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 200 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (August 21, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0306456206
• ISBN-13: 978-0306456206
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,431,790 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

56 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Underline it and re-read it, December 7, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning (Paperback)

Holocaust survivor Frankl earned the right to teach us how to transcend ourselves and find "ultimate meaning". He was a contemporary of Freud who was able to take Freud to task for naturalism and reductionism which "undermines and erodes the enthusiasm of youth". Frankl has a lot to tell us about how to avoid the neurotic train wreck many of us are headed for. He points out that an existential vacuum (meaninglessness and emptyness) is growing in our culture as man "Now, knowing neither what he must do nor what he should do, he sometimes does not even know what he basically wishes to do. Instead, he wishes to do what other people do-which is conformism-or he does what other people wish him to do-which is totalitarianism." Frankl tells us "Man is responsible for fulfilling the meaning of his life." He contends "man is not he who poses the question, What is the meaning of life? But he who is asked this question, for life itself poses it to him. And man has to answer to life by answering for life; he has to respond by being responsible;" and "Being human means being confronted continually with situations, each of which is at once a chance and a challenge, giving us a "chance" to fulfill ourselves by meeting the "challenge" to fulfill it's meaning.

Get it; read it; study it!

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Away with the existential vacuum!, May 27, 2007

By	calmly - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning (Paperback)

"We psychiatrists are neither teachers nor preachers but have to learn from the man in the street, from his ... self-understanding, what being human is all about". Of all those who applied existentialism to psychotherapy and to the efforts of human beings to help themselves, perhaps none has done so with as much wisdom as Viktor Frankl.

Although I didn't connect with the first 50 or so pages of this book, after that I was challenged and inspired by Frankl. His concerns, the "existential vacuum", the depressing impact of an "indoctrination into reductionism", the irreducibility of our experience, "responsibility as the essence of existence", these are well worth being reminded of.

That a "machine model" or "rat model" is not the best way to view human beings, does it seem such a revelation? Frankl observed how some young people had begun to view their ideals and altruism as hangups, how they had been engaging in fruitless "hidden motive" games. He wondered if behavioral scientific therapeutic programs didn't fail to take into account the specialness of people to find meaning, to transcend and to detach themselves from their situations. He called for responsibility and a recognition that we all proceed into the unknowable.

Frankl's approach is quite different from that of Freud, Jung, Skinner or even Rogers (Frankl at least credits in this book Rogers with "de-ideologizing psychotherapy"). His work still lives on, as for example in the United States through the Franklian Psychology (Logotherapy/Existential Analysis)doctoral program offered through Graduate Theological Foundation. Frankl himself, as he makes clear in this book, suggested a concept of spirituality and religion that "goes far beyond the narrow concepts of God as they are promulgated by some representatives of denominational religion", one that encompassed even atheism.

It would seem unfortunate if Frankl and his existential analysis that assumed a "will to meaning" were forgotten. Existentialism remains one of the great reponses of Western civilization to the challenges of life and Viktor Frankl one of its best practical advocates. I realize I need to read more about Frankl, logotherapy and existential analysis in general. It may be the best expression of a sacred view of being human we have in the West.

57 of 70 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars I didn't get it, July 26, 2004

By	M. Endrizzi "dreezman" (Apple Valley, MN USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning (Paperback)

Man's Search for Meaning is my bible for life. I so anticipated
digging into Volume 2, couldn't imagine it could get any
better, it didn't.

You need a PHD in Pysch to read the first page and I only
made it to Chapter 4 and I couldn't figure out what he
was even trying to say. The verbage alone requires a
dictionary, but my arm got tired looking up every other
word.

What happened???

His first book was so rich in real life examples and
touching experiences I was filled with tears of joy.
This book is as if Victor lived his whole life in
the ivory tower talking to other suits.

Oh well, vita continua.