This 2008 edition of Frankl's 1945 book is a must read for every human being who wants to lift their spirit in moments of despair.
The book is structured in three different parts. The first one (Experiences in a Concentration Camp) and the Postscript (The case for a Tragic Optimism) fit beautifully together, and are the basis of Frankl's philosophy and psychotherapy system called Logotherapy. They are narrated in a very conversational way because they are, after all, a memoir. They differ greatly in style and tone from the second part (Logotherapy in a Nutshell), which is a summary of Frankl's therapy system, partially based on Frankl's experiences and observations as Auschwitz inmate, and partially on techniques and views of the world that he had started elaborating before he was sent to the camp. This part is drier in style, way more technical and not as approachable for the reader, unless the reader is really into therapy or a therapist. Harold Kushner's preface to this 2008 edition is a good summary of the book main points, while Frankl's preface to the 1992 edition summarizes well how the book and Logotherapy came to be.
The book has many pearls of wisdom, and is very uplifting despite the brutality of what we read. In all honesty, I already expected that when I picked up the book. Some prisoner's stories are utterly poetic despite their tragedy. I'm glad that those people's historical memoirs had been so beautifully preserved. On the other hand, this is a survivor's first-person narration of the events, so that allows for invaluable insights into the reality of the extermination camps and into the inmates' mental/emotional state and fortune.
Since we live in 2021 and we're pretty aware of the Nazis' atrocities, most of the things that Frankl tells about his experience are somewhat lessened by the impact on the reader of dozens of documentaries and movies on WW2. It might have been chilling reading the book in the postwar era, when all the details were still unfolding and the wold came to realize what had really happened. What we didn't know before reading the book is that a new therapeutic model, Logotherapy, was greatly influenced by the Jew's suffering in Auschwitz, and that there is hope even in the biggest moments of despair.
For the rest, Frank's take on life is admirable and full of wisdom, whether you are into Logotherapy or not. I especially liked his comments on love, the youth and unemployment, as they are still, more than half a century later, valid.
LOGOTHERAPY, SOME CORE PRINCIPLES AND POINTS I LIKE
> The great task for any person is to find meaning in his/her life. Frankl saw three possible sources for meaning: Work (doing something significant), Love (caring for another person), and Courage in difficult times.
> Suffering is meaningless; we give our suffering meaning by the way in which we respond to it.
> You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you.
> Logotherapy aims to curing the soul by leading it to find meaning in life.
> What matters is to make the best of any given situation.
> Man’s main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life.
> The aim of life is not to be happy as the seeking of happiness can increase someone's unhappiness.
> Suffering is unavoidable, is part of life, and we need to accept it and re-frame it.
> Tragic optimism, i.e., one remains optimistic in spite of the “tragic triad, or those aspects of human existence which may be circumscribed by: (1) pain; (2) guilt; and (3) death and that we should say 'yes' to life in spite of all that.
> To suffer unnecessarily is masochistic rather than heroic.
> Success cannot be pursued but it is an end result that the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.
There are hundreds of pearls of wisdom that I cannot reproduce here because it would take too long, but those are the ones that made me read the book in the first place.
SOME CRITIQUE
Frankl poignantly mentions that despite all the inmates being subject to the harsh situations (food and sleep deprivation, hard-work labor, extreme cold, beatings, etc.) some died and some survived, and he ways that, many of those who died did so because they gave up on life and lose hope in getting alive out of the camps and resuming their lives after the war.
I love most of what Frankl says and his attitude towards life. However, we cannot say that Frankl survived just because he had a specific mindset, hopes of getting alive, finding his family and publishing the basics of Logotherapy included in this edition, which he had already started writing before being taken to the camp. First of all, he was an intellectual and a psychiatrist, i.e. a person with a strong mind, mentally s stable with enough intellectual harnesses to re-frame anything in his head to give it meaning. He certainly was an optimistic, like it's in his nature. Not everyone was so well equipped mentally and emotionally. What's more, there must have been other people who, like him, had hopes of surviving, seeing their families and doing something with their lives in the outside world, but they never made it because, I can only hypothesize, their physique and immune system, as well as their mental state weren't Frankl's.
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He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How
Reviewed in the United States on December 4, 2020
This is exactly the right book to read during the coronavirus pandemic of 2020. Viktor Frankl was a prisoner of multiple Nazi concentration camps and, although our conditions are not nearly as dire, most of us have felt like prisoners in our own homes for at least some period of time this year. With that correlation in mind, this book offers many great insights into why we should continually get out of bed in the morning. I myself have been out of a job and quarantined for over nine months. I have seen some friends descend into overwhelming anxiety and depression and have seen others take wonderful advantage of their new found time. “Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways,” Frankl writes “in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone.” We become the person we tell ourselves we are.This book is all about finding and choosing to actively pursue a life of meaning. Dr. Frankl is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who is widely credited with establishing the field of logotherapy (from the Greek word logos meaning “reason”) as a psychiatric technique that uses existential analysis to help patients resolve their emotional conflicts. According to logotherapy “we can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.” This was how he survived the Holocaust, and how we can learn to find our own meaning in times of perceived meaninglessness.When he was arrested in 1942, Frankl had a partially finished manuscript that he was forced to leave behind. On those days when he felt apathy creeping in, he reminded himself of his desire to someday finish the book, and this purpose towards the future motivated him to keep going. Also when he was arrested, so was his family and pregnant wife, and similarly on those days when he felt supreme despair, he thought of his loved ones and found purpose in continuing on with the hope of someday reuniting with them. “It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking into the future” Frankl contends, and further writes of his time in the camps that “the prisoner who had lost faith in the future—his future—was doomed.” It seems true to me that without something promising to look forward to, despair at one’s current situation quickly sets in.One of the messages in this book that resonated most with me was the sentiment that the meaning of life must come from inside each individual and be unique to them. There is no all encompassing meaning of life, but each of us has our own meaning that we are meant to discover and pursue on our own. We must all make choices about the people we want to be and the people we want to become. Having a sense of meaning and a true purpose in life is like having an existential North Star. As long as every choice, big or small, points in the direction of your North Star, you will never be lost in life.Find your North Star my friends.
Reviewed in the United States on December 4, 2020
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Top reviews from other countries
Diksha Suman (@beingsheblog)
The most beautiful book I have ever read.
Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on July 5, 2018
Diksha Suman (@beingsheblog)
Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on July 5, 2018
This book has two parts:
1.Experiences in a Concentration Camp.
2.Logotherapy in a Nutshell
The second part is so impactful and unique that you will re-read this book. The first part mainly is the autobiographical account of Sir, Frankl and the best part is both parts mutually support their credibility.
The way he has poured all the pain in this book is not so easy and that too after experiencing it, I was literally shocked because firstly, I was unaware of the term “Holocaust”, maybe I have read before somewhere in History but I was unaware while reading and Secondly, I had never come across something like this.
He has talked about everything related to life in this book and you know what the best part is even after so much pain, I felt sad but I wasn’t demotivated, I could relate it and with each page-turning, what I found was ‘I am into the book’, suffering all this but I wasn’t tackling all the worst situation in my life as he did.
Suddenly I started understanding that what life is? what suffering is? and what surviving is? and where am I lacking?
So, in another way, I discovered the answer to three most important questions which I wanted to be answered since maturity.
I came across a new word “Logotherapy” and I loved that section so much that I will re-read this book.
In one line, I learned a lot from this book, which I can further practice to live a peaceful and beautiful life ahead. And this what makes this book worth reading.
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Sean E. Nash
Wisdom from the furnace of affliction
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 2, 2017
Caitlin Cockcroft
Touching on an understanding of what is left when you strip a person to their bones
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 14, 2018
