Man's Search for Meaning Paperback – June 1, 2006

If you're in pain, read this book. If you're scared, read this book. If you are lost, read this book. If you are happy, read this book. If you have time, read this book. If you don't have time, read this book. Read this book, read this book.

"We who lived in the concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

I read this in college and ordered again to read some 40 years later. Frankl relates the severe conditions in the concentration camp. Those without any purpose seemed to perish. Those that had developed purpose and meaning to the harsh conditions got out of bed every morning to face another unbearable day. this book is a classic. anything less than 5 stars would be a reflection on me.

When I first started reading Man's Search.... last week I was repulsed by the descriptions of the concentration camp experiences. How could humans be like that? Even though of course we have known about them for 70 years now, it is horrible to read about them. My temptation was to put the book aside, I told someone it was "depressing." But how glad I am that I persevered (because it was our Book Club choice this month.) Ultimately, this book is a hopeful paen to humankind's ability to rise above all suffering, to find our own individual meaning to our existence and in that way make sense of why we are in the world and why we should continue in it, doing our very best. This book transcends religion even as I recognize so much of what Frankl writes in my own religious beliefs.
Truly a must read for people as soon as they are old enough to understand it--perhaps mid teenage years.

Viktor Frankl, an Austrian Jew, studied neurology and psychiatry with a focus on depression and suicide years before being arrested and deported by the Nazis in 1942. He defied odds by lasting three years in concentration camps. He lost his parents, brother, and his wife, who was pregnant. As doctors were in short supply in the camps, Frankl, after working as a slave laborer for some time, was able to work as a physician until his liberation.

As his work prior to his time in the concentration camps had focused on depression and the prevention of suicide, he turned his focus to his own survival story and the people with whom he interacted in the camps. Why did some survive and others perish? What gave people the will to live? What gives life meaning?

Some favorite moments:

•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.
•Frankl saw three possible sources for meaning: in work (doing something significant), in love (caring for another person) and in courage during difficult times. Suffering in and of itself is meaningless; we give our suffering meaning by the way in which we respond to it.
•Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, you freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. 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.
•The truth- that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and believe have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.
•Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.
•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.
•Now, being free, they thought they could use their freedom licentiously and ruthlessly. The only thing that had changed for them was the they were now the oppressors instead of the oppressed...Only slowly could these men be guided back to the commonplace truth that no one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them.
•"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."
•So, let us be alert - alert in a twofold sense: Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.

Highly recommend.

For some reason, I put off reading this book for many years. I had read excerpts that made me want to read it, but getting the book and sitting down to read it just seemed to not fit into my plans. I am so glad I finally read it. For about twenty years, I read many stories about World War Two. I wanted to know why no one helped the Jews. The most gratifying part of the reading was to find that there were many people that endangered their own lives and the lives of their families in order to hide Jews from the Germans. So, to follow a Jew into the concentration camps and read his observations was enlightening. Some survived the camps while others died. They all ate the same food, suffered the same diseases, performed the same work, and suffered the freezing temperatures. Why did some survive? That is what Victor Frankl wanted to know and with close observation, he saw the pattern that gave meaning to life and helped some survive while others gave up and died. His ideas are applicable to modern day problems as well as his methods.