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Man's Search for Meaning | 
 enlarge | Author: Viktor E. Frankl
Publisher: Beacon Press
Category: Book
List Price: $13.00
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Rating:  17 reviews
Sales Rank: 13577
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Pages: 165
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.5
ISBN: 0807014273
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.5318092
EAN: 9780807014271
ASIN: 0807014273
Publication Date: June 15, 2006
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Product Description
Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl's memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Between 1942 and 1945 Frankl labored in four different camps, including Auschwitz, while his parents, brother, and pregnant wife perished. Based on his own experience and the experiences of those he treated in his practice, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. Frankl's theory?known as logotherapy, from the Greek word logos ("meaning")?holds that our primary drive in life is not pleasure, as Freud maintained, but the discovery and pursuit of what we personally find meaningful.
At the time of Frankl's death in 1997, Man's Search for Meaning had sold more than 10 million copies in twenty-four languages. A 1991 reader survey by the Library of Congress and the Book-of-the-Month Club that asked readers to name a "book that made a difference in your life" found Man's Search for Meaning among the ten most influential books in America.
Born in Vienna in 1905 Viktor E. Frankl earned an M.D. and a Ph.D. from the University of Vienna. He published more than thirty books on theoretical and clinical psychology and served as a visiting professor and lecturer at Harvard, Stanford, and elsewhere. In 1977 a fellow survivor, Joseph Fabry, founded the Viktor Frankl Institute of Logotherapy. Frankl died in 1997.
Harold S. Kushner is rabbi emeritus at Temple Israel in Natick, Massachusetts, and the author of several best-selling books, including When Bad Things Happen to Good People.
William J. Winslade is a philosopher, lawyer, and psychoanalyst at the University of Texas Medical School in Galveston.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 12 more reviews...
How to be Worthy of One's Suffering September 2, 2006
M. JEFFREY MCMAHON (Torrance, CA USA)
22 out of 22 found this review helpful
Frankl, who survived the concentration camps, writes that suffering is inevitable and that avoiding suffering is futile. Rather, one should be worthy of one's suffering and make meaning of it instead of surrendering to nihilism, bitterness and despair. He uses poetic, moving anecdotes from the concentration camps to illustrate those souls who find a deeper humanity from their suffering or who become animals relegated to nothing more than teeth-clenched self-preservation. Though not specifically religious, this masterpiece has a religious purpose--to help us find meaning. This book succeeds immeasurably.
*** Why no voting buttons? We do
Perspective March 24, 2007
John J. Rogers (Bolton, MA)
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
This is the most influential book I have read. It stops you from envying those who have more than you and reminds you of those that have less. I am not a two year old dying of AIDS in Africa. It makes you count your blessings. I have bought dozens of copies for friends and acquaintances. All to good effect.
Inspiring Book June 19, 2007
Ryan Koester (San Francisco, CA USA)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
I originally bought this book knowing nothing about Frankl, his experiences, or psychological theories. I simply read the description and a few of the overwhelmingly positive reviews here on Amazon and decided that it sounded interesting. What a life-changing book. Merely reading it at any given time has a marked positive influence on my attitude towards life.
What's most interesting about it, as Frankl says himself, is that what he's propounding are not abstract ideas developed by some academic at a university or in some research laboratory. He uses his direct experience in one of the most adverse circumstances possible--a Nazi concentration camp--to relate the ideas of logotherapy (his own school of psychotherapy) to the reader.
In a nutshell, the three most important tenets of logotherapy are as follows: (1) Life has meaning under all circumstances--even the most miserable ones; (2) Our main motivation for living is our will to find meaning in life; and (3) We have the freedom to find meaning in what we do, and what we experience, or at least in the stand we take when faced with a situation of unchangeable suffering. These principles are put directly to the test, and Frankl demonstrates their validity in a way that no social scientist has conceived of (or been able to) ever before.
From the afterword:
"Frankl was once asked to express in one sentence the meaning of his own life. He wrote the response on paper and asked his students to guess what he had written. After some moments of quiet reflection, a student surprised Frankl by saying, 'The meaning of your life is to help others find the meaning of theirs.'
'That was it, exactly,' Frankl said. 'Those are the very words I had written.'"
Faith, hope and responsibility. July 13, 2007
Yaakov (James) Mosher (Connecticut, USA)
This marvelous work does for the psychologically wounded what Peter Drucker's "The Effective Executive" does for the time-impaired. That is give people a feel for what tools to use to construct their own framework for achieving happiness (not someone else's concept of what another person's happiness ought to be).
Both "Man's Search for Meaning" and "The Effective Executive" should be taken up and re-read at least once a year (pardon me for offering so specific a prescription). Both works are short enough so they can be read quickly. But don't go too fast. Consider Speaker Newt Gingrich's advice when he recommended people go through "The Effective Executive" stopping at salient points (there are plenty of those) and making notes about how something relates specifically to one's life and incorporate that into one's operating system.
Dr. Viktor E. Frankl's logotherapy (or "meaning" therapy) springs from his experience in World War II concentration camps. His writing is refreshingly free from veiled (and sometimes not-so-veiled) invective of Holocaust literature. The terms "Jew" and "German" are scarely to be found. The Jewish identification is raised only when unavoidable to give a complete picture such as when Dr. Frankl's words give an Eastern European rabbi a new lease on mental health. Frank's statement about mankind's only two groups -- the decent and the indecent -- is telling.
Among other Frankl profundities --
-- Suffering is unavoidable.
-- Man in metaphysical tension is normal and worthwhile.
Perhaps his most important statement is that life is meaningful yet the meaning is different for each person and it changes more often than one might think. Keys to following this bouncing ball include taking responsibility and developing a sense of humor, according to our author.
Freedom is not an end in itself, Frankl correctly notes, although others (especially libertarian thinkers in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises) have suggested that it needs to be treated as such societally to that the road to happiness be as wide as possible for individuals. Recognition that life is meaningful is essential to a successful navigation of this road, no matter how wide.
Frankl: "Freedom is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness."
Frankl and many libertarians/classical liberals would agree that freedom and responsibility call for a delicate balance in the human mind. But who am I to say? Read Frankl, Allport and Fabry alongside Mises, Hayek and Rothbard and judge for yourself.
Something you can't miss about Frankl -- he refuses to be a dictator. He was persecuted through the caprice of at least one hideous dictator yet denied the enemy victory by not taking on the enemy's characteristics. This represents a high level of moral reasoning. Although Frankl isn't an explicitly religious author he has earned the title of "Rabbi Frankl" through such choosing.
The opposite of the spirit that animates Frankl and other greats (arrived at through attainment of true knowledge coupled with respect for all mankind) was wonderfully encapsulated by Stephen Crane is his story "Above All Things." Of this all-too-common unholy spirit of the imperialist, the dictator, the socialist "reformer," Crane wrote:
"...The stranger finds the occupations (read: lifestyles) of foreign peoples to be trivial and inconsequent. The average mind utterly fails to comprehend the new point of view...'How futile are the lives of these people.'...This is the arrogance of the man who has not yet solved himself and discovered his own actual futility."
most meaningful self-help book ever written.. August 30, 2007
Kerry O. Burns
Viktor Frankl's journey and his amazing survival techniques in the Auschwitz death camps prove to be one of the most meaningful books ever written. If there was 1 book that everyone should read in their life this would be my choice. Forget all those meaningless self-help books on getting rich, getting in touch with your inner self and all that new age baloney that might enhance your life but if your life has no meaning, no foundation for growth than nothing will ever bring you true happiness. In the midst of our greatest struggles we learn our greatest lessons and a life without struggle is not a life with meaning.
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