A promising young doctor, Frankl had just begun the work when he was sent to the first of several Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz. He sewed the manuscript in his coat pocket for safekeeping, but it was eventually found, confiscated and presumably destroyed.
Theory is Challenged
Ironically, the book’s main purpose was to explain logotherapy, which theorizes that man’s will to survive is primarily based on his feeling a need to complete something; that life can only matter when man senses a definite meaning or purpose for his existence. While forming this theory, and beginning his manuscript, Frankl could hardly have foreseen that logotherapy would be put to the ultimate challenge by his own misfortune.
His survival in the camps was in part due to luck (the infamous finger-pointing SS man decided to send him to the right line), in part due to his concern as a doctor for others, but mostly because he fiercely wanted to re-write the confiscated manuscript. Working in secrecy, using bits and scraps of paper, Frankl spent the better part of 1942-1945 explaining the very theory that was keeping him alive.
The first part of the book concerns the actual death-camp experiences and is written from an amazingly objective, matter-of-fact point of view. Despite his incarcerated status, Frankl’s descriptions are antiseptic in their approach; they are factual, almost totally devoid of emotion. It would have been tempting, and justifiable, to embellish the experiences and expound upon them, but Frankl is to be commended for basically just telling the story and letting the atrocities speak for themselves.
Motivation is the Theoretical Catalyst
As a psychologist, Frankl cannot remove himself from making clinical observations, and is especially intrigued by the level of apathy humans are capable of achieving: “relative apathy . . . a kind of emotional death.” According to his observations, this state was far more visible in the prisoners who tended to look toward their past and/or present, without seeing any reason in—or for—their future. The apathy was often fatal; they succumbed not so much to the disease, torture and starvation as to a lack of meaning or purpose in staying alive. Frankl observes that no matter how deep the suffering, man is willing to endure more of it if he can cling to his sense of meaning.
Frankl uses the second part of this book to define and explain his theory as it applies to everyday life. He points out that logotherapy, as compared with standard psychoanalysis, “is a method less retrospective and less introspective . . . [that it] focuses on the future . . . meanings to be fulfilled by the patient.” The importance of meaning is further stressed by Frankl’s assertion that “man’s main concern is not to gain pleasure or avoid pain, but rather to see a meaning in his life.”
Theory and Philosophy Made Accessible
Unlike many books of this genre, Man’s Search for Meaning is concise and easily readable. Frankl speaks to the layman as easily as the learned psychological scholar, and in today’s vernacular, one could call the book very “user-friendly.” Its lessons apply just as easily to normal situations as they do to the unspeakable and (fortunately) very rare circumstances such as a Holocaust concentration camp would bring about. Frankl’s principle of logotherapy can be summarized by his favorite quote from the German philosopher Frederick Wilhelm Nietzsche: “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”
Frankl, Viktor. Man’s Search for Meaning. Beacon Press, MA, 2006. 165 pages. ISBN:9780807014271
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