Man's Search for Meaning

This book gave me a mixed feeling.

Firstly, I admire E. Frankl, for his unbending will to live, his intellectual attitude- the ability to build something out of utmost discomfort, even in the face of almost certain death. It's not an easy feat to psychoanalyze and create a theory, a whole new school of psychotherapy (Logotherapy) while one himself is part of the subjects. He did and did it excellently.

However, I can't agree with him regarding meaning. Now, there can be meaning, self-imposed, self-explored as he suggested. Those don't need to be intrinsic. However, he also believes in ultimate meaning and didn't put any argument on behalf of his belief. I think I can safely assume that it is due to his faith and perhaps upbringing. He is faithful, and he draws his strength from faith tremendously. His metaphysics is primitive in my opinion.

Still, Logotherapy has a virtue. Unlike other schools, it doesn't treat people as machines with libido, repressions etc but take a real interest in one's current status and environment.

Interesting insights on how the magnitude of suffering and joy are independent of the size of the event.

Frankl has a few gems, but his thesis that suffering brings meaning to life and that life is meaningless without suffering is clearly a defensive reaction to living through Auschwitz. His observation that a belief in the meaninglessness of life combined with a focus on sexual pleasure (hedonism) leads to pansexuality is interesting. He advocates that the pleasure is an outgrowth of love, which to me seems like a too easy way of cutting that knot. I feel that Epicurus would have a lot of useful things to say here.

His general remarks on meaning in life were a bit too thin, though he explicitly prefaces his story with an apology that he cannot draw deeper insights from his own experience, and leaves it to others to complete the job.

His philosophy of logotherapy appears to me to be an overfitting activity. Combating depression or other suffering by grasping your situation firmly and shaking it like a snowglobe until meaning falls out. Now that a bad event is found to be meaningful, the pain will fall away. He only presents successes, but the principles are vague: like North Korean Juche or the Matrix, our experts can do it and tell you you're doing it wrong, but no one can be told what it is.