mass market paperback, 222 pages
English language
Published April 5, 1965 by Washington Square Press.
Dr. Viktor E. Frankl is professor of psychiatry and neurology at the University of Vienna, President of the Austrian Medical Society for Psychotherapy, and head of the neurological department of the poliklinik of Vienna, He leads what has become known as the Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy. He is the leader and originator of the school of logotherapy or existential analysis.
After three grim years at Auschwitz and other Nazi prisons, Dr. Frankl gained freedom only to learn that almost his entire family had been wiped out. But during, and indeed partly because of, the incredible suffering and degradation of those harrowing years, he developed his theory of logotherapy.
In his own words, "logotherapy...makes the concept of man into a whole...and focuses its attention upon mankind's groping for a higher meaning in life." (back cover)
Combinando vivencias con análisis médico, este libro deja huella en todo aquel que lo lea. Lecciones, una tras otra, que te maravillan y asustan al mismo tiempo, y que espero que causen las mejores reflexiones en las mentes de toda persona digna.
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. …
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.
Témoignage d'un survivant des camps de concentration nazi, ce livre est d'une rare force. Ce qui m'a le plus marqué c'est la force qui a animé cet homme à travers son calvaire et la profondeur des apprentissages tirés qu'il retransmet dans ce livre. Frankl insiste que l'objectif principal d'un homme dans sa vie est d'y trouver un sens et le déploie à travers tout son livre par la force de son expérience. Un livre qui peut être très difficile par moments mais essentiel et marquant.
"If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete."
Frankl is great. He's deservedly influential. Sometimes annoying, occasionally an insufferable prig - he's overall a superlative humanist. Brilliant & lovable.
His psych and philosophy are inextricable, but it's easier for me to swallow as philosophy.
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 …
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.
