Paperback, 165 pages
English language
Published Aug. 6, 2006 by Beacon Press.
Man's Search for Meaning has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Between 1942 and 1945 psychiatrist Viktor Frankl labored in four different camps, including Auschwitz, while his parents, brother, and pregnant wife perished. Based on his own experience and the stories of his many patients, 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. In the decades since its first publication in 1959, Man's Search for Meaning has become a classic, with more than twelve million copies in print around the world. A 1991 Library of Congress …
Man's Search for Meaning has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Between 1942 and 1945 psychiatrist Viktor Frankl labored in four different camps, including Auschwitz, while his parents, brother, and pregnant wife perished. Based on his own experience and the stories of his many patients, 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. In the decades since its first publication in 1959, Man's Search for Meaning has become a classic, with more than twelve million copies in print around the world. A 1991 Library of Congress survey 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. At once a memoir, a meditation, a treatise, and a history, it continues to inspire us all to find significance in the very act of living. (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."
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.
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.
