Man's Search for Meaning
Viktor E. Frankl
“Those who have a why can bear almost any how.”
Man's Search for Meaning
Viktor E. Frankl · 1946
Viktor Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist, born in Vienna in 1905. During the Second World War he was imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz. His wife, his parents and his brother died in the camps. After liberation in 1945, he wrote this book in a matter of days; it was first published in German in 1946. He founded logotherapy, a form of therapy based on finding meaning. He died in 1997.
The first part of the book describes Frankl's experience as a prisoner: hunger, cold, cruelty and constant fear of death. He noticed that prisoners who lost hope and lost a sense of purpose often declined quickly. Those who held on to something to live for, a loved one, a task to finish, were more likely to endure. Frankl himself kept going partly by thinking of his wife and imagining rewriting the manuscript that had been taken from him.
Frankl's most famous insight: everything can be taken from a person except one thing, the freedom to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances. Even in the camps, some prisoners walked through the huts comforting others and giving away their last piece of bread. We cannot always choose what happens to us, but we can always choose how we respond.
In the second part, Frankl explains logotherapy. He says the main drive in human beings is not pleasure or power, but the search for meaning. Meaning can be found in three ways: by creating a work or doing a deed; by experiencing something or loving someone; and by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering. He gives the example of a grieving widower. Frankl asked him what would have happened if he had died first. The man realised his wife had been spared this pain, and his suffering found meaning.
Frankl turns the question around: instead of asking what we expect from life, we should ask what life expects from us. Each of us is questioned by life, and we answer by being responsible. Whatever you are going through today, there is still a meaning waiting to be found, a person to love, a task to complete. Find your why, and you will find the strength for the how.