Book Review #5: Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning
Man’s Search for Meaning (1984)
By Viktor Frankl
221 pages (179+Bibliography)
PERSONAL THOUGHTS
Man’s Search for Meaning is a modern classic. Multiple people recommended I read it over the years, but I always resisted. I did not read it for two reasons. First, I worried about how I would handle the content because most of it is set in the Nazi concentration camps. I find the inhumanity of the death camps a very emotionally difficult topic for me. It forces the reader to wrestle with their own humanity or lack thereof.
Second, I hold a personal reason for hesitating to read Viktor Frankl's book. This reason was more subtle for me. My introduction to existential psychotherapy has been through Irvin Yalom. I first read The Gift of Therapy back in graduate school and have continued reading and re-reading his books for years.
When I read about Yalom’s encounter with Frankl in Vienna and at Stanford in his book, Becoming Myself, I did not feel immediately inspired to read Frankl. At the end of Yalom’s chapter discussing Frankl and his work, he shows a more balanced perspective of him. Yalom says, “Years later, when writing Existential Psychotherapy, I reviewed his work thoroughly and realized, more than ever, the importance of his innovative and fundamental contributions to our field” (Yalom, 2017, p. 162).
When I decided to read Man’s Search for Meaning, I read the book in 3 days. It is not a long read, but it is a taxing one. I found it emotionally challenging because it engages such issues as life and death, humanity and inhumanity, meaning and meaninglessness, suffering and suicide. These are not easy topics. They may challenge our deeply held views of the world, especially the fairy tale ending.
Why did I read Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning now? I recently decided that I needed to broaden my view of existential psychotherapy. So, I read Emmy van Deurzen’s Everyday Mysteries: A Handbook of Existential Psychotherapy (2nd) and Mick Cooper’s The Existential Counselling Primer: A Concise Introduction (2nd). Both are excellent introductions to existential psychotherapy. The former is a more technical introduction while the latter is a very accessible one.
CONTENTS
Viktor Frankl lived from 1905 to 1997. He was a Jewish psychiatrist in Vienna, a holocaust survivor of Auschwitz and Dachau, and the founder of Logotherapy. This is Frankl’s foundational work in which he develops Logotherapy. It develops out of his personal experiences and professional psychiatric work. It is well worth reading.
When I was reading van Deurzen and Cooper, I more fully realized the impact of Frankl. He founded the Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy (after Freud and Adler) as well as one of the primary schools of existential psychotherapy (the others being Daseinsanalysis, Existential-Humanistic, and Existential-Phenomenological). His influence cannot be overlooked. According to Cooper, meaning-centered existential approaches, such as Logotherapy, flourish today in continental Europe and America through training centers, newsletters, conferences, and journals.
Man’s Search for Meaning is laid out in three broad sections: Part One: Experiences in a Concentration Camp, Part Two: Logotherapy in a Nutshell, and Postscript 1984: The Case for a Tragic Optimism. It also includes an extensive Bibliography. Part One is the most extensive section of the book. It consists of two-thirds of the book. I do wish that Part One contained further sections for easier reading. In my notes, I created sections for Part One, and it helped me to follow the flow of thought much easier.
Frankl wrote this section, “Experiences in a Concentration Camp,” in just 9 days. This section validates his theories in three phases of prisoners’ mental reactions to the concentration camp: the period following admission, which is focused on shock; the period when he is well entrenched in camp routine, which is focused on apathy; and the period following his release and liberation, which is focused on freedom (Frankl, 1984, p. 26). The utter dehumanizing of the prisoners makes one thankful that Frankl chose not to recount the humiliations already told by others.
Part Two does include section headings and aids the reading tremendously. It is a section that has been revised and updated since 1962. My assumption is that Logotherapy has further evolved and its concepts clarified, but I still found “Logotherapy in a nutshell” difficult to follow at times. It seems to lack a logical flow. I repeatedly found myself attempting to understand how one section related to the next. Upon further inspection, I discovered the connection, but at other times, I still could not make the association.
Postscript 1984 is based on a lecture that he gave at the Third World Congress of Logotherapy in 1983. My edition of the book was published in 1984 and was significantly revised and updated. The lecture both clarifies some of Logotherapy’s concepts as well as sets them in a particular context. It covers concepts like the tragic triad, the existential vacuum, and avenues to meaning. These concepts seem more understandable here in the lecture than in Part Two.
FURTHER THOUGHTS
Frankl is a creative thinker and conceptual psychiatrist. I believe that his influence continues because of two things. First, he intentionally developed a school of psychotherapy. He developed a language for concepts and a language for Logotherapy. He did not simply write books about it but created an organization around it. While I will always appreciate Irvin Yalom and his impact on me, I realize that his influence will always be somewhat limited because he did not develop his school of therapy and an organization to promote it.
Second, he was flexible about his theory and the further development of it. He expected it. In contrast, Freud was protective of his theory and disenfranchised those who modified it. He excommunicated some of the most creative psychoanalytic thinkers such as Adler and Jung. There are examples of those who modified it but stayed within the strict parameters of psychoanalysis. Those are few and far between. Frankl anticipated Logotherapy to continue to grow and develop. He does not seem to rule over it with an iron fist like Freud seems to have done with psychoanalysis. He legitimatized its expansion beyond himself.
QUOTES
These are two of Frankl’s favorite quotes.
About his concentration camp experience, Frankl uses this quote from Nietzsche multiple times: “He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.”
Another Nietzsche quote that Frankl uses is “That which does not kill me, makes me stronger” (103).
Frankl sums up an insight into the first phase of the mental reactions to entering the concentration camp from section one. He says, "An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior" (38). I especially liked this quote because it sets abnormal behavior into context. Abnormal behavior may not be as abnormal as we think it is.
Recommendation
Man’s Search for Meaning is foundational to the meaning-centered existential approach. Logotherapy continues its influence within existential psychotherapy, and this book provides the impetus for it. If you are interested in existential psychotherapy, this is a must-read. As a professor and clinician, I found insights for my life and work.
Additionally, I can see why this book has appealed to a broad audience. Frankl found meaning within the dehumanizing confines of a SS Concentration Camp. Whether he lived or died, the meaning he found made survival possible. Thankfully, he survived and was able to share his insights with us. This book has the power to change the view of our life situation and to find meaning even in the most difficult of situations. It is well-worth reading, a short read with a long-lasting impact.
As a follow-up to Man’s Search for Meaning, I would like to find and read a more systematic presentation of Logotherapy. Fortunately, the 1984 edition of Man’s Search for Meaning does include an extensive Bibliography that I have been searching through. Of course, it is now dated, but I still find it helpful.
Links
Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (1984): https://amzn.to/46prhCA
Viktor Frankl. (2023, June 23). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Frankl
Irvin Yalom, The Gift of Therapy (2002): https://amzn.to/38oys4A
Irvin Yalom, Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist’s Memoir: https://amzn.to/3COkeWs
Irvin Yalom, Existential Psychotherapy (1980): https://amzn.to/3N7Bl8U
Emmy van Deurzen, Everyday Mysteries: A Handbook of Existential Psychotherapy (2nd ed.): https://amzn.to/3NN8KZv
Mick Cooper, The Existential Counselling Primer: A Concise Introduction (2nd ed.): https://amzn.to/46qQr3J