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Man's Search for Meaning | 
 enlarge | Author: Viktor E. Frankl
Publisher: Beacon Press
Category: Book
List Price: $6.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  70 reviews
Sales Rank: 287
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 165
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.1
Dimensions (in): 6.6 x 4.1 x 0.6
ISBN: 080701429X
Dewey Decimal Number: 302
EAN: 9780807014295
ASIN: 080701429X
Publication Date: June 14, 2006
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Product Description
Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl's memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Between 1942 and 1945 Frankl labored in four different camps, including Auschwitz, while his parents, brother, and pregnant wife perished. Based on his own experience and the experiences of those he treated in his practice, 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.
At the time of Frankl's death in 1997, Man's Search for Meaning had sold more than 10 million copies in twenty-four languages. A 1991 reader survey by the Library of Congress and the Book-of-the-Month Club 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.
Born in Vienna in 1905 Viktor E. Frankl earned an M.D. and a Ph.D. from the University of Vienna. He published more than thirty books on theoretical and clinical psychology and served as a visiting professor and lecturer at Harvard, Stanford, and elsewhere. In 1977 a fellow survivor, Joseph Fabry, founded the Viktor Frankl Institute of Logotherapy. Frankl died in 1997.
Harold S. Kushner is rabbi emeritus at Temple Israel in Natick, Massachusetts, and the author of several best-selling books, including When Bad Things Happen to Good People.
William J. Winslade is a philosopher, lawyer, and psychoanalyst at the University of Texas Medical School in Galveston.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 65 more reviews...
"Et lux in tenebris lucet" - and the light shineth in the darkness. July 24, 2008
Viktor E. Frankl teaches us that light can be found in each individual struggle to find meaning within - even through the worst pain, suffering and dehumanization; even in the darkest corners of history...
The book is split into two parts: Experiences In A Concentration Camp and Logotherapy In a Nutshell.
Part one is an account of his experiences in the concentration camps (Auschwitz and several others). Frankl gives us a picture of the sequence of three psychological reactions the prisoners experience to the process of imprisonment and freedom. Despite the horrifying circumstances, we begin to see an optimism budding in the sea of bleakness: a unique sense of meaning in some of the prisoners which helps them to cope with the day to day horrors of camp existence - a meaning which holds their spirits up even though their bodies are broken. This part of the book is unbelievably sad, yet the message it carries about the human condition is truly empowering.
In part 2, we are given a brief overview of Frankl's theory of logotherapy, a form of psychotherapy which helps patients find meaning in their lives - no matter what their circumstances.
The wisdom contained herein is so rich that after having only finished it last night, I know that I will be re-reading it for the rest of my life.
Frankl's reflections will stay with you July 23, 2008
An incredibly powerful, moving account of Frankl's concentration camp experience. His reflections are profound and will bless you deeply. The second half of the book includes an in-depth pyscological exploration that some will not find as digestible; but this is a rich part of the book and well worth the time. Highly recommended.
 A good challenge June 28, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
In short, it's difficult to complain about life when getting a lesson on it from an Auschwitz survivor. It really puts things into perspective for anyone who feels lost or depressed or worthless or small. It gives depth to "if you can't change your situation, change your attitude."
Frankl hits on surprisingly modern points about depression years before Prozac Nation and the transferring of therapy and medications to the mainstream--the normalization of not feeling normal. And he manages to provide a power-packed message in a tiny book; I found myself taking notes on logotherapy and Frankl's observations. And now I find myself trying to figure out how to apply his theory to my everyday frustrations. It's a good challenge.
Feeling curious about the world, frustrated by your life, or lost? Take a weekend and read this book.
My only gripes are the translation, which was crap in the version I read (but I'm an editor, so I get cranky about things like that) and that Frankl does paint himself as the all-answering, all-curing type who can walk into a room and fix any poor fool who's been suffering for years within minutes. I appreciate a degree of modesty. But I guess he's earned the right to feel righteous.
Just buy it June 24, 2008
I've read this more times than I can count. The autobiographical part of the book is stirring. The details of Logotherapy wear a bit thin after many reads, just because of familiarity.
I don't really relate to the idea of suffering as a life accomplishment - not because I devalue the trials of those who have no other choice, but just because I'm disconnected enough from it that I have trouble relating. I do continue to find the idea that a purpose is imposed on you rather than vice versa intriguing, although again, I'm not sure that I agree.
It's a great book and everyone should at least make a lap of the biography to understand what the Holocaust looked like from an insider, particularly people like myself who have been affected by the death of loved ones.
If you've never read it, it will be the best $7 you've ever spent.
Powerfull account of humanitys will to survive June 11, 2008
Viktor Frankl has written an powerfull book about his years as a prisoner inside a nazi concentration camp. He worked as a psychologist and wrote on the subject of lifes meaning. The book is a powerfull testament to the will of humans to survive in dire circumstances. The book begins with the train full of prisoners rolling into the camp. At once they are stripped of all their belongings. Beginning with their clothes, and then glasses, jewlery and all other personal belongings. This is the first step in the process of dehumanizing them. So the struggle for these prisoners he writes is very much about struggling to keep the idea of yourself as a subject alive. To keep alive ones feeling of self worth was essential for survival. it was also important he writes to have the feeling that one had a spiritual center where one could retain some freedom even though one was imprisoned. Otherwise he or she will regress to feeling very small and in the end becoming a formless member of the herd, like an animal. Once this was achieved, when the personality and subjectivity had been broken and erased the person could be willed to do almost anything. The spirit only survives he writes, as long as the idea of hope does. That is why in the suffering one has to parodoxically have to try to find some meaning. If one dosent then the organism is in great danger of being annihilated. Only those who where able to somehow retain a sense of hope, that maybe somewhere someone was waiting for them, that someone who loved them was thinking about them, that god,even though it seemed impossible, saw their suffering.
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