By Luis Nava (‘29)

Man’s Search for Meaning (2006 Edition). Image courtesy of Amazon.

In Man’s Search for Meaning, the author, Victor E. Frankl, recounts his own mind-boggling experiences within several Nazi concentration camps. In 1905, Frankl was born in Vienna, Austria. He studied psychology and philosophy in secondary school, earning a medical doctorate in 1930. Disastrously, he and his family were sent to a concentration camp in 1942. In 1944, he was sent to Auschwitz. 

During the first part of his book, Frankl expresses the horrors he witnessed and the experiences he lived through while prisoner in several camps, including Auschwitz. Frankl details how, upon arrival at a concentration camp, he was stripped of all his belongings, including an important manuscript bearing his latest work. Later in the book, he explains that he attempted to recreate it by scrawling shorthand on shreds of paper. Amidst the terrors of the camp, Frankl recalls that those prisoners with a reason to live survived longer than those who gave up hope. Frankl’s many anecdotes make the first, narrative half of the book an engrossing read that provokes readers to reflect on their own actions. 

In the second portion of his book, Frankl dives into detail about his ideas on psychotherapy. He named his approach to psychotherapy, logotherapy. Essentially, Frankl argues that man’s motivation is to find meaning in life. Furthermore, he states that psychotherapy should aim to help people discover their meaning. Frankl believes that this meaning can come in three forms: from a specific work or job that can only be accomplished by the individual, by meeting someone or having an experience with something, or by meaningfully enduring suffering.

The first of these may refer to a career. For example, a person may find meaning in producing a technology that improves air travel safety. The second may refer to a person. For example, parents find meaning in raising their children. The third, Frankl clearly separates from masochism, which is the pursuit of suffering. Frankl says that enduring and finding meaning in unavoidable suffering can provide meaning in an individual’s life. He states that man should not search for suffering, but that if it should befall him, he should endure it meaningfully.

A significant anecdote from the book comes when Frankl explains his interactions with one of his patients. The man consulting Frankl had lost his wife, and he was suffering immensely. Upon speaking with the man, Frankl asked him what would have happened if he had died first, instead of his wife. The man replied that she would  suffer over his death. Frankl then helped him see that he was suffering in her place, so that she did not have to suffer. The man found comfort in the meaning behind his pain.

Man’s Search for Meaning is a great read, offering meaningful anecdotes that help readers appreciate their lives and find meaning in their existence. Hopefully, this book will inspire readers to find a righteous cause to fight for, no matter how difficult the path gets. As one of the most repeated quotes from Nietzsche in the book reads: “He who has a why to live for, can bear almost any how.”