Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankel

Man’s Search for Meaning

a. What is the book really about?

“Man’s Search for Meaning”, more then being a narration of the experience of a human being in a concentration camp, is Victor Frankl’s opinion on what a human can aim for to achieve self-preservation in an extreme condition. Such things as Love, Beauty (in Nature or Art), Faith and Humour become weapons of the soul in abnormal situation. These four states become a goal to aspire for: a meaning for one’s life. In the book, the author resumes the experience of a Nazi death camp in three major emotional phases: Shock, Apathy and Disillusionment. In order, to survive those phases, the prisoners had to access a spiritual freedom and, therefore, the damage to his soul would be lessened. A spiritual retreat, through the “soul’s weapon”, permitted men in those camp to escape from their surroundings. It is implied in the book that the mental state of someone influences greatly on the body’s health: the loss of faith in the camps, for example, is shown to have a deadly effect. This is where enters the idea of logotherapy : in order to conserve inner strength, a human being must focus on meanings to be fulfilled in their future. Something, or someone, to live for. In order to conserve a certain mental health, it is important that a man sets for himself a task to accomplish and also, understand that life is still “expecting something from them”. Also, the acceptance that there will always be suffering in one’s life seems, to Frankl, as a human achievement. Only when this state of mind is reached can a human access happiness: the prisoners in the camps would feel joy when they arrived in a new camp because there were no crematorium or gas chambers. This puts forward the relativity of suffering: if it is accepted, then other meanings can come forward and facilitate an access to happiness.

b. Is this just a rehash of positive thinking?

Even though Frankl explains that, in situations as horrible as Nazi death camps, there still was a way to happiness, I don’t see this book as a rehash of positive thinking. It is clear that, even though a few survived the camps because they had sat a goal to achieve in the future, it was not sufficient to stay emotionally untouched. Even after the liberation, the survivors did not feel pleasure or relief, they even had lost the ability to feel those emotion. The “spiritual elevation” that is implied in the book , also led them to a form of dehumanization. In order to survive they had to focus on primitive needs: eating and surviving. In order to save the emotional self, human sentiments for others had to be buried: the apathy for the surroundings was so great that the horror of the camps had to become a banality. This led to, even after the liberation, a sentiment that if