Man's Search For Meaning By Viktor Frankl

Man’s search For Meaning is a book written by Viktor Frankl. It is the inspirational story of Frankl’s experience as a prisoner in a Nazi death camps. Frankl who is a psychiatrist by profession, uses his ordeal to understand and document the psychology of survival. From his experiences, he developed a new school known as Logo therapy. He lost his parents, his pregnant wife, and brother in the same concentration camps. From 1942 to 1945, Frankl survived four death camps including Auschwitz. The story of Frankl provides a testament to his experiences as a survivor and the experiences of some of the people he treated. Extreme hunger, cold, and brutality were the order of each day. Most prisoners living in the Nazi camps as prisoners lost belief in life and found it meaningless. Many contemplated suicide as the only option. Those who lost faith could not survive. According to Frankl whoever lost faith in a better future lost his life’s spiritual hold. From that moment, mental and physical decay plagued him and his life fell apart. Giving up was recognized when a person traded a scrap of food for a cigarette. The last cigarette smoke symbolized despair. Frankl sees such kind of despair as a mistake. He argues that having expectations from life does not matter. What matters involves what life expects from us. Many perished in the camps and the few survivors such as Frankl faced constant threat of death in the gas chambers. However, the story is not about the senseless killings and death of the great people and heroes. The story is about the suffering, death, and struggle of the undocumented and unknown victims of the Nazi regime. Additionally, it is the testament of how Frankl at the face of such adversity became an optimist. He reasone...

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...ps in front of him. He sees the bird as the embodiment of his wife. Additionally, he saw himself providing lectures in lecture halls after his liberation. He argues that through love one can grasp the core of another human being’s personality. To see and understand another human beings traits and features one has to love him. That love facilitates the actualization of potential in the person. From such actualization, it is possible to help such a person in making his potentialities a reality.

In conclusion, I do not think Frankl was happy with his situation in the camps. However, he strived to achieve happiness through having a positive attitude and accepting his circumstances. Frankl’s book is a monologue that gives a testament of unimaginable horrors and traumatic events. However, regardless of his situation he made a firm decision to hold happiness in his life.