Man's Search For Meaning By Viktor E. Frankl

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People of all backgrounds throughout history have had the inner struggle of discovering their personal meaning and potential in life. How they went about this can be viewed in a number of ways. They often found their passion through studies in universities or in their work. Others unlocked their purpose tough and difficult times in their lives. These individuals learned that through pain, there can be a positive meaning at the end. But in both situations people occasionally sadly waste their opportunities to explore themselves and lose their potential to become better citizens to their families and to society. Why is it that the two cases occur? It’s strikingly ironic how people who were prisoners in concentration camps, in such terrible times, …show more content…

Frankl, explores how people lost their opportunities for growth while others at the same time transformed into better versions of themselves all within the destruction and despair of The …show more content…

Frankl faced through his life in the concentration camps, the one that was the most crucial to his future success was the inner struggle to find his purpose. During his final years in the death camps, Frankl often gave speeches to fellow prisoners about purpose, potential, and why they all needed to survive and fight on for the prospective future. This was a coping technique for him as well as useful for the other people in the camp also: “ But I also told them that, in spite of this, I had no intention of losing hope and giving up. For no man knew what the future would bring, much less the next hour”(Frankl 82). This unrelenting desire to not only survive, but to thrive, is the reason that Frankl made it out of the camps. His mindset would not let his body give up or give in to death. As a psychiatrist, Frankl passed along his wisdom to other prisoners in his conversations with not only friends, but enemies in the camp as well. What’s ironic is that in such unbearable conditions for a human being to handle, Frankl and other prisoners who were liberated transformed into more developed versions of themselves. While people In their pain and chaos, they discovered something more meaningful than anything they could have possibly imagined of finding outside of the camps; they discovered their inner

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