In Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl describes his revolutionary type of psychotherapy. He calls this therapy, logotherapy, from the Greek word "logos", which denotes meaning. This is centered on man's primary motivation of his search for meaning. To Frankl, finding meaning in life is a stronger force than any subconscious drive. He draws from his own experiences in a Nazi concentration camp to create and support this philosophy of man's existence. Frankl endured much suffering during his time in the concentration camp. All of his possessions were taken away, including his manuscript in which he recorded all of his life's work. He went through rough manual labor, marching through freezing temperatures, and little or no food. To add to this, he didn't even know if his wife was alive or if she had been killed when they were separated. However, throughout all this, Frankl was able to keep his hopes alive, and still care for his fellow man. This is due to his philosophy of person. He figured that the key to surviving in those horrible conditions was to find a meaning in his life. Once there is a meaning to live for, there will be a will to live. Finding a meaning in life is the most important thing according to Frankl. This is the core of his philosophy, and claims that it is the core of human existence. In his view, anything can attribute to be something to live for. Love is perhaps the strongest motivation, but even someone can even find fulfillment in his profession. According to logotherapy, we can find meaning in three ways. Man can either create a work or do a good deed, experience something or encountering someone, or by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering can we discover a meaning in... ... middle of paper ... ...m he loves or without something he feels is important to find meaning. It is also going to be difficult for this person not to consider suicide, even though Frankl believes it should never be an option. Personally I agree with most of Viktor Frankl's ideas and philosophy. It is important for a person to find a meaning in his life. Frankl's philosophy is more human and more personal than other psychiatrists' philosophies. The human person can not be motivated just on unconscious drives. Humans are much deeper beings and need aspects of life such as a sense of purpose, love, and human contact. I also agree that suicide should never be an alternative to life, except if sacrificing your life for a greater cause. Viktor Frankl's ideas are more realistic to human nature, and give a sense of optimism to the reader who can hopefully find meaning in their own lives.
Man's Search for Meaning is a book written in 1946 by Viktor Frankl. Frankl is a holocaust survivor who elaborates on his experiences of being an Auschwitz concentration camp inmate during World War II. Being that Frankl is also a trained psychologist, he goes into detail about his psychotherapeutic method, which involved analyzing a purpose in life to feel positively about, and then imagining it being reality. According to Frankl, longevity was explained by the way a prisoner imagined how the future affected his durability of life. The book proposes to answer the question "How was everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the mind of the average prisoner?" Part One establishes Frankl's dissection of his experiences in the concentration camps, while part two touches on his theory of logotherapy.
One of the most important points in this book is that no matter what you’re going through you have to find your meaning to life. If you don’t have a meaning to life or something to live for then there’s no chance of you surviving whatever you may be going through. You have to find whatever positive thing in your life to make it through any time of your life. In the book, he wrote this, “For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a
A Man's Search for Meaning is a novel that aims to describe the lived experiences of those in concentration camps during World War II. Due to the relevance of the themes in the novel to occupational therapy (OT) practice, I believe A Man's Search for Meaning could be a useful, cost effective tool for an OT working in any therapeutic practice setting.
We may nevertheless say that existentialism is a form of phenomenological philosophy that relies on certain reflective methods of studying human consciousness instantiated in the individual, society, and culture, which emerged as a popular general movement characteristic of 20 century European thought represented thought represented across many disciplines including literature, the humanities, and the social sciences. Existential psychology rejects the mechanistic views of the Freudians and instead sees people as engaged in a search for meaning (Trull & Prinstein, 2013, p. 382), therefore an existential psychotherapist may attribute the cause of the person’s anxiety to lost meaning of life. As Trull and Prinstein (2013) stated, the ultimate goal of existential psychotherapy is "to help the individual reach a point at which awareness and decision making can be exercised responsibly" (p. 383). The role of an existential psychotherapist is to enable the client to come closer to experience. By experiencing self, the client can learn to attach meaning and value to life. Sometimes the therapist will confront the client with questions “that force the client to examine the reasons for failure to search for meaning in life” (Trull & Prinstein, 2013, p.
Existentialists believe that “to live is to suffer; to survive is to find meaning in the suffering”. Despite all the horrific experiences in the concentration, Viktor Frankl is determined to not lose the significance of his life and succumb to the cruelty of his situation. With the use of three literary techniques- argumentation, rhetoric, and style- Frankl gives his proposition warrant that a man will not find meaning in his life by searching for it; he must give his life significance by answering questions life asks him.
"Usually, the quest for the meaning finds expression in a commitment to action, and in one's personal relationships. The building up of a professional career, for example, demands that we identify an activity that suits us and in which we can flourish, and that we settle on a goal and objectives to be achieved. The same can be true of our personal relationships: if we decide to have a family and raise children, we organize our lives in accordance with this decision, and our family life gives meaning to our existence." (Lenoir 30)
Wolf argues that a person must feel something towards his or her project or activities and that the person must feel gravitated toward this project and it must excite them or they may be passionate about it. But, not all people feel the same way in what they do. It doesn’t necessarily mean that their lives are meaningless, just that they look at what they’re doing with a different perspective. The person might be (i) spontaneous in what they choose to do; the activity excites them but they like to do things at different times, (ii) unreflective or idle; they don’t really think about or are not self-reflective about their beliefs, (iii) episodic and has no long term commitments to their projects, or they may be (iv) detached in what they do and they may not love or feel passion towards anything they do. Each example is of a person who may not be passionate and not feel anything towards their projects but have at least some success in such activities. This person may do different kinds of work, help people, and admire art the same way normal people do just with less passion and excitement but with the same amount of success. It would not be fair to say this person’s life lacks meaning because they’re less
Man’s Search for Meaning captivated my interest within the concept of self-love, and hopefulness while in a dehumanized , self loathed, hatred environment, which ultimately ruminates, my self awareness and acknowledgments within the existential belief theory and the power capacity of the human brain. Viktor E. Frankl details readers in his own horrific predicament during World War II, expressing the harsh treatment and imprisonment of Jews in Auschwitz concentration camps. While at camp Frankl expressed multiple stages in which individuals faced within these difficult times while also accompanying for psychological
In Viktor Frankl’s essay “Man’s Search For Meaning,” he recounts his experiences surviving the holocaust. Frankl shows how traumatic experiences shape people and force them to change in accordance with what is happening to them. Furthermore, he argues that adaptation was the only way he could survive. To prove this, he describes how he learned to shut himself off from certain aspects of his life and pay more attention to aspects of life that gave him hope, such as nature. Similarly, adaptation is also an important concern of Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved. In Beloved, Morrison explores Frankl’s idea about how people adapt differently to trauma, some love more than they previously had because they are finally free to do so, some try to find a shaky balance between independence and love and others rely too heavily on the love of a few.
A excruciating pain, like the loss of a family member or close friend, may cause a person to lose faith for better times in life. This particular source of pain was seen all too much during the Holocaust. Between eleven and seventeen million people lost their lives in concentration and work camps all across Europe including Frankl’s own family. For the ones that this tragedy directly affected, their past occasionally became their present and future: “To be sure, a human being is a finite thing, and his freedom is restricted. It is not freedom from conditions, but it is free to take a stand towards the conditions” (Frankl 130). Frankl explains that while people have the ability to change their outlook on their surroundings, it’s often difficult to escape the aftermath of horrific events from the past. Humans cannot control when, where, and how they were raised. All these factors play a crucial part in the development of one’s personality and behaviors. Your view on life can either help you progress or halt your success in finding your meaning. A person who is lost in their past will not glimpse into the possibilities of what the future hold for them. Instead they will only be in a continuous state of nihilism and lack the motivation to have any type of future at
In Victor Frankl's novel Man's Search for Meaning, Frankl discusses finding this magic in life in what he calls will-to-meaning. Frankl, a twentieth century psychiatrist, states that "life ultimately means taking responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual" (122). This concept is what he called will-to-meaning. Some forms of will-to-meaning are hunger, humiliation, fear, and deep anger at injustice (8). Some importance of will-to-meaning is that he had to find a sense of responsibility in his existence (9).
Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung started out their relationship as mentor and mentee, respectively. Jung diverted from Freudian thought to create his own theories after discovering how many ways he did not agree with Freud. The differences between these two psychologists are extremely visible with the use of application and comparison. Numerous examples of Freudian practice and analysis are found in A.A. Brill’s The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud. Freud’s no-holds-barred form of therapy, commonly known as free association, is radical in its own right; let alone when compared to Jung’s analytical approach. Robertson Davies’s The Manticore provides a storyline that exemplifies Jung’s analytical therapy. Although both schools of psychology provide a belief or practice of therapy, projection, and religion, they are extremely unique, and can shed light on the core differences between Freud and Jung.
Logotherapy was initially developed by Holocaust survivor Viktor E. Frankl whilst he endured the horrors of a concentration camp, as described in his novel Man’s Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy. At the core of logotherapy is the insistence that man desires to fulfill his life by giving it significance and filli...
Nevertheless ,we just appreciate life The meaning of life is finding the meaning of life and meanwhile live the life enjoying everything you do, if you don 't like something just change it. Trial and error.if i can do it all time I do little time then it will be easy to do it because when I know what meaning of life puts me in power place in life if I know meaning of life I so Know should have high position because I knew what my captives because I like the job that I worked on it and it was interesting that helps me to make design in difficult. people should make contrast between difficult things and easy things meaning of life-like travel you should know what are going to travel you have to search and find a comfortable seat in the plant meaning dream what abilities what ideas in shudder what he did accomplish the people Being stratification about yourself for what have that a diomed of life things the money is the most important things that find meaning of life and this
The meaning of life, defined by Victor E. Frankl, is the will to find your meaning in life. It is not the meaning of life in general, but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment. He believes that if you are approached with the question of “what is the meaning of my life” or in this case, “life is meaningless,” then you should reverse the question to that person asking the question. For example: What are you bringing to me? What are you as an individual contributing to this life? This forces the person in question to take a look at themselves and to ultimately be responsible. Frankl says that if you are a responsible member of society than the meaning of life transcends from yourself rather from your own psyche. He also says that if we for some reason cannot find meaning within ourselves it has to be from some outside source. This is referred to as service. And an example of this is love. Victor Frankl describes three ways in which we can discover the meaning of life; Creating work-doing a deed, experiencing something-someone, and by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.