Viktor Frankl Man's Search for Meaning

Upon Domingo Portales's suggestion, I recently read Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning." In the account, Frankl tells his story about his time in the concentration camps in Nazi Germany. He walks us through how he was separated from his family, how he ended up working long and hard hours on only one bowl of thin soup and a crust of bread.

Then, the book shifts more into Frankl's meaning of life and how he separated himself from his suffering.

I found the first thirty to forty pages hard to get through, because of the horrible things that he went through, but they turned out to be a great foundation for his message.

The edition that I bought (pocket books non-fiction, The 60th Anniversary Edition) included another section of logotherapy. In this section, he discusses how people put meaning into their own lives and how people are able to suffer but still get through because of a hope they have for the future.

The book is shown below and you can buy it on amazon for under $7.




An interview added by Yecto in April of 2007. In this interview, Frankl more deeply discusses suffering and logotherapy. In this interview, Frankl mentions a friend who had a scuba diving accident and he says that he broke his neck, but his neck did not break him. He also discusses freedom of the mind - how people get past their suffering. He also defines the difference between suffering and despair, despair being suffering without meaning.