Book of the Week: Man's Search for Meaning

09 May 2015

Man’s Search for Meaning was written by Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist who survived The Holocaust. The first part of the book is an account of his experiences in concentration camps and the second part of the book explains logotheraphy, which was another branch of psychotheraphy developed by Viktor. The concentration camps section reminded me of Schindler’s List.

Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning. The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life. Frankl saw three possible sources for meaning: in work (doing something significant), in love (caring for another person), and in courage during difficult times. Suffering in and of itself is meaningless; we give our suffering meaning by the way in which we respond to it.

Logotheraphy Logos means meaning in Greek. Instead of having someone lie on the couch and talk about their childhood, logotheraphy tries to address problems people have as it relates to finding meaning. Once they address the issue of meaning, the problems go away. A lot of the statements in the logotheraphy remind me of things I’ve read on happiness, but this book probably predates those since it was published in 1946. Meaning changes everything.