Viktor Frankl

“Men's search for meaning”.

A book review by Tadek

"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose
one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way." - Viktor Frankl.

The book "Men's search for meaning" of is a story of tragic experiences of Victor Frankl himself
and many of his co-prisoners in the horrifying conditions in the concentration camp Auschwitz.
In the first half of the book the author describes the life inside the concentration camp, in the
second he presents the foundations of the new science - logotherapy.
The author, placed in the unhuman conditions was able to use his prior psychological
understanding and skills of scientific observation to preserve his living forces to be able to
survive the “hell”. The same skills allowed him to create a science that can help many people in
difficult psychological states.
Viktor Frankl was an Austrian psychologist, who was arrested in German nazi times for his
Jewish origins and imprisoned in the nazi concentration camp Auschwitz.
Frank's basic observation was, that people having purpose for living, e.g. who were convinced
that someone waits for them, had much stronger hope, which in turn was helping them retain
more life forces when exposed to cold, hunger or unhuman treatment by the camp guards. On
the contrary, the prisoners with no hope were quickly giving up, losing their life forces, and
dying.
Frankl discovered and documented the “will meaning” - the path on which a man can find the
meaning even when facing the most difficult challenges.
Logotherapy, the psychological stream developed by Viktor Frankl is nowadays, in the huge
wave of depressions, one of the best means to help people to re-discover that live is worth living.