Man’s Search For Meaning by Victor Frankl

Has anyone ever told you about a place you need to visit before you die?  This is the book you need to read.  Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl teaches us that finding meaning in life, even in the face of the most horrible circumstances, will make life worth living.

It’s about the three years Frankl spent in a concentration camp. One of the many incredible things he witnessed were prisoners at their best even while facing the gas chamber. Their final days were spent walking around camp praying for other prisoners and trying to comfort them. It’s proof that everything can be taken from us except one thing…the freedom to choose how we respond to any circumstance.

After surviving the Holocaust, Frankl, a neurologist and psychiatrist, founded a new form of psychotherapy called Logostherapy (Logos is a Greek word denoting meaning).  It teaches that striving to find meaning or purpose in one’s life is man’s primary motivational force.  It’s not pleasure, which Freud believed, or superiority, which Adler taught. Certainly, we all strive for different things in life, but maybe the life best lived is the one driven by our search for meaning.

Reviewed by John Liporace