Man's Search for Meaning
OCLC 233687922 | | |
Followed by | The Doctor and the Soul: From Psychotherapy in Logotherapy |
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Man's Search for Meaning is a 1946 book by
Frankl observed that among the fellow inmates in the concentration camp, those who survived were able to connect with a purpose in life to feel positive about, and then immersed themselves in imagining that purpose such as conversing with an (imagined) loved one. According to Frankl, the way a prisoner imagined the future affected his longevity.
The book intends to answer the question "How was everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the mind of the average prisoner?" Part One constitutes Frankl's analysis of his experiences in the concentration camps, while Part Two introduces his ideas of meaning and his theory called logotherapy.
According to a survey conducted by the
Editions
The book's original title is Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager ("A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp"). Later German editions prefixed the title with Trotzdem Ja zum Leben Sagen ("Nevertheless Say Yes to Life"), taken from a line in Das Buchenwaldlied, a song written by Friedrich Löhner-Beda while an inmate at Buchenwald.[4] The title of the first English-language translation was From Death-Camp to Existentialism. The book's common full English title is Man's Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy, although this subtitle is often not printed on the cover of modern editions.[5]
Experiences in a concentration camp
Frankl identifies three psychological reactions experienced by all inmates to one degree or another:
- shock during the initial admission phase to the camp,
- apathy after becoming accustomed to camp existence, in which the inmate values only that which helps himself and his friends survive, and
- reactions of depersonalization, moral deformity, bitterness, and disillusionment if he survives and is liberated.[6]
Frankl concludes that the
Frankl also concludes that there are only two races of men, decent men and indecent. No society is free of either of them, and thus there were "decent"
His concluding passage in Part One describes the psychological reaction of the inmates to their liberation, which he separates into three stages. The first is depersonalization—a period of readjustment in which a prisoner gradually returns to the world. Initially, the liberated prisoners are so numb that they are unable to understand what freedom means or to emotionally respond to it. Part of them believes that it is an illusion or a dream that will be taken away from them. In their first foray outside their former prison, the prisoners realized that they could not comprehend pleasure. Flowers and the reality of the freedom they had dreamed about for years were all surreal, unable to be grasped in their depersonalization.
The body is the first element to break out of this stage, responding by big appetites of eating and wanting more sleeping. Only after the partial replenishing of the body is the mind finally able to respond, as "feeling suddenly broke through the strange fetters which had restrained it" (p. 111).
This begins the second stage, in which there is a danger of deformation. As the intense pressure on the mind is released, mental health can be endangered. Frankl uses the analogy of a diver suddenly released from his pressure chamber. He recounts the story of a friend who became immediately obsessed with dispensing the same violence in judgment of his abusers that they had inflicted on him.
Upon returning home, the prisoners had to struggle with two fundamental experiences that could damage their mental health: bitterness and disillusionment. The last stage is bitterness at the lack of responsiveness of the world outside—a "superficiality and lack of feeling... so disgusting that one finally felt like creeping into a hole and neither hearing nor seeing human beings any more" (p. 113). Worse was disillusionment, the discovery that suffering does not end, that the longed-for happiness will not come. This was the experience of those who—like Frankl—returned home to discover that no one awaited them. The hope that had sustained them throughout their time in the concentration camp was now gone. Frankl cites this experience as the most difficult to overcome.
As time passed, however, the prisoner's experience in a concentration camp became nothing but a remembered nightmare. What is more, he comes to believe that he has nothing left to fear "except his God" (p. 115).
Logotherapy: Man's Will To Meaning
The central idea behind Man's Search to Meaning, as described throughout Part I of the book and extending to an academic discussion in Part II, titled "Logotherapy" is the idea of "Man's Will to Meaning" being the central and overarching goal of each person's life.
Reception
In a 1991 survey conducted for the
However, aspects of the book have garnered criticism. One of Frankl's main ideas in the book is that a
In his book Faith in Freedom, psychiatrist Thomas Szasz states that Frankl's survivor testimony was written to misdirect, and betrays instead an intent of a transparent effort to conceal Frankl's actions and his collaboration with the Nazis, and that, in the assessment of Raul Hilberg, the founder of Holocaust Studies, Frankl's historical account contains distortions akin to Binjamin Wilkomirski's memoirs, which were translated into nine languages before being exposed as deeply problematic (and according to the most radical interpretation 'false') in Hilberg's 1996 Politics of Memory.[15] Szasz's criticism of Frankl is not universally embraced.[16] Similarly, Hilberg's allegations have been rebutted by several reviewers.[17] Comparison between Frankl's memoirs and Wilkomirski's memoirs leveled by Szasz, however, could legitimately be dismissed altogether as an inapt and misleading analogy insofar as questions arose (and remained) as to whether or not Wilkomirski had ever been an inmate at a concentration camp, whereas this was never a question in Frankl's case: there is no doubt that he is a survivor.
Briefly: Conflicting views about the nature of memory under extreme conditions, as well as the sort of instinctual opportunism (for the sake of survival) or positive thinking mentality that often (one might even say 'usually' or 'almost always') correlated with long-term survival in the Nazi death camps, makes the memoir an important document of witness during the holocaust but also highlight the way in which it displays the cognitive and psychological limits of representing a situation like the Nazi extermination from an 'impartial' first person perspective.
See also
- Existential anxiety
- Maslow's hierarchy of needs
- Statue of Responsibility – proposed in the book to complement the Statue of Liberty
- Life Is Beautiful (1997), film on how a positive attitude can be maintained in the worst of circumstances, including a concentration camp
References
- ^ Fein, Esther (1991). "Book Notes". New York Times. Retrieved 22 May 2012.
- ^ Noble, Holcomb B. (September 4, 1997). "Dr. Viktor E. Frankl of Vienna, Psychiatrist of the Search for Meaning, Dies at 92". The New York Times. p. B-7. Retrieved 22 May 2012.
- ^ "Viktor Frankl Life and Work". Viktor Frankl Institute Vienna. 2011. Retrieved 22 May 2012.
- ISBN 978-3328102779(reprinted from 1977)
- ISBN 978-0807014264
- ISBN 978-0807014295.
- ^ Fein, Esther B. (20 November 1991). "New York Times, 11-20-1991". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 28 April 2020. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
- ^ "How Instagram turned a Holocaust memoir into a self-help manifesto". Vox.
- ^ Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl
- ^ "The best books on Existentialism".
- ^ "The best books on Auschwitz".
- ISBN 978-0813225890.
- ^ Lawrence Langer, Versions of Survival: The Holocaust and the Human Spirit (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982), p. 24.
- – via Project MUSE.
- ^ Faith in Freedom, p. 181 Thomas Szasz
- ^ "Thomas Szasz: An Evaluation | Psychology Today". www.psychologytoday.com. Retrieved 2024-03-18.
- ^ "Review of the Wilkomirski Affair". Swiss American Historical Society Review. 37 (3): 25–32.
External links
- Viktor Frankl: Why believe in others TED talk
- Commentary on Man's Search For Meaning by personal development scholar ISBN 978-1857883237)
- Viktor Frankl at Ninety: An Interview
- Man's Search for Meaning book cover
- Gilmore, Byron Ross (1997). The search for meaning in grief: A comparison of Victor Frankl's 'Search for Meaning' with Douglas Hall's 'Theology of the Cross', and their implications for grief ministry (M.A. thesis). Wilfrid Laurier University.
- There's More To Life Than Being Happy in The Atlantic, discussion of Man's Search For Meaning. 2013.