Man's Search for Meaning Review

Man’s Search for Meaning

Vicktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning is a revolutionary book in the field of psychology. In this book, Vicktor Frankl describes his experiences in the Nazi concentration camp and succinctly puts forward his theory of logotherapy.

Logotherapy is a unique branch of psychotherapy propounded by Vicktor E. Frankl. Often considered the third Viennese school of Psychology, the school of logotherapy focuses on the concept that the most driving force in human life is the search of meaning, compared to Freud’s drive of sex and Adler’s drive of power. The etymology of logotherapy comes from the Greek word “logos” which means “meaning”. Frankl’s basic concept is based on the theory that the main motivational force in one’s life is man’s search for meaning.

Frankl begins the book by giving a description of his experiences in the Nazi concentration camp. Victor Frankl spent three years in different concentration camp under Nazis before he was finally rescued by the Americans on April 27, 1945. During his stay in the Holocaust camp, his experiences and that of the other inmates helped him to shape his theories of logotherapy which is basically a form of existential analysis.

Frankl points out that the inmates in the camp basically go through three distinct phases of existence at a concentration camp. The first phase is the phase of shock when the newly arrived inmates who have heard the monstrosities going on in the camp first see the “ long stretches of several rows of barbed wire fences; watch towers; search lights; and long columns of ragged human figures, grey in the greyness of dawn”( Frankl, 23), they are horrified and bear the dreadful realization of what might lay ahead for them. In this phase some show a certain condition known as “delusion of deprive” (Frankl, 23) in which a condemned man before his damnation gets an illusion that he might be reprieved at the last moment. Frankl relates how he too had hope till the very last minute that all that laid ahead for him would not be that bad. For him just the plumpness of the prisoner’s face brought immense hope that his imprisonment won’t be bad at all (Frankl, 24). And then there were longings for home and every thing that was familiar to the prisoner.

Slowly and gradually all these illusions were torn apart- one by one. Now came the second phase when the prisoners came to realization of their nakedness. As Frankl narrates, “we really had nothing now except our body…all we possessed, literally was our naked existence “(Frankl, 28). This sense of nothing-to-lose brought apathy among the prisoners who now did not care about anything except the very things that helped them or their friends to survive. The apathy was such a strong defense mechanism, for due to it the prisoners were able to ignore all the values that they were raised to believe and follow, and thus the apathy created a strong protective shell among the prisoners. The sight of dead or dying men no longer brought feeling of sympathy in the prisoners. They would without hesitation cut open the pockets of freshly dead bodies to get a piece of bread that the poor soul might have saved himself before he died. This feeling of apathy can be seen acutely through the experience that Frankl relates, “At first the prisoner looked away if he saw the punishment parades of another group; he could not bear to see fellow prisoners march up and down for hours in the mire “ (Frankl, 33). However after days of struggle against hunger and desperate effort to be relived from being chosen to be put in the gas chamber, “his reactions were blunted, and he watched unmoved” (Frankl, 34).

During this period the basic instincts and desires of the man came to the ground zero. All his dreams and fantasies were about the basic physiological needs of food, bread, baths, and cigarettes that he was struggling to obtain for him. He often dreamt about these goods, which was the brain’s mechanism for gratification. There was no interest in pursuing higher needs like sex or self-esteem. It explains why unlike other male establishments like military camps there was little sexual perversion in the concentration camps.(Frankl, 44). His mental world would instead be occupied by the primitive instinct of obtaining food. Two fellow prisoners would talk for hours about their favorite foods and the recipes of their wives (Frankl, 41). Prisoners “could hold endless debates on the sense or nonsense of certain methods of dealing with the small bread ration” (Frankl, 43). However, some dreams were nightmares, but still there was some realization, that no terrible dream could be worse than the reality of the camp in which a prisoner was living.

However, during the encampment, Frankl argues that it was possible for spiritual life to deepen in the concentration camp. Some prisoners often transfixed their thoughts upon their loved ones: their wives, their kids, or their parents and realized that “the salvation of man is through love and in love” (Frankl, 49). The inner life intensified and helped the prisoner find refuge from the desolation and emptiness that surrounded his existence. This enrichment of the mental life also caused a deeper appreciation of art and beauty in the prisoners. Despite the hopelessness of existence, the prisoners “were carried away by nature’s beauty”(Frankl, 51). Their faces glowed with immense appreciation of nature, for example, when they would look to the sunlit mountains of the Bavaria when they were being transported from a concentration camp to the other.

Another aspect of mental life that developed among the prisoners was the strong fatalism. The prisoners were scared of taking any initiative, and due to the fact that their fates had wrongly over- mounted them with immense suffering, they believed in letting the fate take its own way. This escape from commitment was a defense mechanism against the fact that a decision, say for example, to escape often brought death to the prisoner. Despite the fatalism, how a prisoner behaved was not just determined by the fate: the surroundings and the environment, but by the ultimate freedom that no body can take from a man: his right to choose what attitude to take in different situations.

The third phase of the prisoner’s experience came after he was released. There were experiences of depersonalization, moral deformity, bitterness and disillusionment after being liberated. During depersonalization, that usually followed right after liberation, everything appeared unreal to the prisoner. Some prisoners after being released tend to be morally deformed, and sometimes inflict upon the prisoners the same moral viciousness that were earlier inflicted upon them. Bitterness and disillusionment took fold in prisoners who after being released found that there was no one waiting for them, and their loved ones had already perished (Frankl, 98). This ultimately leads to the ultimate day when all his experiences in the camp just appear like a nightmare to him, and some come to a lifetime experience of feeling that “after all he has suffered, there is nothing he need fear any more except his God” (Frankl, 100).

Frankl during his experiences concluded that the life’s meaning is found in every moment of living, and life never ceases to have meaning, even in the suffering and the death. Frankl makes the strong point that the inmates survived well and became happy as long as they could find meaning for their existence. That meaning he believes could be found by three ways. The first is through the things that a person has done or tends to do. For example a writer in a concentration camp find meaning in his life through the things that he intended to write after being released. Frankl himself during his imprisonment would talk to an imaginary group of students to whom he would relate his experiences in the concentration camp (Frankl, 46). The second way to find the meaning was through the experiences through someone else. For example a person would survive for someone whom he believed would be waiting for him, and his immense love for that person would give a meaning to his life. The third and the most paradoxical way is to find meaning through one’s suffering. A person would find meaning in suffering through the rationality that he suffered so that someone else often a loved one would not, or through the feeling that he has to face the suffering broadly for the dignity of his loved one or for his God. As Frankl puts it, “suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice” (Frankl, 117). Without the meaning a person could hardly survive the multitudinous agonies of the concentration camp.

Frankl relates an experience that aptly describes the importance of finding meaning for the survival. Some prisoner early in the morning would sit down mute upon their faeces smoking the cigarette that they had saved and no brutalities of the Capos could make them get up and go to work. At that moment, one could realize that the prisoner had lost the meaning in their life, and the immediate gratification had given way to gratifying long term meanings of life. The prisoner than would slowly kill himself in a couple of weeks.

My first reaction of this book was shocking. I was shocked and shaken through the narratives of torture and inhumane condition that the inmates were forced to live through in the Nazi concentration camp. The natural and the first question that came into my mind was how someone living in such an Earthly hell could help himself from killing himself. The answer that Frankl gave that the man’s ultimate motivation of finding meaning in life saved the man, forced me to have a novel and inspirational look at the life.

I was immensely inspired by the author who argues that the ultimate goal in the life is not finding happiness but in finding meaning in the happiness. It gives explanation of why someone would suffer despite knowing the fact that his suffering has no end and there is no happiness that follows the suffering. Despite the “tragic triad” of pain, guilt and death that surrounds all of our existence, we need to possess optimism all these triads are ultimately meaningful and they lead to our personal and spiritual growth (Frankl 139). As long as we find meaning in the life we can stand through any insurmountable pain. And as soon as we loose the meaning we find ourselves suffering through our sufferings. This is why many youngsters today have taken refuge in drugs because they have lost the meanings of their existence and they try to find the fake meanings in the gratification of immediate pleasure and escape that drugs provide for them.

After reading this book, I was compelled to change the mental map of my mind. Now the pain that come and goes in my life has different meaning attached to it. Now I understand why a woman would endure immense pain of labor. The pain in labor had meaning in the creation of the child, and because of this responsibility of procreation a woman would happily endure the pain. Now I have courage to find meaning and purpose in the pains of examinations, for example. I now with the acknowledgement of the fact that the pain and labor of studies have the purpose of getting knowledgeable, and of making my wife proud, will happily and more enthusiastically study hard.

The book had a high literary and spiritual merit. It was well written, and the description of the raw, first-hand experiences in the concentration camp made the reading immensely interesting and credible. The short lecture on logotherapy at the end of the book was helpful as well. The thought-provoking points and sentences that the author uses from time to time is immensely effective.

I think if the book talked more about his experiences with the patients outside the concentration camp, the book would have been more scholarly. There were few if any criticism of logotherapy given by critics, the inclusion of which would have given the book a more balanced view.

Anyways, I found the book very meaningful, interesting and thought-provoking. The strongest point of the book is how in simple lay man’s term the author explains his theory of logotherapy and argues strongly that the true motivation is finding meaning in life. The essence and the main argument of the book as the author Victor Frankl puts in Nietzsche’s words, “ Life find out its hows if it knows its whys”.

Works Cited

Frankl, Viktor E. (1984). Man’s Search For Meaning. New York: Simon & Schuster Inc