I came across this book in a pile of freebies in a staff room last December, fifty-five years after Viktor Frankl first published it! I’d heard the title for sure along the way, but the small print of “A new forward by Harold S. Kushner” is what caught my eye. I’d read his books (When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough, and When Bad Things Happen to Good People) as a teenager and recall these giving me a great spiritual perspective about the universe, even as a youngster. So, I took the book to read over Christmas break.
This is an amazing piece of psychological science theory conveyed through narrative in the first half, then explained directly in the second half. That second, heady half was the original book that Frankl had in manuscript when he was forced into concentration camps and the Nazi’s destroyed his work…which led to the creation of the first half of the book which is the narrative of how he personally tested his work to literally survive a four-year ordeal.
He names this theory logotherapy, which in short is a focus on finding personal meaning versus commonly understood psychotherapy, which focuses on analyzing past experience in order to move forward. So goes his narrative, identifying much of the loss and trauma experienced in the camps, but spending more time describing the behaviors and activities he pursued which actually kept him alive, recalling and mentally rewriting this book being one of them.
Before I got to, or realized, there was a second half of psycho-babble explanation, I was able to pull out some key ideas transferable to any of our lives that enable us to find meaning and get through situations, usually not as dire as the holocaust. I began listing these cornerstones of our human spirit in the back cover of my copy as I inferred them. Things we focus on, or return to, for renewal are: love, laughter, art, friendship, caring for others, and working toward personal goals. When you consider those you’ve known who are doing well or not so well on the mental/emotional side of life, it becomes clear that one of these meanings may be currently missing or underexposed. This quest for meaning is a key to mental health.
With a huge title as Man’s Search for Meaning, some may think it’s a proposed holy grail that may answer questions of biblical proportion. Perhaps this is a companion text to your own religious doctrine because after studying Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, I can see how Frankl’s work supports the basic tenets of each. But even for those who aren’t particularly religious, I think it’s a human trait to wonder about life’s meaning. Frankl leads us to consider not asking the meaning of life, rather allow life to ask us and we can only respond by identifying the meanings in our own life, then being responsible to them.
This book receives a solid 4 Sutterstars!