Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, born on 26 March 1905 and deceased on 2 September 1997, remains best known for his book Man’s Search for Meaning, published in 1946. It is a psychological reflection on what the horrific experience of Auschwitz taught him about life's primary purpose: the search for meaning, which kept those who survived alive.
For Frankl, meaning comes from three possible sources: purposeful work, love and courage in the face of difficulty. Examining the “intensification of inner life” that helped prisoners stay alive, he recognizes the transcendent power of love. As he writes, love goes far beyond the physical person of the beloved and finds its deepest meaning in their spiritual being, regardless of whether they are present or even alive.
Frankl describes a moving example from his own life: while working in a ditch in the gray Bavarian dawn, he spoke silently with his wife, who was ultimately killed in the camps. Amid the despair of impending death, he felt his spirit pierce the darkness and heard a triumphant “Yes” in answer to the question of whether an ultimate purpose existed. At that moment, a light came on in a distant farmhouse and, a little later, a bird settled in front of him. The sense of his beloved's presence was so strong that he felt he could touch her.
Humor, according to Frankl, is “another of the soul's weapons in the struggle for self-preservation.” It offers distance and the ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds. Even in a concentration camp, where suffering is everywhere, it is possible to practice the “art of living” by developing a sense of humor.
In response to the question of whether people can escape the influence of their environment, Frankl answers from experience that a person retains a remnant of spiritual freedom even under terrible conditions of mental and physical pressure. “Everything can be taken away from a person except one thing: the last of the human rights—to choose one's attitude in any circumstances, to choose one's own way.” Every day, every hour, offers an opportunity to decide whether to submit to the forces that threaten to rob us of ourselves or to preserve our inner freedom.
Frankl recognizes suffering as an inseparable part of both existence and a meaningful life. Without suffering and death, he says, human life cannot be complete. The way a person accepts their fate and its suffering offers an opportunity to add deeper meaning to their life. They can remain brave, dignified and selfless or, in the bitter struggle for self-preservation, lose their human dignity and become like an animal. This choice, he argues, determines whether someone is “worthy of their suffering.”
As a psychiatrist to the prisoners, Frankl found that the most important factor in cultivating an “inner hold” was teaching people to keep a future goal in mind. He invokes Nietzsche: “He who has a ‘why’ to live can endure almost any ‘how.’”
What was needed, he writes, was a fundamental change in attitude toward life: to stop asking what we expect from life and consider what life expects from us. The answer lies in right action and right conduct, rather than words and meditation. Ultimately, life means taking responsibility for finding the right answer to its problems.
These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life, differ from person to person and from moment to moment. It is therefore impossible to define the meaning of life in general terms. Every situation is unique and requires a different response; sometimes action is needed, sometimes reflection, and sometimes simply acceptance of fate.
Frankl also stresses that human kindness can be found in every group, even those that would be easy to condemn as a whole. There are no “angels” and “devils”; there are two “races” of people, the decent and the indecent, and they run through every social group.
The second half of the book presents the method of existential analysis that Frankl called “logotherapy,” healing the soul by cultivating the capacity for a meaningful life. The essence of human existence lies in responsibility, and the categorical imperative of logotherapy is: “Live as if you were already living for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now.”
Frankl wrote the book in nine consecutive days, initially intending to publish it anonymously.
Finally, he advises his students not to aim for success: success, like happiness, cannot be pursued, but comes as an unintended side effect of dedication to a cause greater than ourselves.
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