Rating: Good
Man's Search For Meaning blurb excerpt: Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl's memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Between 1942 and 1945 Frankl labored in four different camps, including Auschwitz. Based on his own experience and the experiences of others he treated later in his practice, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. Frankl's theory-known as logotherapy, from the Greek word logos ("meaning")- holds that our primary drive in life is not pleasure, as Freud maintained, but the discovery and pursuit of what we personally find meaningful.
My opinion: This was a beautifully written book about a very ugly period in history. Offering a first-person account about the physical and psychological struggles survivors faced. For me, this book was a lesson in perspective. When I think of Man's Search For Meaning I will remind myself to change my attitude and show some gratitude. There is meaning to be found in suffering, but that meaning is found in your response to suffering, not the act of it.
Lessons from Man's Search For Meaning:
There are three possible sources in which a person can find his or her meaning of life:
In creating a work or doing a deed
In experiencing something or someone
In suffering;
A person's ability to choose their attitude is more powerful than the influences of their environments. “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts, comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.“
The experiences of camp life proved that apathy could be overcome and irritability suppressed. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom and independence of mind, even when subjected to psychological and physical stress.
Suffering exists, but within in you can find meaning. Frankl claims that one finds meaning in life in three ways. Through work, especially when that work is both creative in nature and aligned with a purpose greater than ourselves. Through love, which often manifests itself in the service of others. And through suffering, which is fundamental to the human experience.
“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how”. Frankl observed that those prisoners who survived, who found a way to endure, always had a greater purpose that carried them onward through difficult conditions.
There are three ‘whys’ that stand out from Frankl’s writing:
Love
Work
Dignity in suffering
The true nature of a person's character is revealed through their actions. The meaning of life is not found on some mountaintop, rather it is revealed daily and hourly, in our choice to take the right action and to perform our duties and responsibilities.
Kindness can be found in surprising places.
Have the wisdom to understand what can't be controlled and the courage to accept it. Whilst demonstrating self-control is important when pursuing goals, we must not waste our time with things we can’t control. What matters is how we react to situations that are beyond our control.
“The salvation of man is through love and in love”. “I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when a man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way – an honourable way – in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. Logotherapy.
A term derived from “logos,” a Greek word that translates as “meaning,” and therapy, which is defined as the treatment of a condition, illness, or maladjustment. The theory is founded on the belief that human nature is motivated by the search for a life purpose; logotherapy is the pursuit of that meaning for one’s life.
For reference, the three main techniques of logotherapy are:
Dereflection - used when a person is overly self-absorbed on an issue or attainment of a goal. By redirecting the attention, or dereflecting the attention away from the self, the person can become whole by thinking about others rather than themselves.
Paradoxical intention: Paradoxical intention involves asking for the thing we fear the most. For people who experience anxiety or phobias, fear can paralyze them. But by using humor and ridicule, they can wish for the thing they fear the most, thus removing the fear from their intention and relieving the anxious symptoms associated with it.
Socratic dialogue: Socratic dialogue is a technique in which the logotherapist uses the own person's words as a method of self-discovery. By listening intently to what the person says, the therapist can point out specific patterns of words, or word solutions to the client, and let the client see new meaning in them. This process allows a person to realize that the answer lies within and is just waiting to be discovered.
Man's Search For Meaning Best Quotes:
"An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation normal behavior."
“Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning. The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life.”
“Questions about the meaning of life can never be answered by sweeping statements. “Life” does not mean something vague, but something very real and concrete, just as life’s tasks are also very real and concrete. They form man’s destiny, which is different and unique”
“Man’s search for meaning may arouse inner tension rather than inner equilibrium. However, precisely such tension is an indispensable prerequisite of mental health”
“At any moment, man must decide, for better or for worse, what will be the monument of his existence.”
“The sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone”
“From all this, we may learn that there are two races of men in this world, but only these two — the “race” of the decent man and the “race” of the indecent man. Both are found everywhere; they penetrate into all groups of society. No group consists entirely of decent or indecent people.”
"We watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions."
“Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!”
“Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.”
"As to the causation of the feeling of meaninglessness, one may say, albeit in an oversimplifying vein, that people have enough to live by but nothing to live for; they have the means but no meaning."
"An active life serves the purpose of giving man the opportunity to realize the values in creative work, while a passive life of enjoyment affords him the opportunity to obtain fulfillment in experiencing beauty, art, or nature. But there is also purpose in that life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man’s attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces. A creative life and a life of enjoyment are banned to him. But not only creativeness and enjoyment are meaningful. If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete."
What Next:
If you are interested in this book, you may want to check out our list of reviewed Personal Development Books.
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