Man’s search for meaning : the classic tribute to hope from the Holocaust by Viktor E. Frankl
Rider, 2004 154 pages £7.99 ISBN 978 1 844 132 393
I was moved by this book. Who could ever fail to be moved by such a story ?
Part of its power is surely that Viktor Frankl does not dwell on the horror of life in the camps (if you can call it life). No, the account is restrained but then the author was a professor of neurology and psychiatry at the University of Vienna Medical School. His writing bears the telltale hallmark of the consummate professional – calm, dispassionate, detached.
What then, one might ask, is the particular value of this account compared with so many other horror stories in the public domain ?
It is that the author, having survived Auschwitz, Dachau and other camps, is able to reflect on his experiences of the events and record their significance with a trained, experienced and well-informed mind. The combination of a calm record and thoughtful reflection yields powerful impact.
Viktor Frankl does not take any particular religious stance in what he writes. He allows for spiritual considerations alongside humanistic values. Nevertheless, underlying the thoughtful reflections, one can’t help noticing the influence of Jewish thought and practice which must have been part of his upbringing and which remained his fundamental worldview.
Professor Frankl is recognised as the founder of what is now known as ‘logotherapy’ – the third school of Viennese psychotherapy following after Freud and Adler. Logotherapy is part of existential and humanistic psychology, describing a search for a meaning in life as the central, human, motivational force.
Man’s search for meaning was first published anonymously in German in 1946 and then published in English translation in 1959 and became an immediate bestseller.
The Library of Congress called it one of the most influential books of the 20th century.
Read it and be moved.