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Man's Search for Meaning

Frankl, Viktor
Publisher:  Washington Square Press
Year Published:  1946  
Pages:  221pp   ISBN:  978-0671646707
Resource Type:  Book

Chronicles Victor Frankl's experiences as a concentration camp inmate and describes his psychotherapeutic method of finding a reason to live. According to Frankl, the book intends to answer the question "How was everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the mind of the average prisoner?" Part One constitutes Frankl's analysis of his experiences in the concentration camps, while Part Two introduces his ideas of meaning and his theory of logotherapy.


Abstract:  Quotations from the book:

* "We who have come back, by the aid of many lucky chances or miracles--whatever one may choose to call them--we know; the best of us did not return."

* "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."

* "Nietzsche's words, 'He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.'"

* "When we are no longer able to change a situation#just think of an incurable disease such as inoperable cancer#we are challenged to change ourselves"

* "Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him - mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp."

* "We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing a something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering."

* "It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life#daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual."

* "Man is capable of changing the world for the better if possible, and of changing himself for the better if necessary."

* "Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death." (Cf. Song of Solomon 8:6)

* "We have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips."

* "A man who for years had thought he had reached the absolute limit of all possible suffering now found that suffering had no limits, and that he could suffer still more, and more intensely."

* "Woe to him, when the day of his dreams finally came, found it to be so different from all that he had longed for!"

* "We were not hoping for happiness---And yet we were not prepared for unhappiness."

* "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!"

* "An incurable psychotic individual may lose his usefulness but yet retain the dignity of a human being. This is my psychiatric credo."

* "Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."

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