Man’s Search For Meaning
by Victor E. Frankl
Summary
Psychologist and Holocaust survivor, Victor E. Frankl, describes what he learned during his time as a prisoner in Auschwitz. Frankl explains how he survived his suffering by maintaining a detached viewpoint. In the midst of his suffering, he learned to focus his mind on how he would teach about the camp dynamics to students sitting in a lecture hall.
Frankl came to realize that a person’s will to live is closely tied to the belief that they have something important to do in the world. A prisoner’s chance of survival increased whenever they believed that they were missed or needed by others. Frankl quotes Friedrich Nietzsche: “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.” It was something Frankl found to be true in even the darkest and most painful of circumstances.
Author’s Website: Man’s Search for Meaning - by Viktor Frankl
Favorite Quotes
“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.”
“All that oppressed me at that moment became objective, seen and described from the remote viewpoint of science. By this method I succeeded somehow in rising above the situation, above the sufferings of the moment, and I observed them as if they were already of the past.”
“When the impossibility of replacing a person is realized, it allows the responsibility which a man has for his existence and its continuance to appear in all its magnitude. A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life.”
“We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed. For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one’s predicament into a human achievement. 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.”
“I do not forget any good deed done to me, and I do not carry a grudge for a bad one.”
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