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Man’s Search for Meaning

Viktor E. Frankl

Beacon Press, 2006
First Edition: 1946

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Viktor E. Frankl’s extraordinary, moving memoir of three years in Nazi death and labor camps is a literary classic and an inspiration to millions. This 2006 edition features a 57-page added section offering Frankl’s explication of “logotherapy,” the psychoanalytic method he developed after the war. Frankl wrote this memoir in nine days in 1946, after returning to his former home in Vienna, Austria, to learn that the Nazis had murdered his pregnant wife, his parents, his brother and his community of friends. His unsentimental account sets out to help readers avoid what he regarded as a misleading, conceptual trap: thinking of the camps with “sentiment and pity.” As of 2006, Frankl’s book had sold more than 12 million copies in 22 languages. A 1991 Library of Congress survey placed it among the “10 most influential books in America.” In non-English editions, its title is Say Yes In Spite Of Everything; that exuberance captures Frankl’s belief that what happens to you – including suffering – is secondary to your response to it. His book teaches that everyone must find his or her unique meaning and purpose in life, and fulfill it. After the intense horror of his camp saga, Viktor E. Frankl’s report on his psychoanalytic approach is less gripping, but quite meaningful. getAbstract recommends his brilliant, stirring, unforgettable memoir to students of history, all therapists and, really, to everyone.

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Viktor E. Frankl

As a teen, Viktor E. Frankl studied philosophy and psychiatry. He initiated a correspondence with Sigmund Freud, who submitted an article of Frankl’s to a leading journal, which published it when Frankl was only 16. By age 34, in 1939, he was head of neurology at Rothschild Hospital, Vienna’s only Jewish hospital. When the Nazis closed it, Frankl feared for his and his family’s lives. In 1942, the US consulate offered him a visa. This rare invitation, a stroke of luck, was a tribute to his reputation. Few Jews got out of Austria that late; fewer still got to America.

Frankl wanted to flee; he knew he could finish his pending book in America. But he saw a fragment of marble his father had saved after the Nazis destroyed Vienna’s largest synagogue. It came from an engraving of the Ten Commandments and bore only a Hebrew letter. When Frankl asked about it, his father said the letter stood for “Honor thy father and mother.” Unable to abandon his family, Frankl let his US visa lapse. The Nazis deported him and his family in September 1942. From then until March 1945, the Nazis shuttled Frankl among four death and labor camps: “Theresienstadt, Auschwitz-...

About the Author

World-renowned writer and psychotherapist Viktor E. Frankl wrote more than 30 books on theoretical and clinical psychology.

Man’s Search for Meaning

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