Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl is one of the most profound books I have picked up. Totaling at only 165 pages, it is short in length but deep in wisdom. Viktor Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist that survived the Holocaust, through his experiences he crafted Man’s Search For Meaning. He splits the book into two parts. In the first part he lays out his different experiences in Auschwitz and the second part he gets into logotherapy which is his psychological philosophy on existence. Frankl addresses the fact that there is a lot of concentration camp literature when he writes this, so the first part of the book he doesn’t feel the pressure to go into every detail. This book made me think about choices. The choices we make every day and how they shape us. Frankl writes, “And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate.” On a smaller scale, in our daily lives as young men we have these choices to make. That inner freedom that Frankl makes note of is a precious jewel that we must defend with all our might. In one moving scene, Frankl struggles with whether or not he should wake a fellow prisoner from an obvious nightmare but instead he decides not to writing, “At that moment I became intensely conscious of the fact that no dream, no matter how horrible, could be as bad as the reality of the camp which surrounded us, and to which I was about to recall him.” The way this book stands out stacked up against many in its’ genre is Frankl’s view on life and suffering. He writes, “…human life, under any circumstances, never ceases to have a meaning, and that this infinite meaning of life includes suffering and dying, privation and death.” He over and over writes about being worthy of his sufferings and knowing how to die. Under such extreme inhuman circumstances, Viktor Frankl forged an incredible philosophy on life and suffering. As men we want to be challenged but at the same time we want to have an easy road to success. Frankl addresses man’s true calling, “What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.” This book is worth its’ weight in gold and it is worth your time. Life is hard and we face challenges every single day, this book is a resource to look to for encouragement. He concludes the book with a powerful quote about mankind, “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 on his lips.”
Written by Michael McPhail
Dr. Viktor E. Frankl
Brains and Brawn 