In this short essay, I will be coving a few important topics over the popular book “Man’s search for meaning.” This essay will cover Frankl’s personal history, his experiences in the concentration camp, an explanation of his famous logotherapy theory, and much more. The book mostly covers Frankl’s experiences as a prisoner in various concentration camps, one of the camps being Auschwitz. I believe that his logotherapy theory helped him survive the concentration camps and shows how you can and must find the meaning to your life. The first part of the book tells about Frankl’s personal experiences in the concentration camps. He knows that the time he was spending in Auschwitz stripped him of his humanity. He was treated like a prisoner and lost his immediate family during the three years.
Even though he was stripped of his humanity, he still found the meaning in his life. The first chapter is very important because this chapter tells in detail what it was like to be a concentration camp prisoner and survivor. During the first chapter, Frankl talks about how the SS men would judge people on arrival on how they walked and looked. If the SS man thought someone looked sick or unhealthy, they would be gassed immediately. If the SS man though someone looked healthy and workable, they were put to work. I have no idea what I would do in his situation. Frankl and other survivors are very strong mined to be put through something like that and still find the meaning to their lives. Also, in the first chapter, the reader learns how all the prisoner’s possessions were taken from them and were identified strictly by numbers. These numbers were tattooed on the prisoners and they were just known by this number, not by their name.
The first chapter is very eye-opening for the reader. The second part of the book introduces Frankl’s logotherapy theory. This theory is about the human desire to have a meaning in life along with will to pleasure, will to power, and will to meaning. This chapter is also very important because it covers the development and process behind the logotherapy theory. He emphasis on childhood trauma and talks about how someone cannot let that hold them back and how someone needs to find their meaning in life without just existing. A person should be happy and they cannot let traumas hold them back from making something great for themselves. This is just a few short summaries of Frankl’s book.
Frankl was one of the few survivors of the concentration camps. After his camp Turkheim was liberated, he returned to his home, Vienna. He then spent the rest of his life teaching what he had learned and experienced during the worst time in his life. He taught that people must and can find meaning to their lives even if all they have experienced was horrible things growing up. Viktor Frankl was born in Vienna, Austria on March 26, 1905. He received his PhD and MD from the University of Venna where he studied neurology, and psychiatry but specialized in suicide and depression. He was a medical student who wanted to eliminate suicide. In 1942, Frankl, his parents, wife, and brother were brought to a concentration camp. Over the span of three years, all of his family members and his wife had passed away.
Frankl had more of a chance of dying than he did living, but somehow beat the odds. Frankl used his experiences in the concentration camps to develop his logotherapy theory. The logotherapy theory is also known as “Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy”. Logotherapy is also called “will to meaning,” which is the desire to find meaning to life. Frankl believed that even in the worst circumstances, the motivation for living comes from finding the meaning that person has to live. Frankl also believed that when we can no longer change a situation, we have to change ourselves. Frankl’s theory was based on a few different things. For example, each person has a healthy core, one’s focus is to inform others to their inner properties and help them with the tools they need to use for their inner core, and lastly, life offers purpose and meaning but does not promise pleasure and contentment.
The logotherapy theory has a few different schools of thought. First is the will to pleasure is when a person constantly wants to please others without thinking about themselves. The will to pleasure is like an animal. Animals always want to please their owner and there are people who like to please others all the time. For example, a person is working at a store and goes above and beyond at their job to please their boss. This person does things outside of the job title, but still gets paid the same amount and continues to do all of these things. This person is wanting to please their boss and that’s the only purpose this person has is to please everyone. Next, the will to power is when a person wants to be a God. A person would want to have so much power over someone and dictate them they want to be held to a high power.
For example, a male wants his wife to bow down to him and do everything for him because he thinks he is powerful. This man wants to have so much power over his wife because he desires a supreme quality of God. Lastly, the will to meaning is the desire to find and create meaning in one’s life and it is the motivation in the person’s life which a person is willing to live or die. In the book, the reader will see how Frankl kept his will to meaning. For example, during Frankl’s three years in the camps, he kept his desire to live by focusing on the potential meanings are goals he could create for himself. He kept his will to meaning after leaving the camps by motivating himself to rewrite his manuscript about logotherapy. Frankl is a wonderful example of will to meaning because it can become very frustrating to obtain, but when its life or death, a person should have the motivation to find the meaning in their lives.
