Man's Search for Meaning

By: Viktor E. Frankl

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 4 hrs and 44 mins

Publisher's summary

Man’s Search for Meaning is the chilling yet inspirational story of Viktor Frankl’s struggle to hold on to hope during the unspeakable horrors of his years as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps. Between 1942 and 1945 Frankl labored in four different camps, including Auschwitz, while his parents, brother, and pregnant wife perished. Based on his own experience and the experiences of those he treated in his practice, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering, but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose.  

Through every waking moment of his ordeal, Frankl’s training as a psychiatrist lent him a remarkable perspective on the psychology of survival. As a result of these experiences, Dr. Frankl developed a revolutionary approach to psychotherapy known as logotherapy. At the core of his theory is the belief that man’s primary motivational force is his search for meaning. Frankl’s assertion that “the will to meaning” is the basic motivation for human life has forever changed the way we understand our humanity in the face of suffering.  

Frankl’s riveting memoir was named one of the 10 Most Influential Books in America after a 1991 survey by the Library of Congress and Book of the Month Club. This revised and updated version includes a new postscript: “The Case for a Tragic Optimism”.

©1959, 1962, 1984 Viktor E. Frankl (P)1995 Blackstone Audiobooks

Critic reviews

"An enduring work of survival literature." (The New York Times)

Read This if You're Very Sick and/or Thinking About Ending Your Life

Does a chronic disease or messed up life have you feeling like you're at the end of the line? Are you feeling like it's time to end your life? Reading/listening to this book may end your suffering. The author, Dr. Frankl, has insights on life that may change your perspective. He was a Jewish doctor in Austria when the Nazis invaded in 1938. He had the opportunity to get out of the country, but decided to stay with his family. That was the wrong choice as he ended up in concentration camps, but this little book was the result. It was/is one of the most compelling that I've ever read. Steven Covey, the self help guru, made mention of this book in the first pages of his bestseller, "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People." It changed him. His self help system was based largely on this book. I could go on, but I'll just say that I read this book when I was in a dark, hopeless place after my doctor told me that my 11 month treatment would have to be extended to 18 months. Perhaps that sounds like no big deal, but I was living on savings and it meant that I would run out of money before the end. Obviously, that had me feeling pretty low. This book changed my perception of my lot and perked me right up! I couldn't change my fate, but I could change the way I thought and dealt with it. Best wishes & I hope you read this!

I will isten again and again

The beginning of this book deals with the author's time in concentration camps, and the descriptions are all to the purpose of tracing his observations, which he later builds his theory of logotherapy on. Thus, the descriptions are not horrifying for horrors sake, but serve to educate one regarding the way these experiences were able to be withstood.

There were a few surprises in this book as well. He mentions logotherapy, and paradoxical intention, in relation to its use in treatment for people with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, among other things.

Most importantly, to myself, were the ways he showed how he had developed his ideas on man's search for meaning. These are ideas that he himself used to save his life while enduring four concentration camps. They are not ideals plucked out of the ether and argued with only intellect.

The narrator has a European accent, which I cannot place, but which added greatly to my listening experience. Sometimes the ideas flow thick and fast and it is a challenge to keep up while also taking in completely the ideas you just heard.

This is a book I will listen to repeatedly and learn from on each occassion.

Humbling

All the other people that have reviewed this book have captured the content of the book very well. The only thing I have to add is that this is a book about an extraordinary man, with all of the horror he was subjected to he still remained a wonderful human. He is not bitter and does not hate the people who subjected him to these unspeakable acts, instead he tries to find the good or humor in their acts.

This book humbled me; I used to get upset when someone took my parking spot, or cut into my queue but now I smile as I have never had to endure real horror or injustice.

Between stimulus and response, there is a space...

"Man's Search for Meaning" is the great summary of Frankl's view on life. Sold in 10 million copies - the book has two distinct parts - the first is a kind of memoir of the horrible time Frankl spent in at least four concentration camps during II World War, including Auschwitz. From all written stories about the life in camp - Frankl's relation is astonishing - there are no gruesome scenes, no ghastly relations - but through some cold description of prisoners shock, apathy, bitterness and finally deformation of morals - Frankl's account is one of the most fearful stories I have ever read. Yet, there is still a small light of humanness, still a germ of meaning in all these atrocities. Let's read: "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."

The second part of the book deals with his LOGOTHERAPY - the fundamental theory Frankl promoted in XX century. Logotherapy seeks the cure for neurosis and existential emptiness in the search for meaning in life. There are passages in the book, also those about love and its importance that make one shiver....

Let's read two citations from this great book:

"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."

One of the Most Important Books Ever Written

There are a handful of books that should truly be required and desired reading for everyone across the world. This is one of them. It is simultaneously repulsive and compelling, disheartening and hopeful.

I read this book perhaps 20 years ago. The older I get, the more I find new meaning in it. There are a great many self-help books out there that go on and on and say nothing. Then there's a book like this that offers an unblinking look at one of history's most horrific events from an inside perspective and uses that as a lead-in to offer to us a scientific embrace of the three little words that could mean the most to all of us.

Love. Faith. Hope.

Adversity-Suffering-Meaning

This is a book I would normally pass on the shelf. A friend who happens to be a Psychologist recommendedI I read this; after a terrible diagnosis I received. Never and I mean NEVER has a book enveloped me, inspired me, or, said exactly what I needed to hear, and on a level compare my own troubles to. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has given up on living a meaningful life; better even know what a meaningful life can be. I would give this book 5 stars, it didn’t solve my problem, but gave me the tools to do so on my own.

Great book for those dealing w/ existential issues

Great book for anyone dealing with existential issues or anyone who wants an introduction into a sound anthropological psycho-therapy method. Frankl chronicles his experiences as a concentration camp inmate and from the viewpoint of his psycho-therapeutic / phenomenological method of finding meaning in all forms of existence, even the most sordid ones, and thus a reason to continue living. Through his experience, he developed a method of psycho-therapeutic method that he called logotherapy. His analysis focuses on a "will to meaning" as opposed to Adler's Nietzschean doctrine of "will to power" or Freud's "will to pleasure". Rather than power or pleasure, logotherapy is founded upon the belief that it is the striving to find a meaning in one's life that is the primary, most powerful motivating and driving force in humans. According to Frankl, "We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering" and 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". For Frankl, it was his love for his wife that enabled him to survive Auschwitz and three other camps, not to mention many moments of "luck" or grace. Love, for Frankle, became the highest experience that a human can have. I appreciated the back story of Frankl's experience that lead to his method and agree with his conclusions, but I think some of his premises fall into a naturalistic fallacy. Nevertheless, he has a great ability to put into words the psychological and existential reality that one deals with when suffering or striving to understand a purpose in life.

I lived in Auschwitz for three hours

My mentor (a man from the Baby-Boomer generation) recommended this book to me by saying, "it was the single most influential book I ever read." With a endorsement like that, I had no choice but to read it. I am happy to say, he did not oversell this book.

The first three hours of Man's Search for Meaning, is a psychological account of Frankl's time in the Nazi prison camps. While I have seen countless documentaries about the atrocities that took place in those camps, Frankl made it far more real.

Frankl explains, not just the physical torments but rather, the mental toll it took on him and the other prisoners. However, Frankl does not attempt to paint himself as a hero - quite the contrary. In perhaps the most sobering line in the book, Frankl says, "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.”

In those first three hours of eloquent narration, I lived in Auschwitz.

The last two hours of the book were not as transcendent but were still fascinating. It describes his psycho-therapeutic method (Logotherapy), which helps a person identify their purpose in life and then to use that individual purpose to overcome the obstacles in their life. Of course, in just two hours there was not a lot of time for great detail but there were still some very solid nuggets of wisdom and several interesting case studies.

Lastly, I would be remiss if I did not mention Simon Vance's brilliant narration. A couple of years ago, I purchased The Complete Sherlock Holmes Collection, narrated by Simon Vance. He has a soothing voice without being monotonous and in the Sherlock Holmes stories, Vance had a nice range of character voices. While there is rare occasion for this in Man's Search for Meaning, Vance's regal voice helps to add weight to this amazing text.

If you are a scholar or just someone who could use a little perspective on your troubles, Man's Search for Meaning is five hours well spent.

Great Book!

I got this book after Dr. Phil said he has read and re-read it several times in his life. While I'm not always a Dr. Phil fan, I think he has it right with this one. It's one of the few books I consistently recommend to anyone. Very insightful, unbiased, and amazing the he has actually lived what he learned and vice versa.

Invaluable path to a meaningful life

Frankel's account of his concentration experience is not as moving as those of Elie Wiesel, but the second half of the book on logotherapy draws together the threads of that experience into a structure for treating patients struggling with the existential crisis of life's meaning. Frankel, the founder of logotherapy (meaning therapy), is with Freud and Adler one of the primary Viennese psychiatrists of the 20th century. For Freud sexual conflicts were key to understanding mental turmoil. For Adler it was the struggle for personal power and superiority. Frankel thought that mental conflicts arose from a desire to know the why of existence. He thought that if we know the why we can live with any what. He said the why is clear if we can love someone and if we can work at something we enjoy.
The concentration camp experience also taught Frankel that he had control over his thoughts and feelings. No SS soldier could change his thoughts. He could always go somewhere in his mind. Frankel foreshadowed the present day's psychology of "think it and you will feel it."

Potentially life changing...

So, we all know about the Holocaust, yet this book is a bit different - told with such "tragic optimism" that the message is not moral outrage or repulsion, but of meaning in the midst of unimaginable degradation. The "why" that makes the "how" of suffering bearable. Frankle quotes Nietzsche throughout.



The most moving passages for me were his imagined conversations with his wife, (who probably by that time was dead), which nonetheless gave him the purpose for continuing to live, and the glimpses of Nature, such as sunsets, raw in beauty, beyond the barbed wire.



His message is simple - it is in loving the people we love and in the struggle that our lives demand of us, that we find meaning that transcends the mere pleasure principle. Our own "ontic logos" is individually uncovered, not found through intellectual introspection on "THE meaning of life" (which is a nonsense and which usually just leads to neurosis).



Frankle highlights the contemporary consumerist "tyranny of happiness", which is endemic in the West, so that many patients feel not just unhappy, but deeply ashamed of their unhappiness.



Existentialism is not popular in the zeitgeist, but I think we can learn much from that generation who lived through the War, and the Holocaust, and developed such philosophies of coping with terrible hardship and suffering. By contrast, we can be very superficial, and self centred, and it left me considering what issues I cared about enough to take action on. Would I regret not doing so otherwise? Yes, probably - as an opportunity wasted!



This is a humane, inspiring, potentially life changing book; well narrated, subtle, profound and unpretentious. It deserves the highest rating.

Throw out your self-help books!

This is an utterly remarkable book for so many reasons. What strikes me most about it is how it really gives meaning to the idea that the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts. What I mean by this is the following: the book is not great psychology, nor great philosophy nor even great narrative. And yet, as a whole I would call it a great book. Why? Because it makes a definitive impact. I cannot say that I walked away from this book unchanged. I suppose it is Viktor Frankl himself who makes all the difference -- in him you find a truly humane, humble and ultimately wise human being. I was truly impressed to hear him quoting Nietzsche while in a concentration camp; this at a time when Nietzsche's work had been distorted and used to promote anti-semitism by the Nazis. One warning though -- his existentialist philosophy is outdated and really needs to be complemented by a contemporary understanding of human nature.

The power of perspective

A book to return to again and again, whenever you feel your sense of perspective slipping. This is the story of a concentration camp prisoner whose humanity and intellect saw him through the worst of all times. The author states at the beginning that it is a book about humanity, not a record of the Holocaust or the realities of concentration camp life, and the lightness and readability of the writing is an incredible achievement. Frankl not only survived, but went on to form a school of psychotherapy that is still revered and relevant today. His central idea is that man can choose his attitude even when he loses control of his circumstances. Whatever horrors life throws at us, our thoughts remain our own. Whatever happens, we should be able to put our problems aside and focus on what is decent and humane and brilliant about the world around us. Compared to what Frankl and his generation went through we live in easy, care-free times. If he could keep his humanity and decency intact, the rest of us have no excuse.

Brilliant

The first part talks about what he learned in his experiences in concentration camps. It doesn't focus on gory details, but rather what insights can be drawn from the conditions. The second part is an introduction to logotherapy--which seeks to help people to find meaning in their lives and thus fulfillment.

Eye opening!

I'd split this book into 3 sections.

The first is an amazing account of the war, Frankl's time there and the happenings. It really did open your eyes

The second part of say is about how he helped the people in camp, some links to finding meaning and purpose and crossing the bridge between his time in camp and his use of logo therapy .

The third part is where I tuned out a lot. It's his views and use of logotherapy so can get quite deep - I'm not sure if it's he subject matter or he very English narrator (which works well on the first 2 parts, not as much on the third!) but it was quite specialist!

Still, I'd rate this book highly for the first two sections!

Deep and Thought Provoking

This is a bool that make you think to the core of your being, it makes you ask just as the title suggests, what meaning actually is and how you can poses it.

The first half of the book is autobiographical and is an harrowing account of the concentration camps, harrowing but not graphic.

The second half is psychoanalytical and more theoretical.

I absolutely loved this book, I can recommend it to anyone one from young adult upwards.

A very small investment for a very large return

This is a book that lighten my load at a time in my life when I needed it. So I will not speak so much about it, but give you a few quotes that might help to get a feeling for the ideas, but I would recommend reading it to get the full impact of the ideas, on different days I get different emphasis, but what I like most about this book is that it gives a well being I have not found in religion or other books, it builds on your humanity a sense of purpose without asking for imposibles or promising absolutes, it gives you a set of tools to live a more content life and that is enough for me.

“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.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest. What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which is in store for him?

No, thank you,' he will think. 'Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, although these are things which cannot inspire envy.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes - within the limits of endowment and environment- he has made out of himself. In the concentration camps, for example, in this living laboratory and on this testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“As a professor in two fields, neurology and psychiatry, I am fully aware of the extent to which man is subject to biological, psychological and sociological conditions. But in addition to being a professor in two fields I am a survivor of four camps - concentration camps, that is - and as such I also bear witness to the unexpected extent to which man is capable of defying and braving even the worst conditions conceivable.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“At the beginning of human history, man lost some of the basic animal instincts in which an animal's behavior is embedded and by which it is secured. Such security, like paradise, is closed to man forever; man has to make choices. In addition to this, however, man has suffered another loss in his more recent development inasmuch as the traditions which buttressed his behavior are now rapidly diminishing. No instinct tells him what he has to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people tell him to do (totalitarianism).”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

Valuable insight into mindworks

Very insightful book that is a great addition to anyone interested in what makes any persons struggle worth persevering with. The driving forces that can help someone overcome grief, adversity, when all seems pointless.
So good I ordered the book for someone I know, and as a reference point for some volunteer work I do. Top notch book.

very wise movie

loved the book. it is amazing and humbling to listen about such extreme life experiences, above all puts one's problems into context and gives an impulse to say yes to life!

Grippong story and an in depth review at the end

The story of Victors hardships was compelling and I found myself unable to stop listening until the end.

The analysis at the end is a little hard to get you're head around but still worth hearing