Man's Search for Meaning

Man’s Search for Meaning (1946) is a memoir and work of nonfiction concerned with psychotherapy. The author, Victor Frankl, was born in 1905 and later became a psychiatrist in Vienna—an occupation that for some time protected him despite the fact that he was Jewish. When he was offered the opportunity to obtain a visa and escape to America, he chose to stay in Nazi-occupied Austria to be near his aging parents. Inevitably, he and his family were arrested and taken to the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz, where Frankl worked as an enslaved laborer. 

Man's Search for Meaning details Frankl’s experience in the concentration camp as well as his attempts to overcome and understand it. The book is in three parts: “Experiences in a Concentration Camp,” “Logotherapy in a Nutshell,” and “Postscript 1984: The Case for Tragic Optimism.” With more than 16 million copies sold as of 2022, the work is one of the most famous pieces of Holocaust literature, although its uplifting tone and branding as a self-help book have also attracted criticism.

Content Warning: Both the source text and this guide contain extensive discussion of antisemitism and the Holocaust.

Overview

The first half of the book is a description and interpretation of the concentration camp experiences that Frankl underwent during the war. He survived against formidable odds thanks to a combination of good fortune and a fierce will to live.

After the war, Frankl returned to his work in psychotherapy profoundly influenced by the question of how he and others he knew in the camps managed to maintain their will to live. In questioning what kept them alive and relatively mentally healthy in such conditions, Frankl expanded on an idea he had begun to develop in the 1930s: “logotherapy,” or “therapy through meaning.” This constituted a whole new branch of psychotherapy that went beyond the pioneering work of Sigmund Freud—which is rooted in the idea that humans are motivated by the drive for pleasure—and of Alfred Adler—which is rooted in the idea that humans are driven to seek power. The author describes his methods of logotherapy in great detail in the second part of the book.

The title of the book encapsulates what Frankl learned from being in a concentration camp, starved, beaten, overworked, and constantly threatened with death. Frankl came to realize that humans can and will survive even the most extreme conditions if they have a strong reason to live: a purpose in life that motivates them. He describes three versions of the meaning of life throughout the book: the effort to achieve, the motivation provided by love, and the courage and dignity of the human spirit in the face of suffering.

In Frankl’s own case, he found meaning in his work. When he was arrested, he had a draft manuscript of his theory on psychotherapy with him. The papers were confiscated, but he thought about his writing often and made efforts to preserve it by taking shorthand notes on scraps of paper. In addition, Frankl often thought about his deep love for his wife and hoped to see her again after the war. Frankl also witnessed many acts of heroism and sacrifice in the camp, which gave him the strength to persevere.