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4.26 AVERAGE
4.26 AVERAGE
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
reflective
fast-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
I just came across this book randomly in an old house that was being cleared of belongings so it could be sold. I knew nothing about it and going by the title alone I'm not sure I would have read it but the blurb on the back drew me in, and I started reading it a little and got sucked in, so I took it with me. I’m a little wary of people’s opinions on this subject because so many tend to immediately head into religious or spiritual stuff, but this guy seemed to be pretty scientific about things so I thought I’d give it a shot.
And yeah, it’s definitely a good book. The first and largest part of the book is a narrative of the author’s experiences in a few different Nazi concentration camps. You may have heard some of this story before since I’m pretty sure this book is quoted in a lot of documentaries on the holocaust. He says his goal is not so much to give a factual account because you can find this information in plenty of other places, but he wants to explain the psychological experience of the concentration camp inmate. The insight of this part is very enlightening and will be useful to many different people no matter your convictions on the subject of life’s meaning (or lack there of). If you are at all interested in this subject I highly recommend the book for this part.
In the second part he gives an explanation of his psychotherapeutic theories. Here, he gets into some ideas I didn’t really agree with. I’m sure the results of his therapy speaks for themselves but his reasoning about the necessity of meaning starts to veer into extra-scientific areas. And he has some strange ideas about philosophy. At one point saying that without meaning man would just be a machine. Really? Is that what you think modern philosophy says about man? Because those ideas went out like hundreds of years ago.
So his main point that human beings have a psychological need to be able to visualize a future for themselves, is a really important observation. I think this point could be used to differentiate between someone who is clinically depressed and someone who isn’t, for example. And it might even be therapeutic to someone who feels like they are stuck in a rut. But his apparent unawareness of philosophical distinctions between such things as function/purpose and the lack of clearly defining what he means by the "meaning of life" make his further points in the second part a little muddled. Being a religious man, he seems to want to give spiritual significance to what he's saying, which personally I found a little off-putting. But thinking about it more, depending on what he actually means by "life" this may be more open to interpretation than first appears.
If you look up life in the dictionary there are several definitions. You could be talking about anything from simply the state of being alive (biological life), what it is to be a human being, or what it is to be conscious. Or crucially, another way to define "life" is, from websters, "the sequence of physical and mental experiences that make up the existence of an individual." Ah, see now this is a different thing entirely. The first group of definitions are talking generally about all life and asking is there a meaning to these things. This second more specific definition is talking about the experiences of an individual. This pairs much better with what Frankl is saying, because he is saying that meaning is something for every individual to discover for himself. He is talking about individuals, not life in general. You give your life (your experiences) meaning yourself through aspirations, goals, and commitments. Basically if you are acting towards some end, then your actions have purpose. It is the attempt to define the meaning of the general broadly defined "life" that gets into the problematic spiritual extra-scientific stuff. But this sort of definition is not helpful or needed. It is Frankl's sort of definition that is the real human psychological need.
I have my own theory about this. I think it's because the psychological need or drive developed evolutionarily so as human beings we would stay focused on creating a comfortable situation for ourselves. In pre-civilized times this would have been a lot harder than it is today. A lot of time and energy would have to be expended towards this goal, it would be a lifelong project. A lot of people today still have to work a lot for this goal. But in modern industrialized nations that have large comfortable middle-classes, whole swaths of people come into life with these needs already met. This leads to a kind of aimlessness and malaise. Basically, this is the modern condition (yeah I know, "first world problems"). But you still have a need to keep striving for something. So this is where you turn to Maslow's "self-actualization". You pursue further goals unique to yourself. Some people turn to creative things, some people go into helping people, politics, and other causes. What Frankl is saying though is that even at the lowest level you need to have this sort of higher goal just to keep you going with all the trivial daily tasks.
And yeah, it’s definitely a good book. The first and largest part of the book is a narrative of the author’s experiences in a few different Nazi concentration camps. You may have heard some of this story before since I’m pretty sure this book is quoted in a lot of documentaries on the holocaust. He says his goal is not so much to give a factual account because you can find this information in plenty of other places, but he wants to explain the psychological experience of the concentration camp inmate. The insight of this part is very enlightening and will be useful to many different people no matter your convictions on the subject of life’s meaning (or lack there of). If you are at all interested in this subject I highly recommend the book for this part.
In the second part he gives an explanation of his psychotherapeutic theories. Here, he gets into some ideas I didn’t really agree with. I’m sure the results of his therapy speaks for themselves but his reasoning about the necessity of meaning starts to veer into extra-scientific areas. And he has some strange ideas about philosophy. At one point saying that without meaning man would just be a machine. Really? Is that what you think modern philosophy says about man? Because those ideas went out like hundreds of years ago.
So his main point that human beings have a psychological need to be able to visualize a future for themselves, is a really important observation. I think this point could be used to differentiate between someone who is clinically depressed and someone who isn’t, for example. And it might even be therapeutic to someone who feels like they are stuck in a rut. But his apparent unawareness of philosophical distinctions between such things as function/purpose and the lack of clearly defining what he means by the "meaning of life" make his further points in the second part a little muddled. Being a religious man, he seems to want to give spiritual significance to what he's saying, which personally I found a little off-putting. But thinking about it more, depending on what he actually means by "life" this may be more open to interpretation than first appears.
If you look up life in the dictionary there are several definitions. You could be talking about anything from simply the state of being alive (biological life), what it is to be a human being, or what it is to be conscious. Or crucially, another way to define "life" is, from websters, "the sequence of physical and mental experiences that make up the existence of an individual." Ah, see now this is a different thing entirely. The first group of definitions are talking generally about all life and asking is there a meaning to these things. This second more specific definition is talking about the experiences of an individual. This pairs much better with what Frankl is saying, because he is saying that meaning is something for every individual to discover for himself. He is talking about individuals, not life in general. You give your life (your experiences) meaning yourself through aspirations, goals, and commitments. Basically if you are acting towards some end, then your actions have purpose. It is the attempt to define the meaning of the general broadly defined "life" that gets into the problematic spiritual extra-scientific stuff. But this sort of definition is not helpful or needed. It is Frankl's sort of definition that is the real human psychological need.
I have my own theory about this. I think it's because the psychological need or drive developed evolutionarily so as human beings we would stay focused on creating a comfortable situation for ourselves. In pre-civilized times this would have been a lot harder than it is today. A lot of time and energy would have to be expended towards this goal, it would be a lifelong project. A lot of people today still have to work a lot for this goal. But in modern industrialized nations that have large comfortable middle-classes, whole swaths of people come into life with these needs already met. This leads to a kind of aimlessness and malaise. Basically, this is the modern condition (yeah I know, "first world problems"). But you still have a need to keep striving for something. So this is where you turn to Maslow's "self-actualization". You pursue further goals unique to yourself. Some people turn to creative things, some people go into helping people, politics, and other causes. What Frankl is saying though is that even at the lowest level you need to have this sort of higher goal just to keep you going with all the trivial daily tasks.
informative
sad
fast-paced
Structured in two sections Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl is a seminal work in both literature and psychology, offering a restrained and objective narrative of Frankl’s imprisonment in Nazi concentration camps, notable for its lack of sentimentalism and its clinical detachment in the face of immense suffering and outlining the theoretical foundations of logotherapy - Frankl’s existential analysis, which posits that the essential motivational force in human life lies in the search for meaning rather than in the pursuit of pleasure or power.
Et lux in tenebris lucet - light shines in the darkness (but sometimes it flickers differently depending on who’s holding the candle).
I'm struggling to admit I wasn't as enthralled as I expected, given the fact that this book is so highly praised, and I really wanted it to be exactly what I needed. When it wasn’t, I almost felt guilty for not liking it as much as I thought I should, but maybe that, in itself, is part of the “search for meaning”: the tension between expectation and what actually stays with you.
It’s one of those works that leaves a mark, though I can’t tell if it’s because of what Frankl wrote, or because of what I was hoping to take away from it. One thing that really struck me was the shifting weight of small phrases. Take “oh well, another day has passed.” In an office, it's resignation. In a camp, it’s survival. On your couch after binge-watching Netflix — it’s probably just dehydration. The words are the same, but the meaning stretches to fit the circumstances.
The relativity of suffering is probably the book’s most haunting lesson - pain expands to fill the heart no matter its size. And the same relativity applies to happiness: in one setting, brushing your hand across a loved one’s face is transcendent; in another, it’s just Tuesday. A warm meal, a flower’s scent, a glimpse of sunset — things we so often take for granted can, under different conditions, become enough to keep someone alive.
The past, too, takes on a new role here: not as a burden, but as a refuge: a place we revisit in memory to survive the present, to shield hope from extinction.
And perhaps what makes Frankl’s reflections feel so durable is the paradox he insists on: life sometimes asks us to act, to create, to build; other times, it asks us to endure, to allow, to bear. Meaning can be found in both — not just in heroic creation but in quiet survival.
The core message is both simple and daunting: the search for meaning is the prime motivation of human life. That’s heavier than it sounds when you realize “meaning” is not neatly packaged for you; you have to wrestle it out of existence, moment by moment.
At the same time, Frankl’s vision — and logotherapy as a whole — emphasizes that suffering can carry meaning and while this is powerful, it also feels like a double-edged sword: in the right hands (and proper circumstances), it’s liberating; in the wrong ones, it risks becoming a justification for needless self-martyrdom, where people convince themselves that all pain must be noble (not neccesary, for he also views that as dangerous).
So, did this book become my new favorite? No. Did it manage to sneak into my mental luggage anyway? Absolutely. And maybe that’s its power: it doesn’t just ask what meaning you read in the book — it asks what meaning you bring to it yourself.
Et lux in tenebris lucet - light shines in the darkness (but sometimes it flickers differently depending on who’s holding the candle).
I'm struggling to admit I wasn't as enthralled as I expected, given the fact that this book is so highly praised, and I really wanted it to be exactly what I needed. When it wasn’t, I almost felt guilty for not liking it as much as I thought I should, but maybe that, in itself, is part of the “search for meaning”: the tension between expectation and what actually stays with you.
It’s one of those works that leaves a mark, though I can’t tell if it’s because of what Frankl wrote, or because of what I was hoping to take away from it. One thing that really struck me was the shifting weight of small phrases. Take “oh well, another day has passed.” In an office, it's resignation. In a camp, it’s survival. On your couch after binge-watching Netflix — it’s probably just dehydration. The words are the same, but the meaning stretches to fit the circumstances.
The relativity of suffering is probably the book’s most haunting lesson - pain expands to fill the heart no matter its size. And the same relativity applies to happiness: in one setting, brushing your hand across a loved one’s face is transcendent; in another, it’s just Tuesday. A warm meal, a flower’s scent, a glimpse of sunset — things we so often take for granted can, under different conditions, become enough to keep someone alive.
The past, too, takes on a new role here: not as a burden, but as a refuge: a place we revisit in memory to survive the present, to shield hope from extinction.
And perhaps what makes Frankl’s reflections feel so durable is the paradox he insists on: life sometimes asks us to act, to create, to build; other times, it asks us to endure, to allow, to bear. Meaning can be found in both — not just in heroic creation but in quiet survival.
The core message is both simple and daunting: the search for meaning is the prime motivation of human life. That’s heavier than it sounds when you realize “meaning” is not neatly packaged for you; you have to wrestle it out of existence, moment by moment.
At the same time, Frankl’s vision — and logotherapy as a whole — emphasizes that suffering can carry meaning and while this is powerful, it also feels like a double-edged sword: in the right hands (and proper circumstances), it’s liberating; in the wrong ones, it risks becoming a justification for needless self-martyrdom, where people convince themselves that all pain must be noble (not neccesary, for he also views that as dangerous).
So, did this book become my new favorite? No. Did it manage to sneak into my mental luggage anyway? Absolutely. And maybe that’s its power: it doesn’t just ask what meaning you read in the book — it asks what meaning you bring to it yourself.
Uggggg, that is what I have to say about this book. He goes on and on about the mind but you never actually get a clear picture of what happened to him or his story in Nazi Germany. This book was a lesson in patience and perseverance.
es un libro que me ha venido muy bien leerlo ahora mismo. se ha sentido un poco como sesgo de confirmación porque la experiencia del autor y su situación te obliga a darle un mayor peso a sus conclusiones. la parte de la logoterapia me gustaría investigar más porque a saber como envejeció eso. en definitiva el punto intermedio entre la esperanza y el estoicismo(? por decirlo de alguna manera
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced