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4.1 AVERAGE
4.1 AVERAGE
hopeful
informative
slow-paced
challenging
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
3.5 stars—the last 1/4 of the book was the most interesting to me.
Great book to give you perspective
I thought this maybe a bit different than Man's Search for Meaning, but I would say it's the same takeaway.
I thought this maybe a bit different than Man's Search for Meaning, but I would say it's the same takeaway.
CW: Suicide, medical trauma, doctors being dicks
Not as good as Man's Search for Meaning, but not as terrible as Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning.
That's not to say that this book isn't also completely fucked up, cause it absolutely is, it's just slightly less fucked up than Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning, but that's not really much of an accomplishment.
So, now you're wondering 'How is it fucked up? I'm sure you're overexaggerating', sadly I am not. As evidence, please enjoy (or try to) this excerpt from chapter two that shows how horrible of a doctor Frankl was:
"As a young doctor, I was working in a clinic for general internal medicine, to which one day, a young colleague was admitted. He had already brought the diagnosis with him. A diagnosis of a highly dangerous, no longer operable, and particularly unusual and malignant type of cancer, and his diagnosis was correct. This was a special form of cancer, medically described as melanosarcoma, which is detectable through a specific urinary reaction.
Of course, we tried to deceive the patient. We exchanged his urine with that of another patient and showed him the negative result of the reaction. But what did he do? One night at midnight, he crept into the lab and set up the test for his own urine to surprise us with his positive result the next day during the doctor’s rounds.
We were extremely embarrassed and there was nothing left, but to expect our colleague to commit suicide.
Every time he had permission to leave the hospital, and we could hardly have forbidden him to go, to visit his usual little café nearby, we were on tenterhooks in case we had heard that he had poisoned himself in the café toilet. But what really happened? The more visibly the disease progressed, the more the patient began to doubt his diagnosis, even when he had mastitis in his liver, he began to postulate harmless liver diseases. So what had occurred? The nearer the end of his life came, the more the man’s will to live asserted itself and the less he wanted to admit to his approaching end. Whichever way you look at it, the fact is, and remains, that his will to live was raging and this fact must remind us, unequivocally, and once and for all, and is applicable to all similar cases that we do not have the right to deny any patient this will to live."
So, yes, Frankl used this experience as a learning experience, except all that he learned from it was a reason to rescue people who are trying to commit suicide and not allow them to do so, even if they're in physical pain from different diseases, as he believed they would learn to enjoy life.
You can't have joy without suffering.
Frankl even gave the example of a long-term patient of his that he KNEW was wanting to kill themselves, and had been wanting to do so for an extended period of time, yet he still saved her life anyways and thought she ought to be thankful to him for it? I realize that he was practicing medicine in a different country and during a different time than I am familiar with, but his son-in-law still decided that this was relevant useful information to publish as of current day standards?
This book is a desperate money grab, so I'm at least glad that I had borrowed it from the library. All of the sentences in the book are far too long with loads of filler inserted as there wasn't actually enough content to make an entire book from. Before this, I thought that I had long sentences, apparently not!
Not as good as Man's Search for Meaning, but not as terrible as Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning.
That's not to say that this book isn't also completely fucked up, cause it absolutely is, it's just slightly less fucked up than Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning, but that's not really much of an accomplishment.
So, now you're wondering 'How is it fucked up? I'm sure you're overexaggerating', sadly I am not. As evidence, please enjoy (or try to) this excerpt from chapter two that shows how horrible of a doctor Frankl was:
"As a young doctor, I was working in a clinic for general internal medicine, to which one day, a young colleague was admitted. He had already brought the diagnosis with him. A diagnosis of a highly dangerous, no longer operable, and particularly unusual and malignant type of cancer, and his diagnosis was correct. This was a special form of cancer, medically described as melanosarcoma, which is detectable through a specific urinary reaction.
Of course, we tried to deceive the patient. We exchanged his urine with that of another patient and showed him the negative result of the reaction. But what did he do? One night at midnight, he crept into the lab and set up the test for his own urine to surprise us with his positive result the next day during the doctor’s rounds.
We were extremely embarrassed and there was nothing left, but to expect our colleague to commit suicide.
Every time he had permission to leave the hospital, and we could hardly have forbidden him to go, to visit his usual little café nearby, we were on tenterhooks in case we had heard that he had poisoned himself in the café toilet. But what really happened? The more visibly the disease progressed, the more the patient began to doubt his diagnosis, even when he had mastitis in his liver, he began to postulate harmless liver diseases. So what had occurred? The nearer the end of his life came, the more the man’s will to live asserted itself and the less he wanted to admit to his approaching end. Whichever way you look at it, the fact is, and remains, that his will to live was raging and this fact must remind us, unequivocally, and once and for all, and is applicable to all similar cases that we do not have the right to deny any patient this will to live."
So, yes, Frankl used this experience as a learning experience, except all that he learned from it was a reason to rescue people who are trying to commit suicide and not allow them to do so, even if they're in physical pain from different diseases, as he believed they would learn to enjoy life.
You can't have joy without suffering.
Frankl even gave the example of a long-term patient of his that he KNEW was wanting to kill themselves, and had been wanting to do so for an extended period of time, yet he still saved her life anyways and thought she ought to be thankful to him for it? I realize that he was practicing medicine in a different country and during a different time than I am familiar with, but his son-in-law still decided that this was relevant useful information to publish as of current day standards?
This book is a desperate money grab, so I'm at least glad that I had borrowed it from the library. All of the sentences in the book are far too long with loads of filler inserted as there wasn't actually enough content to make an entire book from. Before this, I thought that I had long sentences, apparently not!
Such a disappointment! Scrappy and preachy and not entirely cohesive.
An amazing, thought-provoking book that everybody should read at least once. The episodes Viktor Frankl relates in these pages, and his reflections about them, will stay with me for a long time.
This is a collection of lectures Frankl gave a year after being liberated from a Nazi concentration camp. Through stories and insights from his years as a doctor and psychiatrist he reminds his fellow man of their innate desire for life. I read his book Man's Search for Meaning while in college and it remains one of the most inspirational books I have ever read.
challenging
hopeful
medium-paced
Edit: It seems that the German edition that I read doesn't feature the second Part of the English edition on Logotherapy. That might've put it into a formal framework easier to resonate with me. Instead I got to read a theatre play to finish up the book. So bear in mind that my review is based on the German edition from Amazon eBooks.
If feel like should've taken away more from this book. It is highly praised and many seemed to have a deeper understanding of purpose and the human nature.
I could see why people might take that away from the book but I myself couldn't. It was however an authentic and sober-minded account of the human nature in its extremes when everything is taken away from you. There are probably few sources that can give such a first-hand professional account on such a cruel and rare situation.
I learnt more about the mind in total deprivation but I didn't learn more about my own purpose. On the one hand because I am already kind of close to what you might call a purpose and while his view is not too far away from mine probably, his way of framing it didn't resonate with me. I found his style of writing (reading it in German) too verbose and unclear at times.
Despite some criticism I admire him - his actions and words during his time in the KZ and afterwards. I don't know if I would've been that virtuous and had kept a cool head, inspiring so many fellow humans.
As his style of writing and reasoning didn't click with me that well, I had to put in some conscious effort and imagination to actually understand how the mind must feel like under total hunger and pain. As a reader in my cozy bed with a full stomach, it's not always easy to switch on the side of your brain that's driven by rawer instincts.
I loved the theatre play at the end though! Not sure if it is part of the English edition as well.
If feel like should've taken away more from this book. It is highly praised and many seemed to have a deeper understanding of purpose and the human nature.
I could see why people might take that away from the book but I myself couldn't. It was however an authentic and sober-minded account of the human nature in its extremes when everything is taken away from you. There are probably few sources that can give such a first-hand professional account on such a cruel and rare situation.
I learnt more about the mind in total deprivation but I didn't learn more about my own purpose. On the one hand because I am already kind of close to what you might call a purpose and while his view is not too far away from mine probably, his way of framing it didn't resonate with me. I found his style of writing (reading it in German) too verbose and unclear at times.
Despite some criticism I admire him - his actions and words during his time in the KZ and afterwards. I don't know if I would've been that virtuous and had kept a cool head, inspiring so many fellow humans.
As his style of writing and reasoning didn't click with me that well, I had to put in some conscious effort and imagination to actually understand how the mind must feel like under total hunger and pain. As a reader in my cozy bed with a full stomach, it's not always easy to switch on the side of your brain that's driven by rawer instincts.
I loved the theatre play at the end though! Not sure if it is part of the English edition as well.