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Review: Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl (150.195 FRA) by Matthew Manera
This book by Frankl, a leading European psychiatrist in the mid-twentieth century, originally written in 1946, is in three parts: “Experiences in a Concentration Camp; “Logotherapy in a Nutshell”; and “The Case for Tragic Optimism,” a postscript written in 1984.
Part One: Experiences in a Concentration Camp
Frankl explains at the outset that this section answers the question, “How was everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the mind of the average prisoner?” He observes that there were three phases of the inmate’s mental reactions to camp life: “the period following his admission; the period when he is well entrenched in camp routine; and the period following his release and liberation.”
The first phase was characterized by shock, which was soon followed by a “delusion of reprieve,” in which the prisoner believes that he will be “reprieved at the very last minute.” Eventually, as Frankl says of himself as a prisoner, “I struck out my whole former life,” for “the illusions some of us still had were destroyed one by one, and then, quite unexpectedly, most of us were overcome by a grim sense of humour.” The second phase was one of “relative apathy in which [the prisoner] achieved a kind of emotional death” which made him “insensitive to daily and hourly beatings.” In spite of this, “it was possible for spiritual life to deepen.” It was in this phase that Frankl came to realize three things: that “love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire”; “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, to choose one’s own way”; and that “if there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering.” As Nietzsche wrote, “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.” In the third phase, “what was happening to the liberated prisoners could be called ‘depersonalization.’ Everything appeared unreal, unlikely, as in a dream. We could not believe it was true.” On being set free, “only slowly could these men be guided back to the commonplace truth that no one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them.” “Two other fundamental experiences threatened to damage the character of the liberated prisoner: bitterness and disillusionment when he returned to his former life.” nd, finally, “The crowning experience of all, for the homecoming man, is the wonderful feeling that, after all he has suffered, there is nothing he need fear any more—except his God.”
Part Two: Logotherapy in a Nutshell
Part One, concerning his life in a concentration camp, is a kind of preface to Part Two, an explanation of Logotherapy, which Frankl developed and which is the most important part of the book. Logos denotes meaning. Logotherapy, then, “focuses on the meaning of human existence as well as on man’s search for such a meaning.” It speaks of a will to meaning, as opposed to the Freudian will to pleasure, and the Adlerian will to power. Frankl argues that mental hygiene depends not on an achievement of equilibrium, but rather on “the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.” This, he calls noö-dynamics (noös meaning “mind”): “the existential dynamics in a polar field of tension where one pole is represented by a meaning that is to be fulfilled and the other pole by the man who has to fulfill it.” “What matters […] is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment.” In the end, it is the responsibility of each person to answer for their own life. The categorical imperative of logotherapy is, “Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now.”
Frankl says that, according to logotherapy, we can discover the meaning in life (a meaning that always changes, but never ceases to be) in three ways: “(1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing something or encountering someone (no one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him); and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.”
He also argues against what he calls “pan-determinism”: “the view of man which disregards his capacity to take a stand toward any conditions whatsoever (biological, psychological and sociological conditions, or the product of heredity and environment). Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them.”
Part Three: The Case for a Tragic Optimism
Much of this chapter repeats points he made in Part Two. He does introduce, however, the concept of tragic optimism, which, according to Frankl, means that “one is, and remains, optimistic in spite of […] those aspects of human existence which may be circumscribed by: (1) pain; (2) guilt; and (3) death.” One must have optimism in the human potential which allows for: “(1) turning suffering into a human achievement and accomplishment; (2) deriving from guilt the opportunity to change oneself for the better; and (3) deriving from life’s transitoriness an incentive to take responsible action.”