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| Victor Frankl's 1946 Masterpiece |
Alongside Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler, Victor Frankl is
often considered as one of the greats of psychiatric literature. After
publishing Mans Search for Meaning in
1946, he quickly became known as the founder of Logotherapy, often regarded as
‘The Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy’ behind Adler’s Nietzschean
doctrine of ‘will to power’ and Freud’s ‘will to pleasure’. Logotherapy was the
psychological doctrine that the most powerful driving force in humans is
finding a meaning in one’s life, and this principle is explored throughout the
book.
The first half of Frankl’s autobiographical book consists of
his memoirs of his time spent in a concentration camp, and the lesson’s that he
learnt during his torturous experience, also adding how it influenced his
creation of Logotherapy. Frankl believed in the principle that “everything can
be taken from man but one thing, the last of the human freedom’s – to choose
one’s attitude in any given set of circumstance”, so through finding meaning,
even our worst atrocities would be to some extent more bearable if we are
somehow able to find meaning in them, thereby confirming Friedrich Nietzsche’s
famous saying; “that which does not kill you can only make you stronger”.
In the second half of the book, Frankl dives into a more
in-depth explanation of Logotherapy, which he described as not only being a
method of psychiatric analysis, but also essentially a personal philosophy on living
one’s life. Through providing an in-depth explanation of Logotherapy, Frankl
makes the important point that despite being the most influential, motivating
factors in our lives, our search for meaning is hardly ever complete, since
‘meaning’ is something that can often change depending on our individual
circumstances. So the search for meaning isn’t like a race, where once it’s
found we feel complete, but is instead comparable to a marathon, i.e. a long
continuous process which some may complete, whilst others might end their lives
never fully discovering the meaning of their life.
Ultimately, Mans
search for Meaning is easily one of the most influential books of the 20th
century, which I seriously recommend for not only people that are seeking a
better understanding of psychology, but also those simply wanting a good read!
