Book Discussion No.1

...opinion pieces for some of our favorite books...

In his book, Viktor Frankl tells the tale of his life in different concentration camps in Germany during World War II.

Man’s Search for Meaning is a guide on self-transcendence and how we can discover a guiding truth in life. Apart from an autobiography, the book serves also as an introduction to Logotherapy, the authors' version of existenstential analysis.

The book is divided into two parts. The first part describes some of the unimaginable hardships that Frankl and other prisoners had in the concentration camps. He narrates this by describing the three different stages of a typical prisoner's psychological reactions being in the camp. At the same time, he explains how he managed to elevate himself above all these hardships and find haven in his mind and in what gave him in life meaning as well as how he manage to support others in the camp finding their meaning and thus easier to cope in camp and most important more likely to survive.

The second part of the book is an introduction to Logotherapy. Here Frank suggests that the primary force in life is to find meaning. One of the parts that captured my attention is where he introduces and analyses the three different ways of finding meaning as:

“...(1) by doing a deed or creating a work; (2) by encountering someone or experiencing something; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering....” (Frankl, p. 115).

Explaining the essence of existence he writes:

"... I have termed this constitutive characteristic "the self-transcendence of human existence." It denotes the fact that being human always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself—be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love—the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself..." (Frankl, p. 115).

At the end of the book, we found a postscript "The Case of a Tragic Optimism". Here he answers the central question of how to remain positive despite a "tragic triad" which consists of pain, guilt, and death, or in another form how to maintain meaning in spite of these aspects. What also caught my intention in this postscript is also what I could call the positive triad, which is hope, faith, and love. The postscript highlights some of the key messages that were explained earlier in the book.

Overall, with his book, Frankl’s invites us to focus on finding meaning in life a meaning that lies outside the boundaries of our own psyches, and find the best possible use of each moment. To that end, he recommends using our imagination and conscience in the below statement:

"Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now." (Frankl, p. 114, 151)

Without a doubt a very well-written and powerful book on existentialism.