mans search for meaning analysis

After being cooped up in squalor and surrounded by torture for four years, the prisoners couldn’t grasp the concept of their own freedom: “Its reality did not penetrate into our consciousness; we could not grasp the fact that freedom was ours” (88). They had looked forward to it so much that when it came it was almost like an anti-climax. The freed prisoners also had a strong desire for retribution: “They became instigators, not objects, of willful force and injustice. They justified their behavior by their own terrible experiences” (90). Frankl went onto refute this by saying, “that no one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them” (91). Moreover, the prisoners had kept positive in the camps by thinking that they will see their loved ones upon release. Sadly, for many they found that “the person who should open the door was not there, and would never be there again” (92). To these people Frankl imposed the idea that even suffering has a meaning in life; that it is the individual’s responsibility to overcome it and keep fighting on until their last breath. Ultimately, “there is nothing he need fear anymore-except his God” (93).

In Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor E. Frankl tells the honest story of his own experiences as an inmate in a concentration camp during World War II. In his book, Frankl answers the question “How was everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the mind of the average prisoner?” (Frankl, 2006, p. 3) He describes the physical, emotional, and psychological torment that he endured as well as the effect that the camp had on those around him. He breaks down the psychological experience as a prisoner into three stages: the initial shock upon admission into the camp, apathy, and the mental reactions of the prisoner after liberation. He highlights certain emotions experienced throughout the time in the camp such as delusions of reprieve, hope, curiosity, surprise, and even humor.

In the text, Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl states, “We who lived… remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread,” and the reader comes to find that these men in question were specifically driven by hope to continue fighting. They were already in poor conditions; Frankl himself states that the pieces of bread given away were the last ones belonging to the men. How then, are they relying on hope in this instance, if instead it just looks as if they’re making a benevolent final act? It is because those men have hope in those they aid to continue the fight; for, as each individual had their own, personal conflict, those men are continuing their individual fights by, to put it in crude terms, giving the Nazis the finger and embracing an apprentice on their deathbed like in every fantasy game ever. It is therefore that hope can provide the self what it may need as fuel provides fire with what it

Viktor E. Frankl, a psychiatrist and holocaust survivor, was born into a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria on March 26, 1905. Throughout his early life Frankl portrayed an immense interest into psychology and the inner workings of the human thought process. Frankl completed his schooling in psychology at the University of Vienna in 1925. He practiced psychiatry until 1942, when he and his family were deported to the Nazi ghetto of Theresienstadt where he was kept until he and his wife were transferred to the Auschwitz concentration camp. It is here that Frankl’s written story begins. Frankl, however, does not write the story of the typical concentration camp survivor. Frankl would agree with Thomas Hardy when he says, "A story must be exceptional enough to justify its telling; it must have something more unusual to relate than the ordinary experience of every average man and woman." Frankl does not solely speak about the dismal existence that was created in the concentration camps that he was housed within. He also speaks of the psychological factors that were at play during his time in the concentration camps, and what he believed was going on inside the minds of the prisoners. In this is the reason Frankl’s story is truly unique. Frankl’s story is not simply unique it is, as stated by Hardy, “exceptional”. Frankl in order to convey his analysis of the psyche of the prisoners utilized vivid visual imagery, passionate appeals to pathos, and elegant and dramatic

Victor Frankl was a Jewish writer, psychiatrist, and husband before he was imprisoned in Auschwitz. There his strength, dignity, and family were taken away,however he never lost his will to live. He credits this to his ability to find meaning in all that was happening. Frankl writes of his own experiences and those in which he observed in the concentration camps. He starts from the arrival on train to their long awaited, unexpected departure into a world the former prisoners would never view the same.

Imagine being arrested, forced out of your home, transported to a jail-like camp, and seeing people die all around you while wondering if you would be next - all due to your race, religion, or sexuality. This situation seems unrealistic for the 21st century, but sadly, just one century prior, this circumstance was reality for millions of people, including Viktor Frankl, who tells the story of his Holocaust experience. Between the years of 1933 and 1945, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi soldiers captured anyone who he viewed as a lesser race. Common targets included Gypsies, Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, Afro-Germans, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, disabled people, and the most common, Jews. About two-thirds (six million) of European Jews were killed during the Holocaust, more than one million of these were children (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). Frankl turned his experiences and findings into an extremely powerful novel, Man’s Search for Meaning. He tells his story of living in a concentration camp, while also introducing and explaining his psychological theory of logotherapy.

During the ghettoization process of the Holocaust, the constant mistreatment received from authoritarian figures wore down the spirit of the Jews. After having their citizenship revoked as a result of the Nuremberg laws, the Jews were susceptible to physical, emotional, and psychological harassment and abuse. In Elie Wiesel’s case, a majority of the pain inflicted on him and his community was conducted by the Hungarian police. By being segregated into ghettos -- and at the end of constant abuse -- the Jew’s spirits were defeated and they had their hope whittled down to nothingness. In his book, “Night”, towards the end of living in the ghetto, Wiesel details how “weariness had settled into our veins, our limbs, our brains, like molten lead” (Wiesel 16).

Psychologist Victor Frankl’s novel: Man's Search for Meaning delivers a powerful and humbling perspective on life that inspires introspection in the minds of all those that read it. The book achieves this by taking us on a journey with Frankl as he describes his personal experiences of the Holocaust. During his time spent in four different concentration camps Frankl gradually learns lessons in spiritual survival. Devoid of all pleasures and possessing nothing but his “naked existence” Frankl is forced to look inward and in the process discovers what he believes to be the primary motivating factor of all men (p. 15).

Frankl endured much suffering during his time in the concentration camp. All of his possessions were taken away, including his manuscript in which he recorded all of his life's work. He went through rough manual labor, marching through freezing temperatures, and little or no

After three years in concentration camps, Frankl returned to Vienna, where he developed and lectured about his approach to psychological healing. He wrote his world-famous Saying Yes to Life in Spite of Everything: A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp, or as it is titled in English, Man’s Search for Meaning. After his suffering in the concentration camps, Frankl made his hallmark conclusion that even under the most painful, dehumanizing circumstances, life has potential meaning and therefore suffering is also meaningful. This conclusion served as a basis for his logotherapy and existential analysis. In 1946, he was appointed to run the Vienna Polyclinic of Neurology. He remarried in 1947, and his resulting daughter went on to

We are meant to become our truest selves by finding meaning in our lives, which, according to Frankl, can come from three places: work, love, and our attitude in the face of horrific suffering or difficulty. And at the center of this meaning is our responsibility and human right to choose. In Frankl’s theory, we all strive to fulfill a self-chosen goal, from which meaning has the potential to be found. And if no meaning is found, there is meaning yet to be found, or meaning to be drawn from the apparent lack of meaning. Whatever the case, Frankl viewed man’s lack of meaning as the greatest existential crisis, the stress of this meaninglessness giving life and shape to all of our neuroses.

Beginning in March of 1933, when the first concentration camp was established, over ten million people suffered and died due to the systematic and cruel atrocities inflicted upon them by the Nazi Party. Viktor Frankl was among the relative few to survive, and he responded, both during and after, by attempting to decipher, not only the meaning of his own life, but the importance of meaning in the lives of others. He named three stages to the process handling the experience of a concentration camp, which can be applied to many types of suffering. Strangely, all three of these stages, depersonalization, apathy, and the return to normalcy, all seem to incorporate an unexpected reaction, humour. As evidenced by Frankl’s account, it seems as though sufferers of a certain disposition can occasionally find humour and amusement even in the worst of times.

In 1985, Frankl could obtain Oskar Pfister Award from The American Psychiatric Association due to his important works for people and society. 39 books were published from Frankl (Längle, "Frankl, Viktor Emil") that Man's Search for Meaning, his very popular book, is his narration of his life when he was in Nazi camp. Frankl in this book explained that how could find the meaning of his life and discover his new theory which introduced it as logotherapy to the psychology world (Pytell, TIMOTHY E, "Viktor Frankl (1905-1999)"). Frankl's best-selling book "Man's Search for Meaning," chronicles a psychologist's experiences as an inmate in the concentration camp, which led him to discover the importance of finding meaning in all forms of existence (Pytell, TIMOTHY E, "Viktor Frankl (1905-1999)"). Viktor Frankl founded what he called the field of "Logotherapy." Logotherapy is related to Frankl own experiences in Nazi camp. In his life years, which spent in camp, the tensions caused to contemplate deeply about the meaning of life and human purpose of living ("Logotherapy"). He narrates about his problems and restriction, moreover, other men in Auschwitz, that how they

Man’s Search for Meaning, is a biography and the personal memoir of Victor Frankl’s experience in a Nazi Concentration Camp. The book was initially published in 1946 in German and was then published in 1959 in English, under the title From Death-Camp to Existentialism. Prior to World War II, Victor Frankl was a psychiatrist working in Vienna and then later was responsible for running the neurology department at a Jewish Hospital in Rothschild. In 1942 he and his family were arrested and deported. They were separated and sent to concentration

In September of 1942, Viktor Frankl was arrested in Vienna and taken to one of the many Nazi death camps. Frankl was working on a manuscript which was confiscated from him in a move to Auschwitz. In this manuscript entitled, The Doctor and the Soul, Frankl had began his work on a theory he would later call logotherapy. The term logotherapy is derived from the Greek word logos, which means meaning. According to logotherapy, the striving to find a meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in man (Frankl 121). Frankl’s theory and therapy generated and grew through his experiences in the concentration camps.