Musings of the Sundarman

Man's Search for Meaning

I first read Victor Frankl's classic, 'Man's Search for Meaning' in 1999, 40 years after it was first published. Frankl's wife, father, mother and brother perished under horrific circumstances in Nazi concentration camps. Only his sister survived.

Entering the camps on the first day, he lost every shred of his physical belongings. In a most heart-rending step, he had to hand over the manuscript for a scientific book he had written: his life's work. Enduring extreme hunger, cold and brutality, first in Auschwitz, then in Dachau, Frankl and his compatriots lived under a Damocles' sword: they could be sent to the gas ovens at any time during their wrenching imprisonment.

Almost any man in his condition would be forgiven if he claimed life had no meaning. Suicide would be considered a tangible step out of the soul-shredding misery of the camps. Amazingly, against all odds, emerging like a phoenix from the ashes, Frankl stepped out of the camps a free man and an optimist.

His reasoning: even in the most terrible circumstances, people have control over how they see their circumstances, and create a precious, hopeful meaning out of them. Marcus Aurelius, the roman emperor and a famous Stoic, would have called this "the last freedom".

The Nazis' use of torture was really a tool to attempt to extinguish human hope and optimism. But Frankl, remembering his Nietzsche, used to say, "he who has a WHY to live, will bear with almost any HOW...".

The most soul-stirring parts of the book are Frankl's recollections of the thoughts that gave him the will to live, despite being surrounded by men and women who possessed it not.

Frankl used creative visualization to recollect vivid images of his wife. In fact, when a bird alighted on a mound in front of him, he saw his wife's beauty in it's gentle eyes and fluttering wings. Another strategy he used was to imagine himself speaking to throngs of people in universities and lecture halls, and entreating them that "It can never happen again."

He used every scrap of paper and any writing implement he could scrounge up, in incessant attempts to re-write from memory, his own works, especially his precious manuscript. Men all around him gave up their life-will and waited for death, but Frankl could not be budged from his optimistic perspective. "We are not here to judge life according to what we expected from it, and what it had delivered; rather, we must have the courage to find out what life expects of us..."

"Our task is not merely to survive..." he said, "but to find the guiding truth specific to us and our situation..". He realised that in some men's lives, this would only be revealed in the condition of extreme suffering. He claimed that rather than being a symptom of a form of neurosis, suffering, was, in fact, a human achievement. This is startling to most people.

The book's impact on me was amazing. Apparently, Frankl only wanted his prisoner number on the cover of the book and no acknowledgement. According to him, it's success with readers revealed "a ravenous hunger for a meaningful existence."

The main points of 'Man's Search for Meaning':
1. Emphasis on Responsibility
2. Intellectual implications: The will to meaning and logotherapy:
As a doctor, before WWII, he had theorized and come up with the third pillar in Viennese psychotherapeutic approaches. The first two were Freud's 'Psychoanalysis' and Alfred Adler's 'Individual Psychology.' Frankl's contribution was Logotherapy (greek logos = 'meaning').



While psychoanalysis emphasizes introspection and self-examination, logotherapy encourages a person to go 'out of themselves' and see their lives in a broader context. Logotherapy looks to the Will to Meaning as the primary driver of human psychology. Existential distress and angst is a sign that we are becoming more human, as we search for meaning in our lives. This is especially true in materially successful socities around the world today.

Unlike Freud (who looked at life-force as a means to satisfy drives) and Adler (who presumed humans to pursue power at all costs), Frankl and other Humanistic psychologists believed that the outstanding feature of human beings is their Free Will. Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers were other famous proponents of the new school of thought.

3. Sources of meaning: Logotherapy believes we derive meaning in the pursuit of actions that 'close the gap' between WHAT WE ARE and WHAT WE WANT TO BECOME. But what if we are struggling to identify what we want to become?

Frankl felt the modern person has far too many choices at his/her disposal. The frustrated Will to Meaning is compensated for by sex, money, power, and even control of others.

The true sources of meaning according to Frankl are:
a. Creating something of value to oneself and others -- Life Purpose
b. Experiencing life, encountering love -- Makes inner and outer experience a legitimate alternative to achievement
c. The attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering -- not comprehending meaning does not mean it does not exist
d. Fulfilment of your potential, however humble, is the key to life
e. Freedom and Responsibility to Act on Freedom are the roads to contentment

Great quotes from the book:
"Man is the one that created the gas chambers; however, he is also the one who entered the gas chamber UPRIGHT, with the Lord's Prayer, or the Shema Yisrael on his lips..."

" We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way..."

An amazing book, and a great philosophy for life. See an interview of Frankl here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmKta5tymPY