Viktor Frankl had a chance to leave Germany before World War II. Like many German Jews, he found himself at significant risk from the rise of Naziism. Despite obtaining a Visa to emigrate to America, he chose to remain to care for his ailing parents. The decision proved costly, as the Nazis arrested Frankl and incarcerated him in four different concentration camps throughout World War II. When Allie soldiers finally liberated his camp, he learned that his parents, wife, and brother had all perished in other camps.
In his book "Man's Search for Meaning," Frankl chronicles his time in the camps and the philosophy he created and refined as a result of that experience.
Frankl divides his book into three parts. In the first section, he recounts his years as a prisoner. He details many of the tortures he and other Jews suffered under the Nazis - starvation, overwork, unsanitary living conditions; but he spends much of the book talking about human nature.
In part 2, he details his philosophy of logotherapy, which states that man's search for meaning is his primary motivator in life. Frankl refers to this as the third Viennese School of Psychotherapy, following in the footsteps of Freud's psychoanalysis and Alfred Adler's individual psychology. During his time imprisoned, he and other prisoners sought a purpose in life.
Frankl added a third section decades later to update his experience applying logotherapy to his patients.
Each section reinforces the author's belief that man needs to find a purpose to go on living. This idea became increasingly evident when he saw men face a seemingly hopeless situation of indefinite imprisonment and punishment. Those who survived found a reason to do so. For Frankl, it was the desire to complete his unfinished work on logotherapy. For others, it was a loved one who needed them and waited for them. Still others found meaning in their own suffering.
"When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves," asserts Frankl. In other words, if we cannot avoid suffering, we can find meaning in it.
The book reads like an academic paper, but the reader cannot help but feel emotion as the author describes the atrocities suffered under the Nazis. It provides food for thought as we struggle through our own difficulties and strive to move forward.
It does not provide meaning for our lives, but it helps us to think about that meaning and discover it. I have never experienced a tragedy even close to what Frankl went through, but I have been through situations that felt hopeless, and it helped me to think of the big picture and pull myself out of a downward spiral.