Notes on Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl

From psychological, historical, and inspirational standpoints, I thoroughly enjoyed recently reading Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl. The book is divided into two parts: the author's story of surviving a concentration camp and the resulting foundation for the psychiatric therapy based on hope and meaning the author created (called logotherapy). I enjoyed all the details of the stories, even if much of it has already been displayed in numerous movies and museums (the lessons are still relevant and cannot be emphasized enough). I found that I truly identified with the author's enthusiasm, sense of purpose, and underlying optimism.

Below are my notes on the book, which was a fast, enjoyable, and powerful read. I recommend it for anyone interested in the history of the Holocaust and/or psychology.

Preface

• Psychology of concentration camp
  
• Logotherapy
  
• Written by psychiatrist who lost everything in the camps
• Comparison to Freud
• Search for purpose in life
  
• Why do you not commit suicide day to day?
  
• What human does when has nothing further to lose
  
• Make larger sense of life
  
• Existentialism
  
• To live is to suffer (zen
  
• To survive is to find meaning in suffering
  
• He who has "why" to live can deal with any "how"
  
• How to awaken in patient sense of purpose

Preface to 1984 edition

• Book is best seller means people are really suffering and searching for meaning
  
• Wrote book anonymously to start
  
• Unintentional best seller
  

Part 1; Experiences in a concentration camp

• Auschwitz
  
• 3 phases of prisoner: admission shock, adapting to daily routine, liberation
• Cigarettes as currency
• Illusion of reprieve: hang on to false hope until last minute
  

Phase 1:

• Possessions taken
  
• Wash and shave naked
  
• Nakedness is what you're left with
  
• All identity lost
  
• Nothing else to lose except lives leading to humor and curiosity
  
• Shave every day to look younger ad fit for work to avoid getting gassed
  

Phase 2:

• Next stage of apathy and emotional death and lack of response at horrors
  
• Most painful part of beating is insult it implies
  
• Frequent selections between workers and dead
  
• Apathy necessary self-defense
  
• Dreams of bread, cake, and baths
  
• 1 bread and 1 soup per day
  
• Walking through snow and ice with no socks
  
• Deep religious beliefs and small prayer gatherings in secret
  
• Love is the ultimate salvation man can aspire to
  
• In utter desolation, only through loving contemplation can he survive
  
• Find beauty in nature
  
• Ad hoc gatherings for art, skits, joking on life and horrors of camp
  
• Semblance of art and humor in a camp
  
• Humor as salvation
• Luck, joy relative
• Man became a number
  
• Everything can be taken from man except for his freedom to choose attitude and reaction to surroundings
  
• Emotion of suffering is no longer suffering when it becomes an idea you can analyze objectively
  
• Man's meaning and destiny and life all unique
  
• No one meaning of life
  
• Life is just concrete tasks
  
• Suffering is unique task
  
• Opportunity is way he bears his burden
  
• Kindness could be found among guards and SS
  
• Two races of men: decent or indecent
  
• Not split among racial lines
  

Phase 3:

• Could not accept that freedom theirs
  
• Lost the ability to feel pleased
  
• De-personalization, can't believe dream is true
  
• Sudden uplifting of pressure dangerous too, like the bends
  

Part 2: Logotherapy

• Focuses on future, not past
  
• Reoriented toward meaning of life
  
• Logos in Greek = meaning
  
• Striving to find meaning, will to meaning (not will to pleasure)
  
• Existential vacuum
  
• Neuroses from meaning search
  

3 Ways to find meaning:

• Work and duty
  
• Experiencing something or someone, Love
  
• Suffering and our attitude of it
  
• Suffering ceases to be suffering when it finds a meaning through change in attitude
  
• View life as if from deathbed
• Super meaning as viewed from higher plane we can't understand
• Paradoxical attention to what you're most afraid of to fix neuroses/phobias
  

Postscript

• Tragic optimism amidst triad of pain, guilt, death
  
• How to say yes to life despite that
  
• Force optimism

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