Viktor E. Frankl on the Meaning of Life

“Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!”

I’m a little disappointed it took me so long to read this book. As a survivor of perhaps the worst episode of prolonged suffering in modern human history, Victor E. Frankl provides wisdom and insight in Man’s Search for Meaning.

The first half of the book details his experience in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. In the second half, he addresses Logotherapy, the field of psychotherapy he developed from his own suffering as well as his observation of others’ suffering during the Holocaust.

The Greek word “logos” has various definitions, though from Frankl’s perspective it is used to denote “meaning”. Logotheraphy focuses on the meaning of human existence and on man’s search for such meaning.

Frankl discusses the “existential vacuum”, a place where every human being finds herself from time to time. In the existential vacuum, which often manifests itself as a state of ennui, “[n]o instinct tells one what he has to do, and no tradition tells one what he ought to do; sometimes one does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism), or he does what other people wish him to do (totalitarianism).”