Man searching for meaning — Victor Frankl
This is the second review of Hooked on the book. This time I will be commenting on the book “Man searching for meaning” by Victor Frankl.
Who is Victor Frankl?
A renowned Austrian psychiatrist that got captured during world war II and become a prisoner in Auschwitz concentration camp and many others until the war ended. He survived and wrote this book to heal the wound and be able to get all his anger and frustration out as himself tells in the first pages of the book. He is basically an Holocaust survivor. However he is much more than that, he created Logotherapy, a branch in psychiatry and psychoanalysis. Logotherapy states that the will of purpose is the core motivation for the human being. There is even an association on his behalf “Victor Frankl Association”
The book
This book is rough. Rough is the best word to describe it.
The introduction is mandatory. This caught my attention immediately. It tells the story and a bit of the biography of the author, this made keep reading.
The book is written from the perspective of a psychiatrist in a concentration camp and tries to analize the different states of mind that the prisoner under goes in this horrible place under such circumstances.
Sometimes because of this reason it might seem cold and distant. Specially when describing tortures and unbelievable cruel events that will usually happen in the concentration camp. He describes them so vividly because he lived them in first person.
This book is divided into the internment of the prisoner into the concentration camp, the life in the camp and the liberation. As I read the book as a reader I also underwent some different phases myself.
The first days in the concentration camp
The first days while reading this book I turned to be very conscious of the worth of life. But also I had to do a big effort to keep reading. The content of the book was so touching that I will keep on thinking about it the whole day and even I had discussions with some people. Due to being so conscious about what all these people underwent during world war II, it affected my mood.
As I kept reading it shocked me that I had to develop something similar to a resistance to empathize with what I was reading. Something similar to what Victor Frankl describes the prisoners felt after some time in the camp. They forget about everything else and focus on surviving. Memories and the hope of a better future keeps them alive. But they start to behave feelingless.
This chapter is where the author explains how shocking was to leave all your friends, family, possessions and your whole life behind. How in a few days the prisoner becomes a number and they remove the hair so none can be distinguished from the rest. He also describes how the gas chamber were a constant threaten and that caused a big psychological effect because you life was on the edge at all time.
The life in the concentration camp
The second part where the life in the concentration camp is explained is even more cruel and devastating to the reader than the first internment part. However you might just have stopped empathizing as much as at the begging and it might be easier to read through.
The last pages of this second part is where I noticed more psychological analysis. He starts to talk about the feelings of the prisoners, the memories and the faith that kept them alive.
He introduces very interesting concepts about the justification of suffering. Quotes Nietzsche and talks about having a purpose/ that makes you keep fighting. He says that even if you don’t expect nothing from life. Life always expects something from you.There is even a whole secret about the meaning of life which was one of my favorites.
Liberation
the third part talks about the liberation. How people turned from bad to good and vice versa. How some lost their minds moved by revenge and anger. Also, how hard was for many to realize that nothing was waiting for them from all those thoughts and memories that kept them alive.
This is a brief chapter and Victor Frankl finishes the book with an explanation of its method called Logotherapy. In this last part he explains the neurosis and many other states of mind. This is the most technical part of the book and gets quite difficult to understand because he explains complex concepts of his work in Logotherapy.
I have to say that even if I did not understand this part completely I found it one of the best of the book and amongst the most interesting. There is just something fascinating on being able to read about the perspective on big life’s matters by such talented man who has experienced the worst things in life.
These are some of my favorite quotes in the book:
“At the end, It does not matter what we expect from life but what life expect from us”
“After all, what is the human being? The being that decides what he is”
“The only thing that cannot be removed from you is your attitude”
Thanks for reading. I highly recommend this book
