Man's Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy (Touchstone books) [Paperback]

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl is among the most influential works of psychiatric literature since Freud. The book begins with a lengthy, austere and deeply moving personal essay about Frankl's imprisonment in Auschwitz and other concentration camps for five years and his struggle during this time to find reasons to live. The second part of the book, called "Logotherapy in a Nutshell" describes the psychotherapeutic method that Frankl pioneered as a result of his experiences in the concentration camps. Freud believed that sexual instincts and urges were the driving force of humanity's life; Frankl, by contrast, believes that man's deepest desire is to search for meaning and purpose. Therefore, Frankl's logotherapy is much more compatible with western religions than Freudian psychotherapy. This is a fascinating, sophisticated and very human book. At times, Frankl's personal and professional discourses merge into a style of tremendous power. "Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is", Frankl writes. "After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips." --Christine Buttery --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Gerald F. Kreyche

De Paul University

"Man's Search for Meaning" is the story of a man who became a number who became a person. Today Frankl is one of the most famous and gifted of all psychiatrists. Frankl developed his ideas now generally known as the Third School of Viennese Psychiatry -- the school of logotherapy. The incredible attempts to dehumanize man at the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Dachau led Frankl to commence the humanization of psychiatry through logotherapy. Frankl is a professional who possesses the rare ability to write in a layman's language.

'A poignant testimony...a hymn to the phoenix rising in each of us who choose life before flight.' --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

'His works are essential reading for those who seek to understand the human condition.' --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

'An enduring work of survival literature' --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

A handsome gift edition of one of the seminal pieces of literature to emerge from the Second World War: Viktor Frankl's moving account of his experiences in Auschwitz. With new introduction and appendices. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

'Perhaps the most significant thinking since Freud and Adler.' --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

'Influential and eloquent'
--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Remarkable...It changed my life and became a part of all that I live and all that I teach.
--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

When Beacon Press first published Man's Search for Meaning in 1959, Carl Rogers called it "one of the outstanding contributions to psychological thought in the last fifty years." In the thirty-three years since then, this book - at once a memoir, a self-help book, and a psychology manual - has become a classic that has sold more than three million copies in English language editions. Man's Search for Meaning tells the chilling and inspirational story of eminent psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, who was imprisoned at Auschwitz and other concentration camps for three years during the Second World War. Immersed in great suffering and loss, Frankl began to wonder why some of his fellow prisoners were able not only to survive the horrifying conditions, but to grow in the process. Frankl's conclusion - that the most basic human motivation is the will to meaning - became the basis of his groundbreaking psychological theory, logotherapy. As Nietzsche put it, "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how." In Man's Search for Meaning, Frankl outlines the principles of logotherapy, and offers ways to help each one of us focus on finding the purpose in our lives. This new edition of Man's Search for Meaning includes a new preface by the author, in which he explains his decision to remain in his native Austria during the Nazi invasion, a choice which eventually led to his imprisonment. It also includes an updated bibliography of books, articles, records, films, videotapes, and audio tapes about logotherapy.

Viktor Frankl was born in Vienna in 1905 and was Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at the University of Vienna Medical School. His wife, father, mother and brother all died in Nazi concentration camps; only he and his sister survived, but he never lost the qualities of compassion, loyalty, undaunted spirit and thirst for life (earning his pilot's licence aged 67). He died in Vienna in 1997.

www.viktorfrankl.org

(20030731) --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Preface to the 1992 Edition

This book has now lived to see nearly one hundred printings in English - in addition to having been published in twenty-one other languages. And the English editions alone have sold more than three million copies.

These are the dry facts, and they may well be the reason why reports of American newspapers and particularly of American TV stations more often than not start their interviews, after listing these facts, by exclaiming: 'Dr Frankl, your book has become a true bestseller - how do you feel about such a success?' Whereupon I react by reporting that in the first place I do not at all see in the bestseller status of my book an achievement and accomplishment on my part but rather an expression of the misery of our time: if hundreds of thousands of people reach out for a book whose very title promises to deal with the question of a meaning to life, it must be a question that burns under their fingernails.

To be sure, something else may have contributed to the impact of the book: its second, theoretical part ('Logotherapy in a Nutshell') boils down, as it were, to the lesson one may distill from the first part, the autobiographical account ('Experiences in a Concentration Camp'), whereas Part One serves as the existential validation of my theories. Thus, both parts mutually support their credibility.

I had none of this in mind when I wrote the book in 1945. And I did so within nine successive days and with the firm determination that the book should be published anonymously. In fact, the first printing of the original German version does not show my name on the cover, though at the last moment, just before the book's initial publication, I did finally give in to my friends who had urged me to let it be published with my name at least on the title page. At first, however, it had been written with the absolute conviction that, as an anonymous opus, it could never earn its author literary fame. I had wanted simply to convey to the reader by way of a concrete example that life holds a potential meaning under any conditions, even the most miserable ones. And I thought that if the point were demonstrated in a situation as extreme as that in a concentration camp, my book might gain a hearing. I therefore felt responsible for writing down what I had gone through, for I thought it might be helpful to people who are prone to despair.

And so it is both strange and remarkable to me that - among some dozens of books I have authored - precisely this one, which I had intended to be published anonymously so that it could never build up any reputation on the part of the author, did become a success - the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-produce of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run - in the long run, I say! - success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.' --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.