(Hu)Man’s Search For MeaningViktor Frankl's 1956 book Man's

Search for Meaning chronicles his experiences as a concentration camp inmate and describes his psychotherapeutic method of

finding a reason to live.

Andre V. Milteer, M.A. Psychology

Viktor E. Frankl, MD,PhD, 1905-1997

Frankl's approach is based on three philosophical and psychological concepts:

Logotherapy/Existential Analysis, sometimes called the "Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy", is an internationally acknowledged and empirically based meaning-centered approach to psychotherapy. In Logotherapy/Existential Analysis (LTEA) the search for a meaning in life is identified as the primary motivational force in human beings. 1. Freedom of Will 2. Will to Meaning3. Meaning in Life

Andre V. Milteer, M.A. Psychology 3

Basic principlesThe notion of Logotherapy was created with the Greek word logos ("meaning"). Frankl’s concept is based on the premise that the primary motivational force of an individual is to find a meaning in life.

The following list of tenets represents the basic principles of logotherapy:

Life has meaning under all circumstances, even the most miserable ones. Our main motivation for living is our will to find meaning in life.

We have freedom to find meaning in what we do, and what we experience, or at least in the stand we take when faced with a situation of unchangeable suffering.

Andre V. Milteer, M.A. Psychology 4

Discovering Meaning

• Frankl emphasized that realizing the value of suffering is meaningful only when the first two creative possibilities are not available (for example, in a concentration camp) and only when such suffering is inevitable – he was not proposing that people suffer unnecessarily.[6]

• On September 25, 1942 he, along with his wife, and his parents were deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. There Frankl worked as a general practitioner in a clinic until his skill in psychiatry was noticed, when he was asked to establish a special unit to help newcomers to the camp overcome shock and grief. He later set up a suicide watch unit, and all intimations of suicide were reported to him. To maintain his own feeling of being worthy of his sufferings in the dismal conditions, he would frequently march outside and deliver a lecture to an imaginary audience about "Psychotherapeutic Experiences in a Concentration Camp".

According to Frankl, we can discover meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by doing a deed; (2) by experiencing a value – nature, a work of art, another person, i.e., love; (3) by suffering.[4] On the meaning of suffering, Frankl gives the following example:

Once, an elderly general practitioner consulted me because of his severe depression. He could not overcome the loss of his wife who had died two years before and whom he had loved above all else. Now how could I help him? What should I tell him? I refrained from telling him anything, but instead confronted him with a question, "What would have happened, Doctor, if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive you?:“

"Oh," he said, "for her this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!" Whereupon I replied, "You see, Doctor, such a suffering has been spared her, and it is you who have spared her this suffering; but now, you have to pay for it by surviving and mourning her." He said no word but shook my hand and calmly left the office.[5]— Viktor Frankl

Andre V. Milteer, M.A. Psychology 5

Quotations

•"A man can get used to anything, but do not ask us how."

•"Nietzsche's words, 'He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.'"

•"A man who for years had thought he had reached the absolute limit of all possible suffering now found that suffering had no limits, and that he could suffer still more, and more intensely."

•"It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct.

Andre V. Milteer, M.A. Psychology 6

Conclusion

• "We have come to know man as he really is. 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."

• Based upon Dr. Viktor E. Frankl’s Best Selling Book (1984), 3rd Printing.

• Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Frankl)

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Bibliography• Man's Search for Meaning. An Introduction to Logotherapy, Boston: Beacon,

ISBN 0-8070-1426-5; and Random House / Rider, London 2004, ISBN 1-84413-239-0; also: Washington Square Press; ISBN 0-671-02337-3 (Softcover, December 1997)

• On the Theory and Therapy of Mental Disorders. An Introduction to Logotherapy and Existential Analysis, Translated by James M. DuBois. Brunner-Routledge, London-New York 2004. ISBN 0-415-95029-5

• Psychotherapy and Existentialism. Selected Papers on Logotherapy, New York: Simon & Schuster ISBN 0-671-20056-9

• The Will to Meaning. Foundations and Applications of Logotherapy, New York: New American Library, ISBN 0-452-01034-9

• Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning. (A revised and extended edition of The Unconscious God; with a Foreword by Swanee Hunt). Perseus Book Publishing, New York, 1997; ISBN 0-306-45620-6. Paperback edition: Perseus Book Group; New York, July 2000; ISBN 0-7382-0354-8.

• "Dr. Viktor E. Frankl of Vienna, Psychiatrist of the Search for Meaning, Dies at 92," New York Times September 4, 1997