Man’s Search for Meaning

Man’s Search for Meaning blends memoir and psychology. In Part I, Viktor Frankl recounts everyday concentration-camp life—not as a catalog of atrocities, but as a study of what happens inside the mind when identity, possessions, time, and certainty are stripped away. He traces how prisoners move from shock to emotional numbness, and how some survive by anchoring themselves to a future purpose, love, or an attitude they refuse to surrender.

Part II introduces logotherapy—Frankl’s meaning-centered psychotherapy. He argues that humans are primarily driven by a will to meaning, not merely pleasure or power. Meaning can be found through work, love, and the stance one takes toward unavoidable suffering. A later postscript extends this into “tragic optimism”: saying yes to life despite the “tragic triad” of pain, guilt, and death.

• Readers facing loss, illness, anxiety, burnout, or a sense of emptiness who want a grounded framework for meaning without shallow positivity.
• Students and professionals in psychology, counseling, medicine, ethics, and education seeking a classic, humane alternative to purely drive- or symptom-centered models.
• General readers of Holocaust testimony who also want a clear articulation of what inner freedom can look like under extreme coercion.

Viktor E. Frankl (1905–1997) was an Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist, a survivor of Nazi concentration camps, and the founder of logotherapy, often called the “Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy.” After the war he led the neurology department at the Vienna Poliklinik Hospital and wrote widely on meaning, responsibility, and human dignity.