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Title: Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl ISBN: 0-671-02337-3 Publisher: Pocket Books Pub. Date: 01 December, 1997 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.74 (170 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: So Simple, Simply Profound
Comment: Viktor E. Frankl, as you've read in other reviews, is a holocaust survivor. In Man's Search for Meaning Frankl takes his experiences in concentration camps and translates them into a theory for therapy. His personally developed therapy, logotherapy, strives to help mankind overcome nuerosis by applying meaning to one's life experience, including (if not especially) a person's suffering. It is stated over and over again in Frankl's book that if a man can be shown a why, he can endure almost any how. This isn't really a new idea. However, Frankl goes one step further by helping people to see meaning and dignity in their suffering. Indeed, the preface of the book starts out with the line ' Dr. Frankl, author-psychiatrist, sometimes asks his patients who suffer from a multitude of torments great and small, "Why do you not commit suicide?".' What an opening line! What a question! Why does a suffering person not commit suicide? Are they living for a minor child, to finish a project, because their religion forbids suicide? Whatever the reason is, Frankl suggests that while that reason does not necessarily eliminate the suffering, a person's recognition of the dignity of their suffering can give them the will to go on.
While this book is not light reading, and does occasionally get a tad repetitive, it has such a wonderful message and packs so much into such a short space, that I highly recommend that everyone get a copy and read it. I was lent a copy by a friend and now I plan to get a copy for several people who I know. It's just wonderful.
Rating: 5
Summary: Beyond Subtitles
Comment: I have an natural aversion to psychology books. I was recommended this book and when I first time I picked up I made it to the title page and lost interest after seeing the subtitle: an introduction to logotherapy. A while late the book was again recommended to me, this time by another person, and I became determined to read past the subtitle.
Although this is "An introduction to Logotherapy" the implications of this book are much more profound then simply a psychology text-book or a do-it-yourself self-help book. This book does not play the part of creating a sugared life, denying that real struggles, real trials, and real pain do exist. But in acknowledging suffering, this book does not attach meaninglessness to life, which is so easy to do when a person does profoundly suffer. Instead Frankl asserts a beauty to life that is inclusive of both suffering and meaning.
In one of the many beautiful passages in the book, Frankl states that, "What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life; but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms."
This book manages to transcend psychology and the usual "self-help" books to express in sincere and honest terms that life is worth living. Regardless.
Rating: 5
Summary: Why art thou cast down, O my soul? Psalm 43:5
Comment: Surely topics and questions that have not been sufficiently answered since time began (whenever that was).
My paperback copy was swiped off the shelf of my maternal grandmother's; no telling how much she payed for it at the time,(25 cents maybe for a 1960's copy?).
I loved this book, even though it deals with horrific realities in a concentration camp.
Victor Frankl's experiences in the camp at Aushwitz are herein related. Also, threaded within that account are his reflections on the human psyche's response to such horrifying treatment which gave credence and further insight into his own developing system of psychotherapy, later termed logotherapy. His life's work was hidden within his coat, but the Nazi's confiscated and destroyed his manuscript upon arrival at the camp. He would spend whatever precious moments of personal freedom to scribble his thoughts on whatever he could find to keep those thoughts alive.
What made the most lasting impression on me was his describing that first day at Aushwitz when the Nazi's, from a sick and twisted interpretation/understanding of Matthew 25:33, divided all of the arrivals into two groups, one to be gassed and the other to survive and go through a hellish ordeal at the unmerciful mercy of their captors. My thoughts on the Nazi's action in that instance is that they must not have read in their Bibles where God says "Vengeance is mine says the Lord, I will repay" which is found in both the Old and New Testaments, and to Abraham and his descendants "I will curse those who curse thee" Genesis 12:3.
Frankl's Logotherapy has benefitted such groups of people suffering from depression and other severe forms of mental disturbances.
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Title: Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl ISBN: 0738203548 Publisher: Perseus Publishing Pub. Date: July, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Doctor and the Soul : From Psychotherapy to Logotherapy by Viktor E. Frankl ISBN: 0394743172 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 12 October, 1986 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Will to Meaning: Foundations and Applications of Logotherapy by Viktor Emil Frankl, Viktor E. Frank ISBN: 0452010349 Publisher: New American Library Pub. Date: October, 1989 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Recollections: An Autobiography by Viktor E. Frankl, Joseph Fabry, Judith Fabry ISBN: 0738203556 Publisher: Perseus Publishing Pub. Date: July, 2000 List Price(USD): $13.50 |
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Title: Viktor Frankl's Contribution to Spirituality and Aging by Melvin Kimble ISBN: 0789011565 Publisher: Haworth Press Pub. Date: April, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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