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Book
Viktor E. Frankl · 1946
Frankl wrote the first half of this book in nine days, recounting Auschwitz not as horror to be witnessed but as evidence for a clinical claim he had been forming before the camps and tested inside them — that a person can be stripped of everything except the freedom to choose a stance toward what is happening.
Sequence ladder
Narrative Intelligence sources live outside the figurative image sequence ladder. Adaptive placement applies to image sequences, not this reading library.
Appears in
What this book knows
Suffering becomes bearable when a person finds meaning in it; meaning itself is the irreducible will that sustains human life.
work-as-meaning
It did not matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us — right action, right conduct, responsibility.
MSM-RC-039Life was still expecting something from them — one his child, the other a series of books no one else could finish.
VLA-0C08D123-RC-057mortality
The transitoriness of existence constitutes our responsibleness; at any moment man must decide what will be the monument of his existence.
VLA-0C08D123-RC-081Life in a concentration camp could be called a provisional existence of unknown limit — pointless even to talk of release.
VLA-0C08D123-RC-051transformation
The violin wept and a part of me wept with it — my wife lay possibly a thousand yards away, completely out of reach.
VLA-0C08D123-RC-033As soon as I decided to stay with my patients, the unhappy feeling left me — an inward peace I had never experienced before.
VLA-0C08D123-RC-044Illuminates
Editor’s framing
The book does two things at once, and reading it well means holding both. The first half is a survivor's account, spare and unsentimental, of the concentration camps. The second is the outline of logotherapy, the school of psychotherapy Frankl founded on the proposition that the will to meaning, not the will to pleasure or to power, is the primary human drive. What makes the testimony land is the refusal to redeem the suffering — Frankl does not claim the camps were worth it, only that meaning was the variable that predicted who endured. Attend to the inversion at the center: it is not what we expect from life, he argues, but what life expects from us, and the man who can answer that question survives the man who cannot. Vela reads this on the work-and-meaning axis, beside the other books where mortality clarifies rather than cancels a life.
Featured passage
MAN SSEARCH FOR MEANING 77 attitude towardlife.We had to learn ourselves and,further- more,we hadtoteachthe despairing men,that itdid notre- ally matterwhatwe expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. Weneeded tostop asking about the mean- ing oflife, andinsteadtothinkof ourselves asthosewhowere being questioned by life —dailyandhourly. Ouranswer must consist,not intalkandmeditation, butinright action andin right conduct.Lifeultimatelymeanstaking theresponsibil- itytofindtherightanswertoits problemsandtofulfill the tasks which it constantlysetsfor eachindividual. These tasks, and therefore themeaningoflife,differfrom man toman,andfrom momentto moment. Thusit is impos- sibletodefinethemeaningof life in a generalway.Questions aboutthemeaningoflife can never be answeredby sweep- ingstatements. "Life"doesnot meansomething vague, but somethingvery realand concrete, justaslife's tasksare also very real andconcrete.Theyform man'sdestiny, whichisdif- ferent andunique foreach individual. No manand nodestiny can becomparedwith any other manorany other destiny.No situation repeats itself,and each situation calls fora different response. Sometimesthesituationin whicha man finds him- self mayrequire himtoshapehis own fateby action. At other times it ismoreadvantageous forhim to make use ofanop- portunity forcontemplation and to realize assets in this way. Sometimes man may be required simply to accept fate, to bear his cross. Everysituation is distinguished by its unique- ness, andthereisalways only one right answer to the prob- lem posed bythe situation at hand. When aman finds thatit ishis destiny to suffer, he will 78 VIKTORE. FRANKL have to accept hissufferingashis task; hissingle and unique task. He willhaveto acknowledgethefact thateven insuffer- ing heis unique andalone in theuniverse. Noone canrelieve him ofhis sufferingorsufferinhisplace. Hisunique oppor- tunity liesintheway inwhich hebearshis burden. Forus, as prisoners, these thoughtswere notspeculations far removedfrom reality. Theywerethe onlythoughts that couldbeofhelp to us.Theykeptusfrom despair, even when thereseemedtobenochance ofcoming out ofit alive.Long ago we hadpassedthestageofaskingwhatwasthe mean- ingoflife,anaivequerywhichunderstands lifeastheattain- ing of someaimthrough theactive creationofsomething of value.For us,themeaningoflifeembracedthewidercycles oflife anddeath,ofsufferingand of dying. Oncethe meaning ofsufferinghad been revealedto us,we refused tominimizeoralleviatethecamp's torturesby ignor- ingthem orharboringfalseillusionsandentertaining artifi- cial optimism. Sufferinghad become a taskonwhich we did notwant toturnourbacks.Wehad realizeditshiddenop- portunities forachievement,the opportunitieswhichcaused the poet Rilketowrite,"Wie viel ist aufzuleiden!" (Howmuch suffering thereisto getthrough!).Rilke spokeof"getting through suffering" as otherswouldtalkof "gettingthrough work." Therewasplentyofsuffering for us to getthrough. Therefore, itwas necessaryto face up tothe fullamount of suffering, trying tokeep momentsof weakness and furtive tears toa minimum. But therewasnoneed to be ashamed of tears,for tears bore witnessthataman hadthe greatestof courage, the courage tosuffer.Only very few realized that. Shamefacedly someconfessedoccasionally that theyhad
MAN SSEARCH FOR MEANING 77 attitude towardlife.
Read alongside · the emotions
The will to meaning is yearning given a clinical name — the reaching that survives when everything else has been taken.
6 published passages · book excerpt · research analysis
Reader resonance signals for text sources are not wired to this view yet.