Man is a being in search of meaning. However, deciphering meaning of a life confined to the strict principles of camp life and to boundaries set by rolls of barb wire is not easy. How could a life like this be worth preserving?
Viktor Frankl answers this question in Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl orchestrates his agonizing experience at Auschwitz concentration camp into a powerful message to readers regarding the potential of an individual.
Frankl is initially deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp where he works at the camp’s psychiatric clinic to help distraught newcomers adjust to camp life. Here, he witnesses the initial shock experienced by prisoners upon their arrival. He relates this shock to a sudden change in the prisoners’ environment and physical condition.
Frankl soon sets foot on the grounds of Auschwitz where he finalizes his findings and interprets his evaluations into a psychological analysis called logotherapy. According to logotherapy, the pursuit of meaning in life is the ultimate driving force in humans.
Considering that most prisoners have lost all hope in the midst of harsh camp life, Frankl notices the apathy that has built up within the prisoners as they rapidly accustom to camp life. The average prisoner comes to value only those things that will help him or her to survive.
The final psychological reactions are bitterness and depersonalization. Frankl examines that some prisoners have begun to exchange their food coupons for cigarettes. He considers this the ultimate mark of defeat and surrender. Simultaneously, the prisoners are no longer considered as human but as mere numbers. They have been stripped of their identity and are only recognized by the digits etched onto their arms.
However, the greatest agony lies in life after liberation. It is much too difficult for an individual to go on with life knowing the cruelty that rests in each and every human being. The inmates have witnessed far too much of humanity’s will to destruct and murder.
Frankl transfixes a new-found understanding, in readers, of the beauty contained in meaning and life. His concept of logotherapy helps people to form new lives centered around their pursuit for this meaning.
Man’s Search for Meaning suggests that, after all, suffering is unavoidable and is a required step into finding that purpose and will to live.
It has become evident that this book aims to salvage those who lay withering on the vine, masked from their inner potential and meaning.
Just six months before his death, when asked what his reason was for writing this life-altering book, he simply stated, “I had wanted to convey to the reader by way of 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.”
