"The Holocaust survivor who found that meaning, not pleasure, is what keeps people alive."
Viktor Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist who survived multiple Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust, and whose book, Man's Search for Meaning, became one of the most influential works of the 20th century on human resilience and the psychology of purpose. Frankl developed logotherapy, a school of psychotherapy grounded in the belief that the primary human drive is not pleasure (as Freud argued) or power (as Adler argued), but the search for meaning — and that even in conditions of extreme suffering, a person retains the freedom to choose their attitude toward their circumstances. Drawing directly on his own experience in the camps, Frankl observed that prisoners who maintained a sense of purpose — a reason to survive, whether a loved one, an unfinished work, or a future goal — were markedly more likely to endure than those who lost all sense of meaning. His enduring argument is that meaning cannot simply be handed to a person by philosophy or circumstance; it must be discovered by each individual, often through work, love, or the stance one takes toward unavoidable suffering.
Our in-depth summaries and reviews of his work
Viktor Frankl's Holocaust memoir and introduction to logotherapy: meaning through creative, experiential, and attitudinal values, plus a 7-day meaning plan.
Read Summary →Frankl argued that even when every external circumstance is stripped away, a person retains the freedom to choose their own attitude toward their situation.
Frankl's logotherapy holds that the primary human drive is the search for meaning, and that prisoners who retained a sense of purpose were markedly more likely to survive extreme suffering.
Frankl argued meaning can't be supplied by philosophy or circumstance alone — it has to be found individually, often through work, love, or the stance a person takes toward unavoidable suffering.
"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."— Man's Search for Meaning
"Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'."— Man's Search for Meaning
"When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves."— Man's Search for Meaning
Viktor Frankl's Holocaust memoir and introduction to logotherapy: meaning through creative, experiential, and attitudinal values, plus a 7-day meaning plan.
