viktor frankl meaning of life essay

The Meaning of Life According to Viktor Frankl

The meaning of life according to Viktor Frankl

Viktor Frankl published “ Man’s Search for Meaning “in 1945. It inspired millions of people to identify their attitudes towards life. Frankl lived through the horrors of the Holocaust, a prisoner in Auschwitz and Dachau. He overcame it stoically and it laid the foundation of a very personal type of therapy, logotherapy .

Also, the loss of his family clarified for him that his purpose in this world was simply to help others find their own purpose in life . There were three very specific points to it, however:

Work day by day with motivation.
Live from a perspective of love.
Have courage at all times in adversity.

Let’s see below how this can help us find our purpose in life.

Live with decision

We’ve all seen before: p eople who handle very tough circumstances with positivity and motivation. How do they do that? We all share the same biological structures, but what sets us apart from these people is their determination. Being determined to achieve something, overcome all obstacles and fight for what we want, however small, will help us clarify our purpose in each stage of our life.

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” -Viktor Frankl-

Viktor Frankl Understanding of Life

Categories: Church Psychoanalytic Theory

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Published: Nov 8, 2019

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Yes to Life, in Spite of Everything: Viktor Frankl’s Lost Lectures on Moving Beyond Optimism and Pessimism to Find the Deepest Source of Meaning

By maria popova.

“To decide whether life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question of philosophy,” Albert Camus wrote in his classic 119-page essay The Myth of Sisyphus in 1942. “Everything else… is child’s play; we must first of all answer the question.”

Sometimes, life asks this question not as a thought experiment but as a gauntlet hurled with the raw brutality of living.

That selfsame year, the young Viennese neurologist and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl (March 26, 1905–September 2, 1997) was taken to Auschwitz along with more than a million human beings robbed of the basic right to answer this question for themselves, instead deemed unworthy of living. Some survived by reading . Some through humor . Some by pure chance. Most did not. Frankl lost his mother, his father, and his brother to the mass murder in the concentration camps. His own life was spared by the tightly braided lifeline of chance, choice, and character.

A mere eleven months after surviving the unsurvivable, Frankl took up the elemental question at the heart of Camus’s philosophical parable in a set of lectures, which he himself edited into a slim, potent book published in Germany in 1946, just as he was completing Man’s Search for Meaning .

As our collective memory always tends toward amnesia and erasure — especially of periods scarred by civilizational shame — these existential infusions of sanity and lucid buoyancy fell out of print and were soon forgotten. Eventually rediscovered — as is also the tendency of our collective memory when the present fails us and we must lean for succor on the life-tested wisdom of the past — they are now published in English for the first time as Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything ( public library ).

Frankl begins by considering the question of whether life is worth living through the central fact of human dignity. Noting how gravely the Holocaust disillusioned humanity with itself, he cautions against the defeatist “end-of-the-world” mindset with which many responded to this disillusionment, but cautions equally against the “blithe optimism” of previous, more naïve eras that had not yet faced this gruesome civilizational mirror reflecting what human beings are capable of doing to one another. Both dispositions, he argues, stem from nihilism. In consonance with his colleague and contemporary Erich Fromm’s insistence that we can only transcend the shared laziness of optimism and pessimism through rational faith in the human spirit , Frankl writes:

We cannot move toward any spiritual reconstruction with a sense of fatalism such as this.

Generations and myriad cultural upheavals before Zadie Smith observed that “progress is never permanent, will always be threatened, must be redoubled, restated and reimagined if it is to survive,” Frankl considers what “progress” even means, emphasizing the centrality of our individual choices in its constant revision:

Today every impulse for action is generated by the knowledge that there is no form of progress on which we can trustingly rely. If today we cannot sit idly by, it is precisely because each and every one of us determines what and how far something “progresses.” In this, we are aware that inner progress is only actually possible for each individual, while mass progress at most consists of technical progress, which only impresses us because we live in a technical age.

Insisting that it takes a measure of moral strength not to succumb to nihilism, be it that of the pessimist or of the optimist, he exclaims:

Give me a sober activism anytime, rather than that rose-tinted fatalism! How steadfast would a person’s belief in the meaningfulness of life have to be, so as not to be shattered by such skepticism. How unconditionally do we have to believe in the meaning and value of human existence, if this belief is able to take up and bear this skepticism and pessimism? […] Through this nihilism, through the pessimism and skepticism, through the soberness of a “new objectivity” that is no longer that “new” but has grown old, we must strive toward a new humanity.

Sophie Scholl, upon whom chance did not smile as favorably as it did upon Frankl, affirmed this notion with her insistence that living with integrity and belief in human goodness is the wellspring of courage as she courageously faced her own untimely death in the hands of the Nazis. But while the Holocaust indisputably disenchanted humanity, Frankl argues, it also indisputably demonstrated “that what is human is still valid… that it is all a question of the individual human being.” Looking back on the brutality of the camps, he reflects:

What remained was the individual person, the human being — and nothing else. Everything had fallen away from him during those years: money, power, fame; nothing was certain for him anymore: not life, not health, not happiness; all had been called into question for him: vanity, ambition, relationships. Everything was reduced to bare existence. Burnt through with pain, everything that was not essential was melted down — the human being reduced to what he was in the last analysis: either a member of the masses, therefore no one real, so really no one — the anonymous one, a nameless thing (!), that “he” had now become, just a prisoner number; or else he melted right down to his essential self.

In a sentiment that bellows from the hallways of history into the great vaulted temple of timeless truth, he adds:

Everything depends on the individual human being, regardless of how small a number of like-minded people there is, and everything depends on each person, through action and not mere words, creatively making the meaning of life a reality in his or her own being.

Frankl then turns to the question of finding a sense of meaning when the world gives us ample reasons to view life as meaningless — the question of “continuing to live despite persistent world-weariness.” Writing in the post-war pre-dawn of the golden age of consumerism, which has built a global economy by continually robbing us of the sense of meaning and selling it back to us at the price of the product, Frankl first dismantles the notion that meaning is to be found in the pursuit and acquisition of various pleasures:

Let us imagine a man who has been sentenced to death and, a few hours before his execution, has been told he is free to decide on the menu for his last meal. The guard comes into his cell and asks him what he wants to eat, offers him all kinds of delicacies; but the man rejects all his suggestions. He thinks to himself that it is quite irrelevant whether he stuffs good food into the stomach of his organism or not, as in a few hours it will be a corpse. And even the feelings of pleasure that could still be felt in the organism’s cerebral ganglia seem pointless in view of the fact that in two hours they will be destroyed forever. But the whole of life stands in the face of death, and if this man had been right, then our whole lives would also be meaningless, were we only to strive for pleasure and nothing else — preferably the most pleasure and the highest degree of pleasure possible. Pleasure in itself cannot give our existence meaning; thus the lack of pleasure cannot take away meaning from life, which now seems obvious to us.

He quotes a short verse by the great Indian poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore — the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize, Einstein’s onetime conversation partner in contemplating science and spirituality, and a man who thought deeply about human nature :

I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was duty. I worked — and behold, duty was joy.

In consonance with Camus’s view of happiness as a moral obligation — an outcome to be attained not through direct pursuit but as a byproduct of living with authenticity and integrity — Frankl reflects on Tagore’s poetic point:

So, life is somehow duty, a single, huge obligation. And there is certainly joy in life too, but it cannot be pursued, cannot be “willed into being” as joy; rather, it must arise spontaneously, and in fact, it does arise spontaneously, just as an outcome may arise: Happiness should not, must not, and can never be a goal, but only an outcome; the outcome of the fulfillment of that which in Tagore’s poem is called duty… All human striving for happiness, in this sense, is doomed to failure as luck can only fall into one’s lap but can never be hunted down.

In a sentiment James Baldwin would echo two decades later in his superb forgotten essay on the antidote to the hour of despair and life as a moral obligation to the universe , Frankl turns the question unto itself:

At this point it would be helpful [to perform] a conceptual turn through 180 degrees, after which the question can no longer be “What can I expect from life?” but can now only be “What does life expect of me?” What task in life is waiting for me? Now we also understand how, in the final analysis, the question of the meaning of life is not asked in the right way, if asked in the way it is generally asked: it is not we who are permitted to ask about the meaning of life — it is life that asks the questions, directs questions at us… We are the ones who must answer, must give answers to the constant, hourly question of life, to the essential “life questions.” Living itself means nothing other than being questioned; our whole act of being is nothing more than responding to — of being responsible toward — life. With this mental standpoint nothing can scare us anymore, no future, no apparent lack of a future. Because now the present is everything as it holds the eternally new question of life for us.

Frankl adds a caveat of tremendous importance — triply so in our present culture of self-appointed gurus, self-help demagogues, and endless podcast feeds of interviews with accomplished individuals attempting to distill a universal recipe for self-actualization:

The question life asks us, and in answering which we can realize the meaning of the present moment, does not only change from hour to hour but also changes from person to person: the question is entirely different in each moment for every individual. We can, therefore, see how the question as to the meaning of life is posed too simply, unless it is posed with complete specificity, in the concreteness of the here and now. To ask about “the meaning of life” in this way seems just as naive to us as the question of a reporter interviewing a world chess champion and asking, “And now, Master, please tell me: which chess move do you think is the best?” Is there a move, a particular move, that could be good, or even the best, beyond a very specific, concrete game situation, a specific configuration of the pieces?

What emerges from Frankl’s inversion of the question is the sense that, just as learning to die is learning to meet the universe on its own terms , learning to live is learning to meet the universe on its own terms — terms that change daily, hourly, by the moment:

One way or another, there can only be one alternative at a time to give meaning to life, meaning to the moment — so at any time we only need to make one decision about how we must answer, but, each time, a very specific question is being asked of us by life. From all this follows that life always offers us a possibility for the fulfillment of meaning, therefore there is always the option that it has a meaning. One could also say that our human existence can be made meaningful “to the very last breath”; as long as we have breath, as long as we are still conscious, we are each responsible for answering life’s questions.

With this symphonic prelude, Frankl arrives at the essence of what he discovered about the meaning of life in his confrontation with death — a central fact of being at which a great many of humanity’s deepest seers have arrived via one path or another: from Rilke, who so passionately insisted that “death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love,” to physicist Brian Greene, who so poetically nested our search for meaning into our mortality into the most elemental fact of the universe . Frankl writes:

The fact, and only the fact, that we are mortal, that our lives are finite, that our time is restricted and our possibilities are limited, this fact is what makes it meaningful to do something, to exploit a possibility and make it become a reality, to fulfill it, to use our time and occupy it. Death gives us a compulsion to do so. Therefore, death forms the background against which our act of being becomes a responsibility. […] Death is a meaningful part of life, just like human suffering. Both do not rob the existence of human beings of meaning but make it meaningful in the first place. Thus, it is precisely the uniqueness of our existence in the world, the irretrievability of our lifetime, the irrevocability of everything with which we fill it — or leave unfulfilled — that gives our existence significance. But it is not only the uniqueness of an individual life as a whole that gives it importance, it is also the uniqueness of every day, every hour, every moment that represents something that loads our existence with the weight of a terrible and yet so beautiful responsibility! Any hour whose demands we do not fulfill, or fulfill halfheartedly, this hour is forfeited, forfeited “for all eternity.” Conversely, what we achieve by seizing the moment is, once and for all, rescued into reality, into a reality in which it is only apparently “canceled out” by becoming the past. In truth, it has actually been preserved, in the sense of being kept safe. Having been is in this sense perhaps even the safest form of being. The “being,” the reality that we have rescued into the past in this way, can no longer be harmed by transitoriness.

In the remainder of the slender and splendid Yes to Life , Frankl goes on to explore how the imperfections of human nature add to, rather than subtract from, the meaningfulness of our lives and what it means for us to be responsible for our own existence. Complement it with Mary Shelley, writing two centuries ago about a pandemic-savaged world, on what makes life worth living , Walt Whitman contemplating this question after surviving a paralytic stroke, and a vitalizing cosmic antidote to the fear of death from astrophysicist and poet Rebecca Elson, then revisit Frankl on humor as lifeline to sanity and survival .

— Published May 17, 2020 — https://www.themarginalian.org/2020/05/17/yes-to-life-in-spite-of-everything-viktor-frankl/ —

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There's More to Life Than Being Happy

Meaning comes from the pursuit of more complex things than happiness

"It is the very pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness."

In September 1942, Viktor Frankl, a prominent Jewish psychiatrist and neurologist in Vienna, was arrested and transported to a Nazi concentration camp with his wife and parents. Three years later, when his camp was liberated, most of his family, including his pregnant wife, had perished -- but he, prisoner number 119104, had lived. In his bestselling 1946 book, Man's Search for Meaning , which he wrote in nine days about his experiences in the camps, Frankl concluded that the difference between those who had lived and those who had died came down to one thing: Meaning, an insight he came to early in life. When he was a high school student , one of his science teachers declared to the class, "Life is nothing more than a combustion process, a process of oxidation." Frankl jumped out of his chair and responded, "Sir, if this is so, then what can be the meaning of life?"

As he saw in the camps, those who found meaning even in the most horrendous circumstances were far more resilient to suffering than those who did not. "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing," Frankl wrote in Man's Search for Meaning , "the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

Frankl worked as a therapist in the camps, and in his book, he gives the example of two suicidal inmates he encountered there. Like many others in the camps, these two men were hopeless and thought that there was nothing more to expect from life, nothing to live for. "In both cases," Frankl writes, "it was a question of getting them to realize that life was still expecting something from them; something in the future was expected of them." For one man, it was his young child, who was then living in a foreign country. For the other, a scientist, it was a series of books that he needed to finish. Frankl writes:

This uniqueness and singleness which distinguishes each individual and gives a meaning to his existence has a bearing on creative work as much as it does on human love. When the impossibility of replacing a person is realized, it allows the responsibility which a man has for his existence and its continuance to appear in all its magnitude. A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the "why" for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any "how."

In 1991, the Library of Congress and Book-of-the-Month Club listed Man's Search for Meaning as one of the 10 most influential books in the United States. It has sold millions of copies worldwide. Now, over twenty years later, the book's ethos -- its emphasis on meaning, the value of suffering, and responsibility to something greater than the self -- seems to be at odds with our culture, which is more interested in the pursuit of individual happiness than in the search for meaning. "To the European," Frankl wrote, "it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to 'be happy.' But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to 'be happy.'"

According to Gallup , the happiness levels of Americans are at a four-year high -- as is, it seems, the number of best-selling books with the word "happiness" in their titles. At this writing, Gallup also reports that nearly 60 percent all Americans today feel happy, without a lot of stress or worry. On the other hand, according to the Center for Disease Control , about 4 out of 10 Americans have not discovered a satisfying life purpose. Forty percent either do not think their lives have a clear sense of purpose or are neutral about whether their lives have purpose. Nearly a quarter of Americans feel neutral or do not have a strong sense of what makes their lives meaningful. Research has shown that having purpose and meaning in life increases overall well-being and life satisfaction, improves mental and physical health, enhances resiliency, enhances self-esteem, and decreases the chances of depression. On top of that, the single-minded pursuit of happiness is ironically leaving people less happy, according to recent research . "It is the very pursuit of happiness," Frankl knew, "that thwarts happiness."

This is why some researchers are cautioning against the pursuit of mere happiness. In a new study , which will be published this year in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Positive Psychology , psychological scientists asked nearly 400 Americans aged 18 to 78 whether they thought their lives were meaningful and/or happy. Examining their self-reported attitudes toward meaning, happiness, and many other variables -- like stress levels, spending patterns, and having children -- over a month-long period, the researchers found that a meaningful life and happy life overlap in certain ways, but are ultimately very different. Leading a happy life, the psychologists found, is associated with being a "taker" while leading a meaningful life corresponds with being a "giver."

"Happiness without meaning characterizes a relatively shallow, self-absorbed or even selfish life, in which things go well, needs and desire are easily satisfied, and difficult or taxing entanglements are avoided," the authors write.

How do the happy life and the meaningful life differ? Happiness, they found, is about feeling good. Specifically, the researchers found that people who are happy tend to think that life is easy, they are in good physical health, and they are able to buy the things that they need and want. While not having enough money decreases how happy and meaningful you consider your life to be, it has a much greater impact on happiness. The happy life is also defined by a lack of stress or worry.

Most importantly from a social perspective, the pursuit of happiness is associated with selfish behavior -- being, as mentioned, a "taker" rather than a "giver." The psychologists give an evolutionary explanation for this: happiness is about drive reduction. If you have a need or a desire -- like hunger -- you satisfy it, and that makes you happy. People become happy, in other words, when they get what they want. Humans, then, are not the only ones who can feel happy. Animals have needs and drives, too, and when those drives are satisfied, animals also feel happy, the researchers point out.

"Happy people get a lot of joy from receiving benefits from others while people leading meaningful lives get a lot of joy from giving to others," explained Kathleen Vohs, one of the authors of the study, in a recent presentation at the University of Pennsylvania. In other words, meaning transcends the self while happiness is all about giving the self what it wants. People who have high meaning in their lives are more likely to help others in need. "If anything, pure happiness is linked to not helping others in need," the researchers, which include Stanford University's Jennifer Aaker and Emily Garbinsky, write.

What sets human beings apart from animals is not the pursuit of happiness, which occurs all across the natural world, but the pursuit of meaning, which is unique to humans, according to Roy Baumeister, the lead researcher of the study and author, with John Tierney, of the recent book Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength . Baumeister, a social psychologists at Florida State University, was named an ISI highly cited scientific researcher in 2003.

The study participants reported deriving meaning from giving a part of themselves away to others and making a sacrifice on behalf of the overall group. In the words of Martin E. P. Seligman, one of the leading psychological scientists alive today, in the meaningful life "you use your highest strengths and talents to belong to and serve something you believe is larger than the self." For instance, having more meaning in one's life was associated with activities like buying presents for others, taking care of kids, and arguing. People whose lives have high levels of meaning often actively seek meaning out even when they know it will come at the expense of happiness. Because they have invested themselves in something bigger than themselves, they also worry more and have higher levels of stress and anxiety in their lives than happy people. Having children, for example, is associated with the meaningful life and requires self-sacrifice, but it has been famously associated with low happiness among parents, including the ones in this study. In fact, according to Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert, research shows that parents are less happy interacting with their children than they are exercising, eating, and watching television.

"Partly what we do as human beings is to take care of others and contribute to others. This makes life meaningful but it does not necessarily make us happy," Baumeister told me in an interview.

Meaning is not only about transcending the self, but also about transcending the present moment -- which is perhaps the most important finding of the study, according to the researchers. While happiness is an emotion felt in the here and now, it ultimately fades away, just as all emotions do; positive affect and feelings of pleasure are fleeting. The amount of time people report feeling good or bad correlates with happiness but not at all with meaning.

Meaning, on the other hand, is enduring. It connects the past to the present to the future. "Thinking beyond the present moment, into the past or future, was a sign of the relatively meaningful but unhappy life," the researchers write. "Happiness is not generally found in contemplating the past or future." That is, people who thought more about the present were happier, but people who spent more time thinking about the future or about past struggles and sufferings felt more meaning in their lives, though they were less happy.

Having negative events happen to you, the study found, decreases your happiness but increases the amount of meaning you have in life. Another study from 2011 confirmed this, finding that people who have meaning in their lives, in the form of a clearly defined purpose, rate their satisfaction with life higher even when they were feeling bad than those who did not have a clearly defined purpose. "If there is meaning in life at all," Frankl wrote, "then there must be meaning in suffering."

Which brings us back to Frankl's life and, specifically, a decisive experience he had before he was sent to the concentration camps. It was an incident that emphasizes the difference between the pursuit of meaning and the pursuit of happiness in life.

In his early adulthood, before he and his family were taken away to the camps, Frankl had established himself as one of the leading psychiatrists in Vienna and the world. As a 16-year-old boy, for example, he struck up a correspondence with Sigmund Freud and one day sent Freud a two-page paper he had written. Freud, impressed by Frankl's talent, sent the paper to the International Journal of Psychoanalysis for publication. "I hope you don't object," Freud wrote the teenager.

While he was in medical school, Frankl distinguished himself even further. Not only did he establish suicide-prevention centers for teenagers -- a precursor to his work in the camps -- but he was also developing his signature contribution to the field of clinical psychology: logotherapy, which is meant to help people overcome depression and achieve well-being by finding their unique meaning in life. By 1941, his theories had received international attention and he was working as the chief of neurology at Vienna's Rothschild Hospital, where he risked his life and career by making false diagnoses of mentally ill patients so that they would not, per Nazi orders, be euthanized.

That was the same year when he had a decision to make, a decision that would change his life. With his career on the rise and the threat of the Nazis looming over him, Frankl had applied for a visa to America, which he was granted in 1941. By then, the Nazis had already started rounding up the Jews and taking them away to concentration camps, focusing on the elderly first. Frankl knew that it would only be time before the Nazis came to take his parents away. He also knew that once they did, he had a responsibility to be there with his parents to help them through the trauma of adjusting to camp life. On the other hand, as a newly married man with his visa in hand, he was tempted to leave for America and flee to safety, where he could distinguish himself even further in his field.

As Anna S. Redsand recounts in her biography of Frankl, he was at a loss for what to do, so he set out for St. Stephan's Cathedral in Vienna to clear his head. Listening to the organ music, he repeatedly asked himself, "Should I leave my parents behind?... Should I say goodbye and leave them to their fate?" Where did his responsibility lie? He was looking for a "hint from heaven."

When he returned home, he found it. A piece of marble was lying on the table. His father explained that it was from the rubble of one of the nearby synagogues that the Nazis had destroyed. The marble contained the fragment of one of the Ten Commandments -- the one about honoring your father and your mother. With that, Frankl decided to stay in Vienna and forgo whatever opportunities for safety and career advancement awaited him in the United States. He decided to put aside his individual pursuits to serve his family and, later, other inmates in the camps.

The wisdom that Frankl derived from his experiences there, in the middle of unimaginable human suffering, is just as relevant now as it was then: "Being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself -- be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself -- by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love -- the more human he is."

Baumeister and his colleagues would agree that the pursuit of meaning is what makes human beings uniquely human. By putting aside our selfish interests to serve someone or something larger than ourselves -- by devoting our lives to "giving" rather than "taking" -- we are not only expressing our fundamental humanity, but are also acknowledging that that there is more to the good life than the pursuit of simple happiness.

Viktor Frankl

Only when the emotions work in terms of values can the individual feel pure joy ~Viktor Frankl ~

Happiness and Meaning: The Bottom Line

While Frankl rarely touches on the topic of the pursuit of happiness , he is very concerned with satisfaction and fulfillment in life. We can see this in his preoccupation with addressing depression, anxiety and meaninglessness. (Frankl 1992, p. 143).

In the pursuit of meaning, Frankl recommends three different kinds of experience: through deeds, the experience of values through some kind of medium (beauty through art, love through a relationship , etc.) or suffering . While the third is not necessarily in the absence of the first two, within Frankl’s frame of thought, suffering became an option through which to find meaning and experience values in life in the absence of the other two opportunities (Frankl 1992, p. 118).

Frankl famously stated that: “ Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.” Though for Frankl, joy could never be an end to itself, it was an important byproduct of finding meaning in life. He points to studies where there is marked difference in life spans between “trained, tasked animals,” i.e., animals with a purpose, than “taskless, jobless animals.” And yet it is not enough simply to have something to do, rather what counts is the “manner in which one does the work” (Frankl 1986, p. 125)

Striving to find meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in man ~Viktor Frankl ~

Frankl’s Background

Victor Emil Frankl (1905 – 1997), Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, devoted his life to studying, understanding and promoting “meaning.”

His famous book, Man’s Search for Meaning , tells the story of how he survived the Holocaust by finding personal meaning in the experience, which gave him the will to live through it. He went on to later establish a new school of existential therapy called logotherapy, based in the premise that man’s underlying motivator in life is a “will to meaning ,” even in the most difficult of circumstances.

Frankl pointed to research indicating a strong relationship between “meaninglessness” and criminal behaviors, addictions and depression. Without meaning, people fill the void with hedonistic pleasures, power, materialism, hatred, boredom, or neurotic obsessions and compulsions. Some may also strive for Suprameaning, the ultimate meaning in life, a spiritual kind of meaning that depends solely on a greater power outside of personal or external control.

“ What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him. ”

Viktor Frankl was an Austrian neurologist and psychologist who founded what he called the field of “Logotherapy”, which has been dubbed the “Third Viennese School of Psychology” (following Freud and Alder). Logotherapy developed in and through Frankl’s personal experience in the Theresienstadt Nazi concentration camp. The years spent there deeply affected his understanding of reality and the meaning of human life . His most popular book, Man’s Search for Meaning, chronicles his experience in the camp as well as the development of logotherapy. During his time there, he found that those around him who did not lose their sense of purpose and meaning in life were able to survive much longer than those who had lost their way. William James would have considered this life changing event to be a “crisis of meaning.”

Logotherapy

In The Will to Meaning, Frankl notes that “logotherapy aims to unlock the will to meaning in life.” More often than not, he found that people would ponder the meaning of life when for Frankl, it is very clear that, “it is life itself that asks questions of man.” Paradoxically, by abandoning the desire to have “freedom from” we take the “freedom to” make the “decision for” one’s unique and singular life task (Frankl 1988, p. 16).

Logotherapy developed in a context of extreme suffering, depression and sadness and so it is not surprising that Frankl focuses on a way out of these things. His experience showed him that life can be meaningful and fulfilling even in spite of the harshest circumstances. On the other hand, he also warns against the pursuit of hedonistic pleasures because of its tendency to distract people from their search for meaning in life.

Only when the emotions work in terms of values can the individual feel pure joy (Frankl 1986, p. 40).

In the pursuit of meaning, Frankl recommends three different kinds of experience : through deeds, the experience of values through some kind of medium (beauty through art, love through a relationship , etc.) or suffering. While the third is not necessarily in the absence of the first two, within Frankl’s frame of thought, suffering became an option through which to find meaning and experience values in life in the absence of the other two opportunities (Frankl 1992, p. 118).

Though for Frankl, joy could never be an end to itself, it was an important byproduct of finding meaning in life. He points to studies where there is marked difference in life spans between “trained, tasked animals,” i.e., animals with a purpose, than “taskless, jobless animals.” And yet it is not enough simply to have something to do, rather what counts is the “manner in which one does the work” (Frankl 1986, p. 125)

Responsibility

Human freedom is not a freedom from but freedom to (Frankl 1988, p. 16).

As mentioned above, Frankl sees our ability to respond to life and to be responsible to life as a major factor in finding meaning and therefore, fulfillment in life. In fact, he viewed responsibility to be the “essence of existence” (Frankl 1992, 114). He believed that humans were not simply the product of heredity and environment and that they had the ability to make decisions and take responsibility for their own lives. This “third element” of decision is what Frankl believed made education so important; he felt that education must be education towards the ability to make decisions, take responsibility and then become free to be the person you decide to be (Frankl 1986, p. xxv).

Individuality

Frankl is careful to state that he does not have a one-size-fits all answer to the meaning of life. His respect for human individuality and each person’s unique identity, purpose and passions does not allow him to do otherwise. And so he encourages people to answer life and find one’s own unique meaning in life. When posed the question of how this might be done, he quotes from Goethe: “How can we learn to know ourselves? Never by reflection but by action. Try to do your duty and you will soon find out what you are. But what is your duty? The demands of each day.” In quoting this, he points to the importance attached to the individual doing the work and the manner in which the job is done rather than the job or task itself (Frankl 1986, p. 56).

Frankl’s logotherapy utilizes several techniques to enhance the quality of one’s life. First is the concept of paradoxical Intention, wherethe therapist encourages the patient to intend or wish for, even if only for a second, precisely what they fear. This is especially useful for obsessive, compulsive and phobic conditions, as well as cases of underlying anticipatory anxiety.

The case of the sweating doctor

A young doctor had major hydrophobia. One day, meeting his chief on the street, as he extended his hand in greeting, he noticed that he was perspiring more than usual. The next time he was in a similar situation he expected to perspire again, and this anticipatory anxiety precipitated excessive sweating. It was a vicious circle … We advised our patient, in the event that his anticipatory anxiety should recur, to resolve deliberately to show the people whom he confronted at the time just how much he could really sweat.A week later he returned to report that whenever he met anyone who triggered his anxiety, he said to himself, “I only sweated out a little before, but now I’m going to pour out at least ten litres!” What was the result of this paradoxical resolution? After suffering from his phobia for four years, he was quickly able, after only one session, to free himself of it for good. (Frankl, 1967)

Dereflection

Another technique is that of dereflection, whereby the therapist diverts the patients away from their problems towards something else meaningful in the world. Perhaps the most commonly known use of this is for sexual dysfunction, since the more one thinks about potency during the sexual act, the less likely one is able to achieve it.

The following is a transcript from Frankl’s advice to Anna, 19-year old art student who displays severe symptoms of incipient schizophrenia. She considers herself as being confused and asks for help.

Patient: What is going on within me? Frankl: Don’t brood over yourself. Don’t inquire into the source of your trouble. Leave this to us doctors. We will steer and pilot you through the crisis. Well, isn’t there a goal beckoning you – say, an artistic assignment? Patient : But this inner turmoil …. Frankl: Don’t watch your inner turmoil, but turn your gaze to what is waiting for you. What counts is not what lurks in the depths, but what waits in the future, waits to be actualized by you…. Patient: But what is the origin of my trouble? Frankl: Don’t focus on questions like this. Whatever the pathological process underlying your psychological affliction may be, we will cure you. Therefore, don’t be concerned with the strange feelings haunting you. Ignore them until we make you get rid of them. Don’t watch them. Don’t fight them. Imagine, there are about a dozen great things, works which wait to be created by Anna, and there is no one who could achieve and accomplish it but Anna. No one could replace her in this assignment. They will be your creations, and if you don’t create them, they will remain uncreated forever… Patient: Doctor, I believe in what you say. It is a message which makes me happy.

Discernment of Meaning

Finally, the logotherapist tries to enlarge the patient’s discernment of meaning in at least three ways: creatively, experientially and attitudinally.

a) Meaning through creative values

Frankl writes that “The logotherapist’s role consists in widening and broadening the visual field of the patient so that the whole spectrum of meaning and values becomes conscious and visible to him”. A major source of meaning is through the value of all that we create, achieve and accomplish.

b) Meaning through experiential values

Frankl writes “Let us ask a mountain-climber who has beheld the alpine sunset and is so moved by the splendor of nature that he feels cold shudders running down his spine – let us ask him whether after such an experience his life can ever again seem wholly meaningless” (Frankl,1965).

c) Meaning through attitudinal values

Frankl argued that we always have the freedom to find meaning through meaningful attitudes even in apparently meaningless situations. For example, an elderly, depressed patient who could not overcome the loss of his wife was helped by the following conversation with Frankl:

Frankl asked “What would have happened if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive you.”

“Oh,” replied the patient, “for her this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!”

Frankl continued, “You see such a suffering has been spared her; and it is you who have spared her this suffering; but now, you have to pay for it by surviving her and mourning her.” The man said no word, but shook Frankl’s hand and calmly left his office (Frankl, 1992).

Frankl’s surprising resilience amidst his experiences of extreme suffering and sadness speaks to how his theories may have helped him and those around him. As the alarming suicide and depression rates among young teenagers and adults in the United States continue, his call to answer life’s call through logotherapy may be a promising resource.

Our Related Articles

The next three scientists have also made substantial contributions to the literature on the science of happiness:

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Abraham Maslow
Marie Jahoda

External Readings

The Unheard Cry for Meaning: Psychotherapy and Humanism (Touchstone Books).
The Will to Meaning: Foundations and Applications of Logotherapy (Meridian).

Bibliography

Frankl, Victor (1992). Man’s Search for Meaning. (4th ed.). Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Frankl, Victor (1986). The Doctor and the Soul. (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Vintage Books.
Frankl, Victor (1967). Psychotherapy and Existentialism. New York, NY: Washington Square Press.
Frankl, Victor (1988). The Will to Meaning: Foundations and Applications of Logotherapy. New York, NY: Penguin Books.
Frankl, Victor (2000). Recollections: An Autobiography. New York, NY: Perseus Books.

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Logotherapy: Viktor Frankl’s Theory of Meaning

When we bask in the glory of a sunset and reflect on creation or enjoy the embrace of a loved one, it provides meaning.

As we engage with our community, participate in creative endeavors, and support a cause greater than ourselves, we experience the value of life.

What is it then that brings meaning to life? What is it that makes those hard moments, the dark nights, and endless struggles worth the fight?

The quest to answer “what is the meaning of life?” has been around since the beginning of time. To find meaning in life can be seen as the primary motivation of each person, and the concept of logotherapy is based on that proposition.

In the following article, we will take a deep dive into the creation of logotherapy, research, techniques, and worksheets.

Before you read on, we thought you might like to download our three Meaning & Valued Living Exercises for free . These creative, science-based exercises will help you learn more about your values, motivations, and goals and will give you the tools to inspire a sense of meaning in the lives of your clients, students, or employees.

This Article Contains:

Logotherapy: a definition, who was viktor frankl, viktor frankl’s theory, research and empirical results, 3 techniques of logotherapy, 4 activities and worksheets, 6 famous quotes on life and meaning, 5 books on the topic, our meaning & valued living masterclass, a take-home message.

Logotherapy is often referred to as the “ third Viennese school of psychotherapy ,” and it originated in the 1930s as a response to both Freud’s psychoanalysis and Adler’s emphasis on power within society. It is more than just “therapy.” It is a philosophy for the spiritually lost and an education for those who are confused. It offers support in the face of suffering and healing for the sick (Guttmann, 2008).

Logotherapy examines the physical, psychological, and spiritual (noological) aspects of a human being, and it can be seen through the expression of an individual’s functioning. It is often regarded as a humanistic–existential school of thought but can also be used in conjunction with contemporary therapies (McMullin, 2000).

In contrast to Freud’s “ will to pleasure ” and Adler’s “ will to power ,” logotherapy is based on the idea that we are driven by a “ will to meaning ” or an inner desire to find purpose and meaning in life (Amelis & Dattilio, 2013).

As humans, we often respond to situations in the first two dimensions of functioning (physical/psychological) with conditioned and automatic reactions. Examples of these reactions include negative self-talk, irrational actions, outbursts, and negative emotions.

Animals also respond in the first two dimensions. It is the third dimension of functioning that separates humans from other species. This is the unique beauty of logotherapy.

While humans can survive just like animals living within the first two dimensions (satisfying physical needs and thinking), logotherapy offers a deeper connection to the soul and an opportunity to explore that which makes us uniquely human.

The spiritual dimension is one of meaning. The basic tenets of logotherapy are that

human life has meaning,
human beings long to experience their own sense of life meaning, and
humans have the potential to experience meaning under any and every circumstance (Schulenberg, 2003).

The Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist was born March 26, 1905, and is best known for his psychological memoir Man’s Search for Meaning (2006) and as the father of logotherapy.

He published 40 books that have been translated into 50 languages, demonstrating that love, freedom, meaning, and responsibility transcend race, culture, religion, and continents.

His most famous memoir begins by outlining a personal experience through the gruesome Auschwitz concentration camps. The three years he spent in concentration camps became more than a story of survival. Frankl embodies the modern-day definition of resilience.

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Frankl viewed logotherapy as a way to enhance existing therapies by emphasizing the “meaning-dimension” or spiritual dimension of human beings. Three philosophical and psychological concepts make up Frankl’s logotherapy: freedom of will, will to meaning, and meaning of life (Batthyany, 2019).

Freedom of will asserts that humans are free to decide and can take a stance toward both internal and external conditions. Freedom in this context is defined as a space to shape one’s own life within limits of specific possibilities. It provides the client with room for autonomy in the face of somatic or psychological illness. In essence, we are free to choose our responses no matter our circumstances.

Will to meaning states that humans are free to achieve goals and purposes in life. Frustration, aggression, addiction, depression, and suicidality arise when individuals cannot realize their “will to meaning.” As humans, our primary motive is to search for meaning or purpose in our lives. We are capable of surpassing pleasure and supporting pain for a meaningful cause.

Meaning in life is based on the idea that meaning is an objective reality rather than merely an illusion or personal perception. Humans have both freedom and responsibility to bring forth their best possible selves by realizing the meaning of the moment in every situation.

Can we find meaning under all circumstances, even unavoidable suffering? We can discover meaning in life through creative clues, experiential values, and attitudinal values (Lewis, 2011).

Viktor Frankl: Logotherapy and man’s search for meaning

Logotherapy has significant application to every dimension of an individual (the tri-dimensional ontology). Psychologically, logotherapy uses the specific techniques of paradoxical intention and dereflection to deal with problems of anxiety, compulsive disorders, obsessions, and phobias. These will be discussed in further detail in the next section.

Physiologically, logotherapy is an effective way to cope with suffering and physical pain or loss. Spiritually, logotherapy demonstrates that life has meaning or purpose when people suffer from the “existential vacuum” that we experience as boredom, apathy, emptiness, and depression (Frankl, 2006).

1. PTSD and acute stress

One of the most effective things about logotherapy is its ability to empower individuals, allowing them to be freed from their symptoms and increase their capacity to be proactive.

Since logotherapy was founded on a preface of suffering, it is a natural therapy for treating traumatic experiences. Logotherapy is a useful treatment for individuals with acute stress disorder or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

In numerous case studies of clients with combat-related PTSD, logotherapy exercises that highlight the construct of meaning led to a significant decrease in symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression (Schiraldi, 2000). Research on logotherapy’s effectiveness for treating PTSD has mostly been established through qualitative research and case studies.

2. Alcohol and drug treatment

There are obvious parallels between the spiritual elements of Alcoholics Anonymous and the concepts of discovering personal meaning found in logotherapy.

Frankl (2006) discussed a “mass neurotic triad” of aggression, depression, and addiction that occurs when individuals experience an existential vacuum. This vacuum leads to violations of social norms, symptoms of stress, and addiction.

The treatment for this existential vacuum is, of course, to guide the client into discovering the freedom to choose, the will to find meaning, and the responsibility of living a purposeful life (Hutzell, 1990).

Logotherapy has been effective in reducing cravings and participation in drinking among alcoholics. Additionally, logotherapy groups successfully improved the meaning of life and mental health among wives of alcoholics (Cho, 2008).

Frankl would argue that when individuals can tap into their freedom, responsibility, and life purpose, there is no longer a need or desire for mind-altering substances like alcohol or drugs.

3. Anxiety and depression

Logotherapy has successfully been used to treat depression and anxiety. One study looked specifically at depression and stress among cervical cancer patients (Soetrisno & Moewardi, 2017).

Researchers measured cortisol levels (stress hormone) and scores from the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) among two groups of 15 patients. One group received logotherapy treatment for a total of six weeks (45-minute sessions once per week), and the control group received standard cancer treatment.

After six weeks, there was a significant decrease in BDI scores and levels of cortisol for the treatment group, while the control group had no change (Soetrisno & Moewardi, 2017). It makes sense that improving the meaning of life for cancer patients decreased their levels of stress and depression.

Logotherapy also successfully decreased measurable levels of suffering and increased the meaning of life in a group of adolescent cancer patients when compared with a matched control group (Kang et al., 2009).

Similarly, two-hour sessions of logotherapy among a group of 22 breast cancer patients significantly decreased BDI scores (Hagighi, Khodaei, and Sharifzadeh, 2012). This research demonstrated that logotherapy can be a beneficial treatment for individuals struggling through cancer or other major illnesses.

4. Group logotherapy

There is also significant research to support the use of logotherapy in group settings. Instructing both individuals and groups on the dimensions of responsibility, freedom, and values can help decrease suffering and increase various measures of psychological wellbeing.

When comparing the effectiveness of gestalt and logotherapy in a group setting of divorced women, logotherapy provided a more substantial decrease in depression, anxiety, and aggression (Yousefi, 2006).

Group logotherapy also led to increased psychological wellbeing, positive relationships, autonomy, personal growth, and mastery among mothers of children with intellectual disabilities (Faramarzi & Bavali, 2017).

There are similarities between the therapeutic techniques of logotherapy and both Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).

1. Dereflection

The first technique is dereflection, which is aimed at helping clients focus attention away from problems and complaints and toward something positive. It is based on the concept of self-distancing and self-transcendence .

Practically speaking, it involves asking questions like “ What would your life be like without X problem? ”; “ If everything went perfectly in your life, what would that look like? ”; and “ Is there anything in your life you would die for? ”

2. Paradoxical intention

Paradoxical intention is an effective technique to use with phobias, fear, and anxiety.

The basis of this technique is that humor and ridicule can be useful when fear is paralyzing. Fear is removed when action/intention focuses on what is feared the most. For example, if a person struggles with a fear of rejection, they would purposely put themselves in positions where they would be rejected or told “no.”

An apt illustration is in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling, 1999), where young students had to face their worst fears. To conquer their fear, they had to turn the terrifying thought into something laughable, such as a big spider on roller skates, thereby ridiculing and overcoming the paralyzing fear.

3. Socratic dialogue

Socratic dialogue is a tool in logotherapy that walks a client through a process of self-discovery in their own words.

It is different from Socratic questioning , which is often used in CBT. Socratic questioning breaks down anxious or negative thoughts, while Socratic dialogue is used to find meaning within a conversation. It allows the client to realize they already have the answers to their purpose, meaning, and freedom.

Our Positive Psychology Toolkit© contains over 400 tools, exercises and questionnaires to assist therapists, coaches and educators, to name a few. Some of these worksheets are described below.

1. Valued Living During Challenging Times

A perfect fit for Frankl’s logotherapy, the Valued Living During Challenging Times worksheet has clients reflect on a challenging circumstance and reconnect with personal values. Through this process, clients can find meaning in their suffering and become more resilient and tolerant of stress.

2. Passengers on the Bus group activity

The empirically tested metaphor “passengers on the bus” has been effectively used in ACT interventions. The Passengers on the Bus group activity uses role-play and debriefing to help clients learn to react to distressing situations in line with their values rather than choosing to avoid painful situations or act on their emotions.

3. A Value Tattoo

While logotherapy uses Socratic dialogue to find meaning, the Value Tattoo worksheet is helpful for clients who might find questions difficult or confronting. Instead of asking, “ What is most important in life? ” the client is encouraged to use creativity and imagine a tattoo that would be meaningful to them.

4. Find Your Purpose worksheet

This Find Your Purpose worksheet asks a series of basic questions designed to identify gifts, talents, skills, and abilities, which can ultimately reflect finding purpose in life. By finding your purpose and using your strengths in a positive way, you can create a lasting impact on the world around you and ultimately find meaning in life.

While finding the meaning of life seems to be at the forefront of logotherapy, Frankl argued that instead of asking this question, an individual should realize that they are the one being questioned.

He stated, “ It doesn’t really matter what we expected from life, but what life expected from us ” (Frankl, 1986).

Other notable quotes from Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning (2006) include:

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.

Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.

Related famous quotes include:

He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.

Man’s Search for Meaning (2006) is the best place to start for a brief background on Viktor Frankl and a great introduction to logotherapy. ( Amazon )
The Will to Meaning (Frankl, 2014) dives a bit deeper into the application of logotherapy ( Amazon )
Frankl’s The Doctor and the Soul: From Psychotherapy to Logotherapy (1986) is the first book published after his release from Nazi concentration camps. He discusses that the fundamental human drive is not sex (Freud’s view) or the need for approval (Adler’s perspective) but the drive to have a meaningful life . ( Amazon )
In the book Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy , author Ann Graber (2019) focuses on the practical application of logotherapy and the effectiveness of using the spiritual dimension in existential therapy to find healing. ( Amazon )
Joseph Fabry compiles work on logotherapy in the text Finding Meaning in Life: Logotherapy (1995) , which can specifically help clients with drug, alcohol, or life adjustment issues. ( Amazon )

For more reading, visit our post listing the 7 Best Books to Help You Find the Meaning of Life .

17 Tools To Encourage Meaningful, Value-Aligned Living

This 17 Meaning & Valued Living Exercises [PDF] pack contains our best exercises for helping others discover their purpose and live more fulfilling, value-aligned lives.

Created by Experts. 100% Science-based.

The apparent parallels between positive psychology and Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy are endless.

While there are also notable differences, there is no denying that finding value and meaning in this journey of life leads to an array of positive outcomes.

The Meaning & Valued Living Masterclass provides an excellent background of positive psychology. It builds on the sailboat metaphor by emphasizing the types and paradox of meaning. By introducing practical exercises to find meaning and values, professionals can immediately apply techniques to address a wide range of issues.

One of the best things about positive psychology and the practicality of this masterclass is that it can improve life and wellbeing for those who are struggling, those who are suffering, and those who are looking to thrive.

If you’re looking for more science-based ways to help others discover meaning, this collection contains 17 validated meaning tools for practitioners. Use them to help others choose directions for their lives in alignment with what is truly important to them.

Perhaps the question, “ what is the meaning of life? ” is not the right question for us.

Asking this question is like addressing the symptom rather than the actual problem.

If we worked on finding sources of meaning within our lives through both the good and bad experiences, then we could gain relief from existential issues and increase our resilience and wellbeing.

Once we find these potential sources of meaning and align them with our personal values and strengths, that will ultimately result in the most profound sense of joy and meaning possible.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Meaning & Valued Living Exercises for free .

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Batthyany, A. (2019). What is logotherapy/existential analysis? Logotherapy and existential analysis. Viktor Frankl Institut . Retrieved from https://www.viktorfrankl.org/logotherapy.html
Cho, S. (2008). Effects of logo-autobiography program on meaning in life and mental health in the wives of alcoholics. Journal of Asian Nursing Research , 2 (2), 129–139.
Fabry, J. B. (1995). Finding meaning in life: Logotherapy . Jason Aronson.
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Kang, K. A., Im, J. I., Kim, H. S., Kim, S. J., Song, M. K., & Songyong, S. (2009). The effect of logotherapy on the suffering, finding meaning, and spiritual wellbeing of adolescents with terminal cancer. Journal of Korean Academy of Child Health Nursing , 15 (2), 136–144.
Lewis, M. H. (2011). Defiant power: An overview of Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy and existential analysis. Retrieved June 19, 2020, from www.defiantpower.com.
McMullin, R. E. (2000). The new handbook of cognitive therapy techniques. Norton Press.
Rowling, J. K. (1999). Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Schulenberg, S. E. (2003). Empirical research and logotherapy. Psychological Reports , 93 , 307–319.
Schiraldi, G. R. (2000). Post traumatic stress disorder sourcebook: A guide to healing, recovery and growth. Lowell House.
Soetrisno, S., & Moewardi. (2017). The effect of logotherapy on the expressions of cortisol, HSP70, Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), and pain scales in advanced cervical cancer patients. Health Care for Women International , 38( 2), 91–99.
Yousefi, N. (2006). Comparing the effectiveness of two counseling approaches of gestalt therapy and logotherapy on decrease of depression symptoms, anxiety and aggression among women divorce applicants. Cross-Country Congress of Family Pathology , 10 (3), 658–663.

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I am a trauma survivor, I didn’t even realize, what I was dealing with for such a long time was PTSD, Disassociation, Depression, Grief and Anxiety. I found a lot of relief when I discovered that I have the power, in how I perceive my past. I listen more than I speak, unless someone wants to hear what I have to say. During COVID-19 I was deemed an essential worker, I am an Auto Technician, before and during COVID-19 I was Shop Manager, I had never felt such extreme pressure knowing that the safety of the people I work with was in my hands. I drove to work everyday with no other car in sight, until I got to work. The atmosphere was so tense, I felt where I cut into it, as I walked from my car to the building I work in, I could not understand other managers attitudes and why I questioned mine. Like a wise Philosopher once said in a moment of chaos, normal behavior seems abnormal. I encouraged everyone everyday, letting them know, this wasn’t the first time in history this has happened, just like the Philosopher King Marcus Aurelius. Everyday I had something humors to say. I am used to pressure, being I grew up around violence and witnessed a kid get shot and killed by drive a by. This wasn’t my first Rodeo. What was going on in the moment, did not phase me. I would find justification in my own way, why things happen. I continued until my back eventually gave out from so much stress. I felt guilt that I had never felt before, I kept giving happiness and hope until I lost my own, and gave into the excruciating pain that bulging disc in my lower back produce. This was the life changing moment in my life. COVID-19 in full bloom and running rampant, I did not turn to traditional medicine. Instead I found a Phycologist and Therapist that helped me get past my own internal struggles, as I have come together with myself and countless hours of reading, exercising, meditation, yoga, and Philosophy. I have come to this website. After reading your article, and understanding my own struggles, I am a firm believer Logotherapy can help so many people.

Dr. Melissa Madeson, Thank you for your well defined points about V Frankle and logotherapy. I once led a group of seniors at a convalescent center. We discussed the meaningful moments they recalled in their lives. I encouraged the participants to write their short and focused memoirs. These writings were subsequently published in a small volume. The writers and participants took part in a public reading, with family, friends, facility staff , and public in attendance. Overall, the lectures, writing, and readings were meaningful to all involved.

Finding meaning in trauma patients’ stories help them heal. Their traumas don’t define them, they’re just facts when their stories make sense. I am a trauma therapist and I love Viktor Frankl. This article actually helped me realize that how I work with trauma patients is actually how logotherapy help patients. Thank you.

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Eur J Psychol
v.17(3); 2021 Aug

Searching for Meaning in Chaos: Viktor Frankl’s Story

Hanan bushkin.

1 The Anxiety and Trauma Clinic, Johannesburg, South Africa

Roelf van Niekerk

2 Department of Industrial and Organisational Psychology, Nelson Mandela University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa

Louise Stroud

3 Department of Psychology, Nelson Mandela University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa

The existential psychiatrist Viktor Frankl (1905–1997) lived an extraordinary life. He witnessed and experienced acts of anti-Semitism, persecution, brutality, physical abuse, malnutrition, and emotional humiliation. Ironically, through these experiences, the loss of dignity and the loss of the lives of his wife, parents and brother, his philosophy of human nature, namely, that the search for meaning is the drive behind human behaviour, was moulded. Frankl formulated the basis of his existential approach to psychological practice before World War II (WWII). However, his experiences in the concentration camps confirmed his view that it is through a search for meaning and purpose in life that individuals can endure hardship and suffering. In a sense, Frank’s theory was tested in a dramatic way by the tragedies of his life. Following WWII, Frankl shaped modern psychological thinking by lecturing at more than 200 universities, authoring 40 books published in 50 languages and receiving 29 honorary doctorates. His ideas and experiences related to the search for meaning influenced theorists, practitioners, researchers, and lay people around the world. This study focuses specifically on the period between 1942 and 1945. The aim is to explore Frankl’s search for meaning within an unpredictable, life-threatening, and chaotic context through the lens of his concept of noö-dynamics.

Viktor Emil Frankl (26 March 1905–2 September 1997) was an Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist, a Holocaust survivor, and the founder of logotherapy—a school of therapy centred around meaning creation, considered the Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy. A central tenet of Frankl’s theory is the concept of noö-dynamics ( Frankl, 2014 ) which helps to explain the relationship between Frankl’s chaotic external world and his search for meaning within the chaos. This study aims to explore how Frankl made sense of his world and ultimately how he found meaning during his time in the concentration camps, between 1942 and 1945. More specifically, this psychobiographical case study explores—through the lens of Frankl’s concept of noö-dynamics—the strategies he employed in the concentration camps to find purpose and create meaning.

Frankl was born on the 26th of March 1905 in Vienna in the Jewish area of Leopoldstadt where he personally witnessed and experienced daily acts of anti-Semitism and persecution ( Frankl, 2000 ). In 1930 Frankl received a medical degree from the University of Vienna, and was put in charge of the hospital ward in Vienna for the treatment of females who had attempted suicide ( Redsand, 2006 ). In 1937 Frankl established a private practice in neurology and psychiatry in his sister’s living room ( Redsand, 2006 ). During World War II in September 1942, Frankl and his wife, Tilly were deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp. This was the first of four different camps where Frankl experienced physical abuse, malnutrition, emotional humiliation and torture ( Klingberg, 2001 ; Redsand, 2006 ). During his time in the concentration camps, Frankl experienced the loss of his wife and parents, and perhaps most significantly, the loss of hope, dignity and meaning, which ultimately moulded his philosophy of human nature ( Frankl, 2006 ; Klingberg, 2001 ). He was liberated from Türkheim concentration camp in 1945 after spending two and a half years in four concentration camps. A year later Frankl wrote his most distinguished book, Man’s search for meaning ( Frankl, 1959 ), which chronicled his experiences in the concentration camps and proposed the foundation of his theory ( Southwick, Gilmartin, McDonough, & Morrissey, 2006 ).

After the war Frankl was appointed as Chief of Neurology at the Vienna Policlinic Hospital. Here he met his second wife, Elly Schwindt ( Klingberg, 2001 ; Redsand, 2006 ). They were married in 1947 and together taught Frankl’s theory and philosophy ( Redsand, 2006 ). Frankl’s contribution to the academic world has been recognised by major institutions throughout the globe ( Graber, 2004 ; Redsand, 2006 ). He became blind at the age of 85, and died in 1997 at the age of 92.

Frankl’s Existential Theory

Frankl’s philosophical background is grounded in existentialism and his theory has been placed in the tradition of existential philosophy ( Klingberg, 2001 ; Pytell, 2015 ). He described a situation at the age of 13 that would become a central tenet of his theory ( Frankl, 2000 ; Klingberg, 2001 ; Pytell, 2015 ; Redsand, 2006 ). When a teacher told Frankl’s class that life is processes of combustion and oxidation, Frankl asked: “Professor Fritz, if this is the case, what meaning then does life have?” ( Redsand, 2006 , p. 18). Later Frankl described reductionism “as today’s nihilism” ( Frankl, 2000 , p. 60). Frankl believed that reductionism failed to grasp the uniqueness of humanness by describing human beings as mere machines, as opposed to possessing the ability to transcend beyond their unique physicality ( Frankl, 1988 , 2006 , 2014 ).

Frankl (2010 , 2011 , 2014 ) maintained that the search for meaning is not a secondary thought process to instincts, but rather the primary motivation in life. His theory (2010, 2011, 2012, 2014) highlighted the need to acquire the tools necessary to find meaning, rather than to view a person as a two-dimensional machine with separate parts. A person’s ability to transcend their environment was a central component of Frankl’s existential theory.

Frankl (2004 , 2006 , 2014 ) stated that the individual is the only one to decide about the meaning of their life and that the individual has to take responsibility for creating and deciding its unique meaning. Furthermore, the ability to decide the meaning of a situation has the power to create a positive outcome from the worst of situations, as Frankl (2000 ) explained:

I can see beyond the misery of the situation to the potential for discovering a meaning behind it, and thus to turn an apparently meaningless suffering into a genuine human achievement. I am convinced that, in the final analysis, there is no situation that does not contain within it the seed of meaning. To a great extent, this conviction is the basis of Logotherapy. (p. 53)

Noö-Dynamics

Frankl (2006 ) asserted that mental well-being is not about achieving emotional equilibrium, but rather “the existential dynamics in a polar field of tension where one pole is represented by the meaning that is to be fulfilled and the other pole by the man who has to fulfil it” (p. 110). This is a foundational concept of Frankl’s existential theory, which is based on a person’s drive to achieve purpose in life. Frankl (2004 ) referred to this tension between a person’s end goal and where a person is currently as noö-dynamics. The term noödynamics is derived from noetics which was a central feature of the Austrian philosophical-psychological tradition to which Frankl was a part. The origin of the term stems from the Greek word noös meaning mind or spirit ( Hatt, 1965 ). Hence, the noölogical dimension according to Frankl refers to the uniquely human experience of transcending one’s environment and entering into the dimension of noetic phenomena (or the noölogical dimension; Frankl, 1988 ). According to Frankl (2004 ), human beings should aim to create this tension in order to re-orientate themselves towards their meaning in life. This constant tension provides a person with a sense of drive and purpose ( Frankl, 2006 , 2014 ). Frankl stated that working towards a sense of emotional homeostasis is mentally healthy and that tension aroused by a goal that needs to be fulfilled is what makes a person live in this world with purpose. Frankl (2004 ), therefore, maintained that noö-dynamics is a healthy state for a person to be in and while a state of emotional homeostasis is naturally comforting, noö-dynamics is what one should aim to create in one’s life.

The present study on the life of Frankl may be described as a longitudinal life history study with a qualitative-morphogenic, idiographic-morphogenic research design ( Burnell, 2013 ; Yin, 2013 ). The research design may be defined further as a longitudinal, single-case, psychobiographical study ( Ferrer & Ponterotto, 2020 ; Fouché, 1999 ; Fouché & Van Niekerk, 2010 ; Ndoro & Van Niekerk, 2019 ; Van Niekerk, Prenter, & Fouché, 2019 ), which portrays an individual’s life through the use of evidence, theory and interpretation ( Du Plessis, 2017 ; Du Plessis & Du Plessis, 2018 ; Mayer, Van Niekerk, & Fouché, 2020 ; Ndoro & Van Niekerk, 2019 ; Schultz, 2005 ). Psychobiographical research is simply the construction of a subject’s lived experiences through the application of psychological theory and involves the comprehensive application of biographical information with the aim of illuminating patterns in thinking, feelings and behaviours in extraordinary individuals ( Du Plessis & Du Plessis, 2018 ; Ferrer & Ponterotto, 2020 ; Fouché & Van Niekerk, 2010 ; Mayer et al., 2020 ; Ponterotto, 2014 , 2018 ; Prenter, Van Niekerk, & Fouché, 2019 ; Van Niekerk et al., 2019 ).

This qualitative psychobiographical study can also be described as both exploratory-descriptive and descriptive-dialogic in nature. The exploratory-descriptive nature refers to the nature of exploration of Frankl’s process of creating meaning through the lens of his concept of noö-dynamics, while the descriptive-dialogic nature of this approach allowed for the informal assessment of the same psychological concept to be applied to Frankl’s experiences in the concentration camps.

A non-probability sampling procedure, purposive sampling, was employed in the selection of Frankl as the psychobiographical subject. In purposive sampling, the researcher’s judgement is used to determine the characteristic attributes desired and to ensure that the data collected and analysed are in-depth ( Strydom & Delport, 2005 ). Frankl was selected for this study based on his unique, significant and interesting life.

Data Collection and Analysis

Multiple sources of data were collected and reviewed. The researchers searched for publicly available material related to the historical period in which Frankl lived. The material included primary data such as books written by Frankl, as well as secondary data, which included materials produced by others about Frankl’s life and contributions. The sources of information collected were aligned with the primary aim of this study and included an autobiography, biographies, published books and articles by Frankl and about Frankl, transcribed interviews and lectures presented by Frankl.

Yin (2013 ) proposed two strategies that should be employed by researchers, namely data analysis that is guided by objective theoretical approaches and the strategy of case description. The first strategy refers to how the researcher relies on the theoretical approaches to identify and select the data to be used in the collection and analysis process. This selection is achieved through the researcher asking questions that will provide insight into the objectives of the study, as well as the theoretical approaches used ( Fouché, 1999 ). The second strategy entails the development of a descriptive framework to organise and integrate case information ( Yin, 2013 ). According to Fouché (1999 ), the researcher should achieve this through the development of a conceptual matrix that would guide the data extraction and categorisation. Both Alexander’s model ( Alexander, 1990 ), as well as Du Plessis’s 12-step process ( Du Plessis, 2017 ) was used for this purpose.

Qualitative Research Criteria

In order to ensure a satisfactory qualitative research quality, the researchers applied qualitative criteria, more specifically referring to trustworthiness, credibility, dependability, transferability and conformability ( Yin, 2013 ). In addition, a process of triangulation of theories, data and method was applied ( Tindall, 1999 ).

Ethical Considerations

Ethical clearance was provided by the Nelson Mandela University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. The researchers chose to study a long-deceased individual, which eliminated the need to receive consent from the subject. However, the researchers obtained written consent from the Viktor Frankl institute for conducting the study. In addition, the researchers strictly followed the recommendations made by Elms (1994 ) and also complied with the general ethical guidelines as stipulated by the Health Professions Council of South Africa.

Finally, the study was written with consciousness regarding the sensitive personal information used and the findings made. This was done with the intent to not cause embarrassment to Frankl’s family.

Frankl’s Search for Meaning in Chaos

Frankl’s concept of noö-dynamics and homeostasis ( Frankl, 1988 , 2004 ) is a central idea that explains the push-pull relationship between Frankl’s inner and outer chaotic world and his subsequent need to create meaning within the chaos. Frankl’s struggle to understand his life, his need to find answers and to establish the meaning in such a struggle permeated throughout his life, and more specifically during his time in the concentration camps between 1942 and 1945. Frankl wrote, discussed, and taught many principles and strategies to help others find meaning in their lives. The researchers have observed, collated, and highlighted at least eight specific strategies which Frankl had utilised in order to create meaning within his chaotic environment. More specifically, the creation of meaning through: 1) creative pursuits, 2) servicing others, 3) contradictory experiences, 4) the commitment to a decision, 5) spiritual connection, 6) perceiving meaningless tasks through a meaningful lens, 7) creating and chasing goals, and lastly 8) maintaining an unconditional attitude of strength. More specific examples of how Frankl utilised these strategies are highlighted below.

Over a period of two and a half years, Frankl had lived in four concentration camps: Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, Dachau and Türkheim. Life at Theresienstadt concentration camp was harsh and filled with daily suffering, although Frankl recalled how the Jews in the camp attempted to keep their lives meaningful and entertaining ( Frankl, 2000 , 2012 ). Children and artists painted, actors performed for the crowds, musicians played the music that uplifted people and scholars gave lectures ( Adler, 2017 ). Frankl found that witnessing and participating in creative pursuits provided him with meaning and purpose in a place which was intent on creating suffering. For Frankl, engagement with creative outlets provided him with meaningful distraction, which ultimately allowed him to transcend the chaos of his environment and escape through engagement with something meaningful. In essence, the daily suffering had created a sense of noö-dynamics, and the engagement in creative pursuits helped Frankl to achieve a sense of homeostasis.

Frankl volunteered to give public talks on different topics related to medicine and psychology, for example, sleep disturbances, the psychology of Alpinism (mountain climbing), medical ministry, and psychotherapy ( Klingberg, 2001 ). Furthermore, as he had organised in Vienna, Frankl was in charge of a team of like-minded individuals who participated in and ran suicide-prevention programs that helped prisoners adjust to life in Theresienstadt ( Klingberg, 2001 ; Redsand, 2006 ). Frankl and his team often helped depressed and suicidal prisoners with logotherapeutic techniques that aimed at assisting them in finding meaning and reasons to live despite their living conditions ( Frankl, 2000 ). Frankl found that pursuing activities for the service of others allowed him to transcend the suffering of his environment. Such pursuits had changed Frankl’s focus from himself to focusing on others. This change in focus had resulted in living a life of meaning within an environment that was designed to take meaning away. The daily life in the camp had created a sense of suffering or noö-dynamics for Frankl, and his engagement in activities that contributed to others, provided him with meaning and purpose, ultimately at times homeostasis. The psychological need to create homeostasis had once again provided Frankl with a pursuit for meaning.

Another example of Frankl finding meaning in the pursuit of serving others was when after 5 months of hard labour at Kaufering, which was one of the sub camps in Dachau (on 5 March 1945), he was approached by the chief doctor of Kaufering, a Hungarian who felt favourable towards Frankl ( Frankl, 2000 ). Frankl was asked if he had wanted to head towards Türkheim (also known as Kaufering IV), where he would work as a doctor. Frankl was sceptical of the offer as he did not trust the real intention of the officials, especially since there was a chance that he would be tricked into going to a death camp. Frankl decided to go as he felt that if he spent the last remaining moments of his life caring for sick prisoners, at least his suffering, life and death would have some meaning. Such act of engagement in a meaningful pursuit, allowed Frankl to gain meaning in the chaotic and challenging circumstances. The noö-dynamics created through the unpredictable environment was given meaning through the pursuit of helping others, offering them hope and emotional comfort ( Frankl, 2000 ).

The Nazis humiliated and tortured the people of Theresienstadt daily ( Klingberg, 2001 ). Frankl recalled that one day he was called to the Gestapo run police prison, where a SS officer ordered him to fill a bucket with water, run to a compost pile and pour the water on top of the pile. The pile was higher than Frankl in length and when he could not reach the top of the pile to pour water over it, the SS officer beat him and ordered him to repeat this exercise for hours. Eventually, Frankl was dragged back to his quarters with 32 injuries ( Frankl, 2000 ). Tilly cleaned his wounds and in an attempt to lift his spirit, she took him to a jazz concert that evening. The contrast provided Frankl with a fascinating insight. He described it as follows: “The contrast between the indescribable torture of the morning and the jazz in the evening was typical of our existence—with all its contradictions of beauty and hideousness, humanity and inhumanity” ( Redsand, 2006 , p. 65). Frankl once again found meaning in engaging with creative pursuits, but also through the contradiction of his experience. The experience of suffering had created a sense of noö-dynamics, and through the engagement with meaningful activities such as art, culture, and music had created a relief or distraction. In addition, the contradiction between suffering and meaningfulness heightened the feelings of noö-dynamics which ultimately created a greater sense of purpose.

Frankl had endured a total of four separate selections, each one carrying the anxiety of an unknown fate, which he acknowledged taught him to resign to the decisions that were not under his control and “to let fate take its course” ( Frankl, 1961 , p. 54). In the fourth selection, Frankl was selected for labour in the Dachau camp and was loaded with another group onto a freight train. Frankl had no idea where the train was headed and he and the rest of the prisoners tried to guess the direction ( Klingberg, 2001 ). The train was heading west and Frankl feared that they were heading for Mauthausen, a camp so notorious for torture, that it was feared even amongst the prisoners in Auschwitz. Frankl and the rest of the prisoners on the train felt a sense of relief when the train swerved away from Mauthausen onto a track that led to Dachau in Southern Germany. Frankl recalled that it was a joyous moment for all the prisoners, later emphasising that the size of human suffering is relative and that a trivial experience can cause the most amount of joy ( Frankl, 2000 ). For the prisoners at that moment realising that they were not going to be sent to Mauthausen camp but were instead being sent to Dachau was something to celebrate, even though being sent to Dachau was hardly a cause for celebration ( Frankl, 2000 ; Klingberg, 2001 ). Frankl had discovered for himself that meaning is constructed through the contradiction of one’s experiences. For Frankl, the bigger the gap between one’s current position and one’s goal, vision or the position of where one wants to be, the greater the sense of noö-dynamics. Once the difference lessens, the experience and the emotion felt is joy.

Frankl also found meaning in enjoying small pleasures ( Frankl, 2012 ). Frankl recalled sleeping in his clothes at night because the wintertime was unbearably cold. He remembered the moment of heat as he lay on the loose earth and urinated in his clothing, which gave him immense pleasure ( Frankl, 2000 ). The same pleasurable moment was when he was standing in soup lines, enjoying the warm sensation of urinating in his clothes. At that moment, it felt like “sipping a hot tea” ( Klingberg, 2001 , p. 2632/6819). Frankl found that meaning was relative, and is constructed through the contradiction of one’s experience.

The conditions in the Ghetto took its toll on Frankl’s father, Gabriel. He was placed in the same barracks where Viktor had lived and worked ( Klingberg, 2001 ). Six months into their stay in Theresienstadt, Gabriel died of starvation and pneumonia at the age of 81 years ( Frankl, 2000 ). Frankl reported that his father’s death left him feeling at peace because he knew that he had done all he could in order to protect his father by the choice that he made to stay in Vienna. Regarding his choice Frankl recalled:

I kissed him and left. I knew I would not see him alive again. But I had the most wonderful feeling one can imagine. I had done what I could do. I had stayed in Vienna because of my parents and now I had accompanied father to the threshold and had spared him the unnecessary agony of death. ( Klingberg, 2001 , p. 2289/6819)

Frankl had found meaning through committing to a decision without considering the alternative. This commitment had allowed Frankl to not place value on alternative positions and hence live fully engaged with the decision made. Such act of committing to a position had created psychological closure or homeostasis, as it helped Frankl counterbalance the loss of his father with the sacrifice that he made by staying with his parents. Ultimately providing his sense of loss with meaning.

Another example of Frankl finding meaning through his commitment to a position or a choice was when he was at Auschwitz. Frankl and the rest of the prisoners in the line were ordered to go to the cleansing station, where they were instructed to toss their valuables onto blankets on the ground. Frankl rebelled and hid his two most valuable items in his possessions, with the first being his manuscript about logotherapy, which he had hoped would be his legacy and the second being the Donauland Alpine pin he had earned as a climbing guide. He hid both in his jacket, which he had also hoped to keep. Unfortunately, Frankl was ordered to throw his clothes into a pile and with it, his most treasured possessions ( Frankl, 2000 ). Frankl’s commitment to a decision to hold onto his meaningful objects had created the counterbalance to the psychological chaos (noö-dynamics) which was created in his environment.

At Auschwitz, Frankl’s body hair was shaved off and he was ordered to shower with the other prisoners ( Klingberg, 2001 ). The prisoners had heard stories about other prisoners being ordered to get ready for the showers, given soap, only to realise that they were in the gas chamber when the door closed behind them. Frankl was relieved when he realised that real water poured out of the showerheads ( Frankl, 2000 ). Frankl emerged from the showers and was ordered to pick clothes from a pile of clothes that lay on the floor. These clothes belonged to prisoners who were murdered in the gas chambers. Frankl picked a thin, torn coat from the pile and found a scrap of paper in the pocket ( Redsand, 2006 ). It was a torn page from the Jewish prayer book and on it was written the Shema Yisrael, the prayer Frankl had heard his father say every day as a young boy. The prayer translated from Hebrew said: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One God; and you shall love the Lord our God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” ( Redsand, 2006 , p. 70). Frankl later wrote that this prayer and his connection to a spiritual realm was a “challenge to me to live what I had written, to practice what I had preached” (p. 70). The chaos which Frankl was living in had created a sense of noö-dynamics which motivated him to search for a meaningful reason to continue living through the suffering. Frankl had found the words of the prayer and spiritual connection as a message that had once again created a stronger sense of homeostasis and purpose.

Another example of Frankl connecting to a spiritual dimension in order to find inner resiliency and ultimately meaning, was when he recalled shovelling snow and struggling to find meaning for such great suffering. Frankl questioned the purpose of this type of life, and at that moment, he “heard a victorious Yes” ( Redsand, 2006 , p. 75), looked up and a light from a farmhouse in the distance went on. The light turning on coincided with his inner voice resounding that life does have a purpose, which helped reignite Frankl’s desire to continue living ( Frankl, 2000 ). It was at that moment that Frankl decided to pursue the rewriting of the book he had lost at Auschwitz, which would later be titled The Doctor and the Soul. Frankl acknowledged that the connection to a spiritual dimension provided him with a sense of purpose and ultimately kept him alive ( Frankl, 2000 ; Klingberg, 2001 ).

Frankl also created meaning by perceiving a meaningless task through a meaningful lens. For example, when the prisoners reached Dachau and were sent to one of its subcamps, known as Kaufering III. At this camp, while enclosed by barbed wire, there were no gas chambers, ovens and no crematoria at this camp ( Klingberg, 2001 ). In the Kaufering III camp, prisoners were assigned to build concrete bunkers and railway supply embankments. Under the physically challenging conditions, prisoners fell ill quickly after arriving and in September and October 1944, 1,322 ill prisoners were selected to be deported to Auschwitz to be gassed ( Redsand, 2006 ). Frankl was assigned to be a manual labourer, working on railroads, digging ditches and building new camps. Frankl later acknowledged that his mountain climbing experience had helped him to survive physically. Frankl recalled loading sick prisoners onto a wagon, while another prisoner said to him: “Frankl, I see from how you are proceeding that you have a way of conserving your energy when you are not using it to do something, like an Alpine climbing guide” ( Redsand, 2006 , p. 74). Frankl, found meaning in a task that seemed meaningless, by assigning meaningful pursuits to meaningless activities, more specifically in this example was the activity of mountain climbing which provided him with so much joy.

For survival, Frankl recalled that the prisoners focused their attention on their dreams and fantasies and on relatively small goals, such as attaining food, getting better clothes to wear or just avoiding punishment ( Frankl, 2012 ). However, for Frankl, it was not only the small goals that helped him cope emotionally, but focusing on the future and future goals that provided him with the most meaning ( Frankl, 2000 ). This realisation which would become one of the central principles of his existential theory came up during what Frankl called “the endless little problem of our miserable life” ( Redsand, 2006 , p. 75). During his suffering, while strategising on how to get bread with his meal or how to get a piece of wire to tie his shoe or how to get the Capo (a prisoner with extra privileges who acted as a foreman) to give him a safer job, Frankl had this insight and he daydreamed about his future, about standing on a platform of a well-lit lecture hall, lecturing about the psychology of the concentration camp. This future dream would become his goal and Frankl realised that focusing on that future goal, rather than on the unchangeable situation, served as his coping and survival mechanism. Frankl wrote that at that moment, he “succeeded somehow in rising above the situation, above the suffering of the moment” ( Redsand, 2006 , p. 75).

Another example of Frankl’s approach to chasing goals as means of attaining meaning in chaos was when he would council suicidal prisoners. For the prisoners, life was filled with daily suffering and ending one’s life was an enticing option ( Langer, 1982 ). Therefore, a strict rule to be adhered to by the prisoners was to not interfere with a man in the process of committing suicide ( Frankl, 2000 ). Many times, Frankl would approach a suicidal prisoner and attempted to help the person discover a goal to live for, something unique to that person that was aligned with his or her personalised values. Whether it be to live for a child or complete some project which they had begun, whatever the reason, Frankl would attempt to help the person look for it. Frankl recalled being asked by a warden to speak to the group of prisoners and offer words of encouragement. Since Frankl also experienced a sense of hope, the topic of his talk to his fellow prisoners was about hope for the future, loved ones and about chasing goals that were unfinished that needed to be finished. Frankl spoke about finding meaning despite their situation and quoted Friedrich Nietzsche: “That which does not kill me makes me stronger” ( Redsand, 2006 , p. 76). Frankl recalled that he had offered his fellow hopeless men hope for the future by getting them to focus on meaningful goals to pursue ( Frankl, 2000 ).

Frankl noticed something interesting in the camp; often, it was not the physically strong men who emotionally survived ( Frankl, 2006 ). Frankl questioned the reasons behind such observation and realised that emotional and psychological survival in an unchangeable environment is often not dependent on physical strength, but rather inner strength ( Frankl, 2006 , 2012 ). Frankl found that maintaining an unconditional attitude of strength despite one’s environment was a significant ingredient that allowed the prisoners to develop emotional resiliency in their chaotic environment.

Frankl’s theory places much emphasis on strategies and principles of how to create meaning in one’s unchangeable circumstance and environment. More specifically, Frankl (2014 ) proposed that the creation and discovery of meaning in one’s life can be achieved through creative pursuits, the experience of love, and through an attitudinal value. Through such methods, Frankl maintained that a person can overcome the anxiety surrounding one’s own finite life, suffering, and guilt. The push-pull relationship or the emotional tension created within the individual when chasing one’s goals and the eventual relief of achieving the desired results was a common theme throughout Frankl’s experiences in the camp and his methods of creating meaning in his experiences. More specifically, Frankl created meaning in his experiences through: 1) creative pursuits, 2) servicing others, 3) the contradiction of experiences, 4) the commitment to a decision, 5) spiritual connection, 6) perceiving meaningless tasks through a meaningful lens, 7) creating and chasing goals, and lastly 8) maintaining an unconditional attitude of strength.

Whilst the researchers found Frankl’s theory useful in exploring and describing his own search for meaning within his chaotic environment, Frankl’s theory has some limitations which will be highlighted for the reader in order to provide a more robust context and understanding. Firstly, Frankl’s existential theory has been criticised for its simplistic views of human drive and motivation. More specifically, Frankl’s theory oversimplifies the complexities of what motivates human beings to search for meaning ( Pytell, 2015 ; Tengan, 1999 ). Secondly, Tengan (1999 ) criticised Frankl’s existential theory on the basis that his theory is not comprehensive enough. More specifically, Tengan believed that Frankl’s notion of freedom of will ( Frankl, 1988 ) is simplistic. However, the researchers maintained that this criticism should not detract from Frankl’s emphasis on the importance of individual will and responsibility, which he had exercised when attaining meaning in his life. The researchers explored and described Frankl’s life and thematic strategies for attaining meaning through the lens of his key theoretical concept of his existential theory ( Frankl, 2014 ). Whilst the study offered a unique perspective on Frankl’s pursuit for meaning during his time in the concentration camps between 1942 and 1945, the researchers recommends that future researchers explore the underlying psychological reasons as to why Frankl was driven to find meaning in an unchangeable environment.

Whilst the researchers maintain that the study has been successful in terms of the achievement of its aims, future research should consider Frankl’s methods of creating meaning in his earlier development. Such research could possibly shed light on additional findings and understanding of Frankl’s methods of creating meaning in other environments, situations, and development.

Acknowledgments

The authors have no additional (i.e., non-financial) support to report.

Biographies

Hanan Bushkin is a registered psychologist and the head of the Anxiety and Trauma Clinic in Johannesburg, South Africa. Dr Bushkin specialises in the treatment of mood disorders, and has worked extensively on the problem of behavioural patterns and its effect on mood and cognition. Hanan has also been involved in front-line crisis intervention and organisational training. Hanan is also the founder of A.B.A. (Anchor Based Approach) which is a structured and systematic approach to the treatment of psychological conditions. Dr Bushkin has lectured extensively and completed his Ph.D. with special interest in relationship dynamics and the psychological process and structures necessary to creating a meaningful life. Dr Bushkin has been featured and quoted in various media outlets and forums, and is currently involved in research focusing on the specialised categories which are attributed to the acquisition of meaning and purpose.

Roelf van Niekerk is a registered Clinical and Industrial Psychologist as well as a Master Human Resource Practitioner. He obtained a BA Theology, BA Honours (Psychology), and MA (Industrial Psychology) at the University of Stellenbosch; a MA (Clinical Psychology) and D Phil (Psychology) at the University of Port Elizabeth, and a M Ed (General Education Theory and Practice) at Rhodes University. Prof Van Niekerk is currently the Director: School of Industrial Psychology and Human Resorces at the Nelson Mandela University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. He was previously employed at the Universities of Port Elizabeth, Free State, Fort Hare, and Rhodes University. Prof Van Niekerk’s research focus is on psychobiographical research projects, particularly in the fields of personality-, career-, and leadership development. He teaches a range of modules including psychological assessment, career management, organisational development, personality psychology, psychotherapy, and psychopathology.

Prof Louise Stroud is a Registered Clinical Psychologist and Full Professor employed in the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Health Sciences, at the Nelson Mandela University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. She is also the Lead Researcher for the Association for Research in Infant and Child Development (ARICD) based in London, United Kingdom. Her specific research interests include the study of the psychology of people and their lives, the development of children, neuropsychology and ecopsychology.

The authors have no funding to report.

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

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Viktor Frankl - Suffering, meaning, and the will to live

2021, Narrative Paths

Frankl survived a genocide, the Holocaust. He lost all of his family; although he had an opportunity to leave Austria to save his life, he did not want to leave his parents. Frankl would also lose his wife, not knowing whether or not she was alive or dead. Through three different camps, he held out hope as though she was, envisioning her face every day. "I did not know whether my wife was alive, and I had no means of finding out (during all my prison life, there was no outgoing or incoming mail); but at that moment, it ceased to matter.

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Viktor Frankl's 'Search for Meaning' in 5 Enduring Quotes

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Viktor Frankl was a young and successful Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist when Adolf Hitler and the Nazis invaded Austria in 1938. Frankl was Jewish, and in 1942 he and his family — his pregnant wife Tilly, his parents and his brother — were deported from Vienna to a Nazi-run "ghetto" in Czechoslovakia and then to concentration camps.

Separated from his wife, and stripped of his identity and humanity, Frankl spent three years in four different concentration camps, including Auschwitz, the notorious death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. He suffered daily degradation, deprivation and violence and witnessed countless friends and fellow prisoners succumb to disease, starvation and despair. Frankl credited his own survival to a method of psychoanalysis that he had begun to develop before his ordeal.

Frankl called his approach logotherapy or "meaning therapy," which centers on the belief that humans can overcome the inherent suffering and disappointments of life by finding meaning and a sense of purpose in every moment. Throughout his intense and prolonged suffering in the camps, Frankl was forced to put his theory to the ultimate test. He credited his survival to grasping tightly to the meaning he found in the love of his wife and the satisfaction of his work.

When the camps were liberated at the end of World War II, Frankl returned to Vienna, where he learned that his entire family, including his beloved Tilly, had been murdered by the Nazis. Inconsolable, he turned again to his work, and in 1946 he anonymously published, in German, "A Psychologist's Experiences in the Concentration Camp," which was later translated to English and republished as " Man's Search for Meaning ."

"Man's Search for Meaning" has sold more than 16 million copies in 50 languages and is considered one of the most influential books of the 20th century. We spoke with Alexander Batthyány, director of the Viktor Frankl Institute in Vienna, to discuss five quotes from "Man's Search for Meaning" and other writings that illustrate the power of Frankl's hard-won psychological insights.

"What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him."
"In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice."
"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."
"No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same."
"No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him."

1. "What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him."

As a student and young practitioner, Frankl studied under the leading psychological minds of Vienna, notably Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler. But Frankl grew disillusioned with psychological models that were focused on internal neuroses, like Freud's obsession with libido, or Adler's "inferiority complex."

"Frankl said that these theories describe man as an island solely interested in 'How do I feel?' and ignoring the most important questions: 'Why am I here and what am I good for?'" says Batthyány. "If we know the answer to these, many of the other problems are solved."

When Frankl says that man doesn't need a "tensionless state," he's saying that the goal of life isn't to attain happiness or comfort, which is often the focus of today's "self-help" and "self-improvement" culture.

"The primary motivation for living is to find meaning," wrote Frankl. The goal is to figure out how to live in such a way that gives purpose and meaning to existence, often by serving or sacrificing your own desires for the benefit of others.

Bonus quote: "The more one forgets himself — by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love — the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself."

2. "In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice."

When Frankl was first brought to the camps, he was carrying the unfinished manuscript for a book about logotherapy hidden in his coat. The manuscript, like all his personal possessions, was taken from him and destroyed.

In "Man's Search for Meaning," Frankl described how, in the midst of his torturous existence in the camps, he would occupy his mind with thoughts of his wife Tilly, and with the task of remembering his book, page by page, chapter by chapter. His "why" for staying alive was twofold: to see his Tilly again, and to finish his book. That was the sense of purpose that Frankl needed to survive.

In logotherapy, the psychologist tries to help his or her patients identify their own sense of purpose, even in the midst of significant suffering or sadness.

Batthyány tells a story of an elderly doctor who had just lost his wife of 60 years and was so crushed by her death that he could barely get out of bed. Frankl asked him, "What would have happened if you had died first instead of your wife?" The doctor replied, "My God, she would have suffered so. It would have been awful for her." Frankl then said, "You see? Your suffering is painful, but isn't it good that you took it away from her?" The man had found his reason for living.

"He was ready to suffer out of love," says Batthyány, "and that's the difference between suffering and desperation. Desperation is meaningless suffering, but suffering is part of life."

Bonus quote: "Nietzsche’s words: 'He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how,' could be the guiding motto for all psychotherapeutic and psychohygienic efforts regarding prisoners."

3. "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."

Frankl's greatest trial and lowest low didn't happen during his three years in the concentration camps, but after he was liberated. That's when he learned that his beloved wife was dead, as were the rest of his family and many close friends.

"So now I'm all alone," Frankl wrote a friend in 1945. "In the camp, we believed that we had reached the lowest point — and then, when we returned, we saw that nothing has survived, that that which had kept us standing has been destroyed, that at the same time as we were becoming human again it was possible to fall deeper, into an even more boundless suffering."

Frankl was close to experiencing that raw desperation that Batthyány called "meaningless suffering." But as Frankl expressed in the above quote, even when life strips you of everything, you still have your freedom. Even in the camps, where Frankl and his fellow prisoners were denied all basic freedoms and human rights, they could still choose how to respond.

Frankl often said that "the best among us didn't return," meaning that those prisoners who chose kindness, who gave their last crumbs of bread so that another person wouldn't starve, were the ones who didn't make it home. They chose a responsibility to something beyond their own survival, and that gave them meaning.

Writing to his friends, Frankl admitted that life had lost all pleasure after his wife's death, but he didn't turn his back on his core beliefs: "I see increasingly that life is so very meaningful, that in suffering and even in failure there must still be meaning."

Frankl still had his freedom to choose, and he chose to focus on his unfinished book about logotherapy, which would become "Man's Search for Meaning." And in time, Frankl met another wonderful companion, his second wife Elly with whom he had a daughter Gabriele, and wrote another 39 books.

"We have an enormous amount of freedom, but that's only half of the story," says Batthyány. "Freedom has a certain dignity and value, but responsibility is everything. How do I use my freedom? How does it impact others? How does it impact the world? And that leads us back to meaning."

Bonus quote: "It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us."

4. "No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same."

Frankl was an outspoken critic of the concept of "collective guilt," which said that the entire German or Austrian people were guilty of the crimes committed by the Nazi regime. Since Frankl believed in freedom and responsibility, he believed that only those who directly participated in the crimes were guilty and deserved to be punished.

"It's not that Frankl came out of the camps ready to forgive and forget everything," says Batthyány, "But he made a strong differentiation between guilt, responsibility and liability."

The above quote comes from "Man's Search for Meaning." Taken out of context, it sounds like Frankl is talking about reserving judgment on the Nazi guards at Auschwitz, but that's not true. Here he's referring to his fellow prisoners who "snitched" or colluded with the guards to ensure their own survival. People in desperate situations do desperate things.

Bonus quote: "It is a prerogative of being human, and a constituent of human existence, to be capable of shaping and reshaping oneself. In other words, it is a privilege of man to become guilty, and his responsibility to overcome guilt."

5. "No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him."

Frankl taught that every human being is unique and irreplaceable. Logotherapy, unlike other schools of psychology, acknowledges the existence of a soul, the true essence of an individual that exists beyond body and mind. Within the soul of every person lies their unique nature and untapped potential. It's the goal of a therapist, as well as friends or family members, to help others actualize their full potential.

And the key to that actualization, for Frankl, is love.

"There's a saying by Dostoevsky: 'To love somebody means seeing him or her as God intended them to be,'" says Batthyány. "Love means connecting on such a level that you see the personhood of the other. You don't just see the group that he or she belongs to — their religion, nationality or political affiliation — what you see is something far beyond any of these conditions."

Because Frankl believed in freedom, he believed that anyone could change. Batthyány says that Frankl maintained a long correspondence with a Holocaust denier, hoping to convince the man that the horrors he had experienced and witnessed with his own eyes were indeed true. For Frankl to see the potential good inside that man required a higher degree of love than most of us are capable of.

Bonus quote: "The truth — that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire ... The salvation of man is through love and in love."

Viktor Frankl was offered a visa to immigrate to the U.S. in the early 1940s. He turned it down because it would have meant leaving his elderly parents behind to face the Nazi occupation alone. He returned to Vienna after the war, becoming a noted speaker and writer as well as executive director of the Viennese Neurological Health Center. Frankl died in 1997 in Vienna.

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A Reflection on the Meaning of Life

Remembering viktor frankl in the aftermath of anthony bourdain’s death..

Posted June 8, 2018 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

I was only an 11-year-old child when I first stumbled upon Viktor E. Frankl’s book, Man's Search for Meaning , although the first edition of the same book in my native language was titled, And Why Didn't You Commit Suicide That Time?

Beyond its approachable thin frame, which was attractive to my 11-year-old intellect and reflective of my reading capacity, I was completely caught off guard by such a direct and profound question on a cover of the book. Of course, what I got out of Dr. Frankl’s work as a child was a great sense of admiration for this incredible human being who found a way to survive years in Nazi concentration camps, where, as a young man, he was subjected to the worst kinds of abuse.

Reading Man's Search for Meaning as an adult, many years later, I realized just how important and relevant Frank’s message was to us all. Frankl argued that, while we cannot control what happens to us in some circumstances, that we can — through acceptance and search for meaning — cultivate an attitude that will enable us to endure the most difficult of life’s situations.

According to Frankl, the meaning of life is different for each individual. For some, it may be found in close relationships; for others, it may be work or a hobby, while others may find meaning in small, daily activities and interactions.

Throughout his work, Frankl’s tone is always very human and non-judgmental, which is best observed in his treatment of those who took their lives – in other words, he is always simultaneously providing us with insights on how finding one’s own meaning in the direst of situations can save lives, while recognizing complex contexts and mental health issues that may contribute to one’s suicide.

We are all equal in our humanity. We may suffer for different reasons, but suffering is something that is experienced by all: rich and poor, young and old, urban and rural, “ordinary folk” and famous people. Celebrities, however, often reflect larger societal struggles. Recent losses of Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade are reminders that even those fortunate enough to enjoy successful and creative lives are not immune to mental health problems nor are they immune to the multitude of other factors that constitute our often stressful and complex daily lives.

As evident by the outpouring of emotion by those who knew them, it appears that both Bourdain and Spade were artistic, driven, giving and loving individuals who strived to create and bring goodness into the world. It is certain that the world will miss their presence.

While I didn’t follow Spade’s work, I still remember watching Bourdain’s early food TV shows and his unique ability to merge the food with smart and sophisticated commentary on culture and society. I remember watching Bourdain with my late father who was just thrilled that someone came up with such a smart idea of telling us about foods from all over the world, while also reminding us that food is more than just our basic need, but also a way of connecting, socializing, better understanding each other.

I loved watching Bourdain’s shows because of his humanity and his ability to connect and relate to people from all walks of life, from every culture. Bourdain had that rare talent to make you feel like you knew him — you may have watched him on a TV set, but he made you feel like you were right there with him enjoying whatever dish he was eating. He was always genuinely interested in what people had to say — a quality that I, as a psychologist, especially appreciated.

We need to keep talking about Bourdain, Spade, and many others who left us too soon. We need to keep talking about it so that we better understand this issue and know the best ways to help.

We frequently hear reports of an increase in suicide rates in the U.S. Over the past several years, we’ve also been introduced to the growing problem of suicide among helping professions, as physicians, medical students, and other caring individuals in helping professions are taking their lives at alarming rates.

What we know from some early qualitative studies (e.g., Rosen, 1975) of those who survived serious suicide attempts, such as jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, is that all of the survivors reported some form of “ spiritual rebirth” experience, “a sense of oneness or unity with other human beings and the entire universe” (Rosen, 1975, p.293), and none of the seven survivors attempted suicide again.

These studies certainly provide some important insights. For instance, one survivor “realized that halfway down he was going to hit a concrete piling and he remained conscious to solve this problem,” and survived by maneuvering “his body so that he only grazed the concrete piling” (Rosen, 1975, p. 291). In other words, when given a few seconds to reflect, the person wanted to live.

While this is a very complex problem, with a lot of individual variabilities, findings like those have implications for prevention efforts. For example, these findings highlight how important it is to remove access to firearms for those at risk, as firearms are the most common method of death by suicide — a method that does not leave any time to reflect or ask for help.

As a society, we need to be better at talking about mental health in general and about suicide in particular. While we made strides to reduce the stigma associated with mental health issues, it is important to stay active, continue this discussion and advocate for public health policies that will save lives.

Dr. Frankl, as I mentioned earlier, argued that the meaning of life is a key motivator to our survival. While it differs for each individual, finding meaning is important to each individual. One may argue that the current era of information overload, with many of us spending long hours alone and isolated on our iPhone, laptop and iPad islands, faced with multiple pressures to be efficient and productive, makes it easy for us to disconnect from each other and walk around silently with accumulated stressors too often even unaware of it. In such circumstances, holding on to one’s own meaning or reclaiming it can be challenging to say the least.

Today we lost Anthony Bourdain. For too long, too many have lost their fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, and friends too early. It is time for all of us to help create a society that will promote more time to cultivate close relationships, that will allow us to reach out to each other, and that will provide us with opportunities to get help and support when needed.

I hope we all can play a part in building a culture that will empower every individual to find her or his meaning in life and offer help during those dark moments in which we all may find ourselves at some point. Together, as a community of connected family members, friends, colleagues and neighbors we can make our society kinder and stronger.

Frankl, V. E. (2006). Man's search for meaning. Boston: Beacon Press.

Rosen, D. H. (1975). Suicide Survivors: A Follow-up Study of Persons Who Survived Jumping from the Golden Gate and San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridges. Western Journal of Medicine, 122(4), 289–294.

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Home / Essay Samples / Literature / Man's Search For Meaning / Reflection on Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning”

Reflection on Viktor Frankl’s "Man's Search for Meaning"

Category: Literature , Philosophy , Life
Topic: Man's Search For Meaning , Meaning , Suffering

Pages: 2 (746 words)

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Importance to me

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Emil Frankl. (n.d.). Retrieved September 18, 2019, from https://www.enotes.com/topics/mans-search-for-meaning
Frankl, Viktor E. Man's Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984. Print.
LitCharts. (n.d.). Man's Search for Meaning Summary. Retrieved September 17, 2019, from https://www.litcharts.com/lit/man-s-search-for-meaning/summary

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Viktor Frankl's 'Search for Meaning' in 5 Enduring Quotes

1. "What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him."

2. "In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice."

3. "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."

4. "No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same."

5. "No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him."

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