2013 Countdown #3: Man's Search for Meaning, ****

I had heard of Viktor Frankl's book Man's Search for Meaning previously, but until earlier this year, I had misunderstood what it's about. I had assumed that it was a work of philosophy, which I suppose is true in a way. But it's more accurate to describe the book partly as the author's memoir of surviving the Holocaust and partly as a description of the psychotherapeutic technique that the author, a psychiatrist, developed to help people who have experienced terrible traumas.

The book is an insightful and thought-provoking examination of how we find meaning in life and how we bear suffering. In the first half of the book, Frankl describes--with almost heartbreaking understatement--his life in a German concentration camp during World War II. There are no heroes in his memoir: he is chillingly matter-of-fact about everyone in the camp, both guards and guarded. He frequently downplays his own suffering by offering disclaimers that others endured conditions much worse than his, that their hardships eclipsed his somehow. Several times, he mentions almost apologetically that others have already described the living conditions, the medical trials, the senseless brutality, and the casual killings that filled the days there.

When the war finally ended, Frankl dedicated much of his time to providing psychotherapy to other survivors. Many traditional therapeutic methods required patients to dwell on past traumatic experiences, which kept the wounds open. Frankl chose a different approach, which he called logotherapy. Logotherapy asked the patients to focus on the future instead of the past, helping them to define some specific life objective that could help bring meaning to the individual's future life. Frankl quotes Nietzsche: "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how."

Frankl's theory was that suffering becomes more bearable if one can make some sense of it. This passage of the book moved me: "Once, an elderly general practitioner consulted me because of his severe depression. He could not overcome the loss of his wife who had died two years before and whom he had loved above all else. Now, how could I help him? What should I tell him? Well, I refrained from telling him anything but instead confronted him with the question, 'What would have happened, Doctor, if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive you?' 'Oh,' he said, "for her this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!' Whereupon I replied, 'You see, Doctor, such a suffering has been spared her, and it was you who have spared her this suffering--to be sure, at the price that now you have to survive and mourn her.' He said no word but shook my hand and calmly left my office. In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice."

For a layperson like me, the technical aspects of the psychotherapy presented in the second half of the book overwhelmed the book's basic message a bit, which is why I rated the book 4-stars instead of 5. But it is still a memorable, tremendously worthwhile read.