Man's Search for Meaning

by Viktor E. Frankl

The truth—that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire.

(What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you.)

“Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!”

(1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.

Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him.

“Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, though these are things which cannot inspire envy.”

“The neurotic who learns to laugh at himself may be on the way to self-management, perhaps to cure.”

As we see, anticipatory anxiety has to be counteracted by paradoxical intention; hyper-intention as well as hyper-reflection have to be counteracted by dereflection; dereflection, however, ultimately is not possible except by the patient’s orientation toward his specific vocation and mission in life.16