Man's Search for Meaning

by Viktor E. Frankl

No instinct tells him what he has to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people wish him to do (totalitarianism).

Existential

Sometimes the frustrated will to meaning is vicariously compensated for by a will to power, including the most primitive form of the will to power, the will to money.

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

freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness.

there is ample empirical evidence that the three facets of this syndrome—depression, aggression, addiction—are due to what is called in logotherapy “the existential vacuum,” a feeling of emptiness and meaninglessness.

If one is not cognizant of this difference and holds that an individual’s value stems only from his present usefulness, then, believe me, one owes it only to personal inconsistency not to plead for euthanasia along the lines of Hitler’s program,