Man's Search for Meaning

by Viktor E. Frankl

I would like to mention a few similar surprises on how much we could endure: we were unable to clean our teeth, and yet, in spite of that and a severe vitamin deficiency, we had healthier gums than ever before.

“There are things which must cause you to lose your reason or you have none to lose.”

it is the mental agony caused by the injustice, the unreasonableness of it all.

The most painful part of beatings is the insult which they imply.

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

The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living.

The meager pleasures of camp life provided a kind of negative happiness,—“freedom from suffering,”

(The consciousness of one’s inner value is anchored in higher, more spiritual things, and cannot be shaken by camp life. But how many free men, let alone prisoners, possess it?)

Is there no spiritual freedom in regard to behavior and reaction to any given surroundings?

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer

And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom;

which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate.

It is this spiritual freedom—which cannot be taken away—that makes life meaningful and purposeful.

An active life serves the purpose of giving man the opportunity to realize values in creative work, while a passive life of enjoyment affords him the opportunity to obtain fulfillment in experiencing beauty, art, or nature.

I forced my thoughts to turn to another subject. Suddenly I saw myself standing on the platform of a well-lit, warm and pleasant lecture room.

By this method I succeeded somehow in rising above the situation, above the sufferings of the moment, and I observed them as if they were already of the past. Both

What does Spinoza say in his Ethics?

the sudden loss of hope and courage can have a deadly effect.

Nietzsche’s words, “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how,”

What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life.

did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We

“Was Du erlebst, kann keine Macht der Welt Dir rauben. “ (What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you.)

I said that someone looks down on each us in difficult hours—a friend, a wife, somebody alive or dead, or a God—and he would not expect us to disappoint him.

I knew of myself or of the world—I had but one sentence in mind—always the same: “I called to the Lord from my narrow prison and He answered me in the freedom of space.”

Only slowly could these men be guided back to the commonplace truth that no one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them.

According to logotherapy, this striving to find a meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in man.

man needs “something” for the sake of which to live.

There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the

knowledge that there is a meaning in one’s life.

So if therapists wish to foster their patients’ mental health, they should not be afraid to create a sound amount of tension through a reorientation toward the meaning of one’s life.