Man’s Search for Meaning

Description

A book for finding purpose and strength in times of great despair, the international best-seller is still just as relevant today as when it was first published.

We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life-daily and hourly. Our answer must consist not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.

When Man’s Search for Meaning was first published in 1959, it was hailed by Carl Rogers as “one of the outstanding contributions to psychological thought in the last fifty years.” Now, more than forty years and 4 million copies later, this tribute to hope in the face of unimaginable loss has emerged as a true classic. Man’s Search for Meaning–at once a memoir, a self-help book, and a psychology manual-is the story of psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s struggle for survival during his three years in Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps. Yet rather than “a tale concerned with the great horrors,” Frankl focuses in on the “hard fight for existence” waged by “the great army of unknown and unrecorded.”

Viktor Frankl’s training as a psychiatrist allowed him a remarkable perspective on the psychology of survival. In these inspired pages, he asserts that the “the will to meaning” is the basic motivation for human life. This simple and yet profound statement became the basis of his psychological theory, logotherapy, and forever changed the way we understand our humanity in the face of suffering. As Nietzsche put it, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” Frankl’s seminal work offers us all an avenue to greater meaning and purpose in our own lives-a way to transcend suffering and find significance in the act of living.

Reviews

”An enduring work of survival literature” –New York Times

”If you read but one book this year, Dr Frankl’s book should be that one.” –Los Angeles Times

”His works are essential reading for those who seek to understand the human condition.” –UK Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

”A poignant testimony…a hymn to the phoenix rising in each of us who choose life before flight.” –Brian Keenan, author of An Evil Cradling

”One of the most remarkable books I have ever read. It changed my life.” –Susan Jeffers, author of Feel the Fear And Do It Anyway and Embracing Uncertainty

”Perhaps the most significant thinking since Freud and Adler.” –American Journal of Psychiatry

”Much like a first aid kit, this recording has the potential to save lives . . . This classic, carefully read by Simon Vance, is a vital aid to the troubled of all ages.” –Library Journal

Author Biography

Viktor E. Frankl developed the revolutionary approach to psychotherapy known as logotherapy, founded on the belief that humanity’s primary motivational force is the search for meaning. One of the great psychotherapists of this century, he was head of the neurological department of the Vienna Polyclinic Hospital for twenty-five years and is the author of thirty-one works on philosophy, psychotherapy, and neurology, including the classic Man’s Search For Meaning, which has sold over nine million copies around the world.