Man’s Search For Meaning – by Victor E Frankl

We find ourselves in middle of World War II. Frankl had been captured by the Germans and is in a concentration camp. “Every man was controlled by one thought only: to keep himself alive for the family waiting for him at home”. Man’s Search For Meaning is a dark book and highlights the atrocities of the time, but also shows us that terrible things happen when we lose a sense of meaning in our lives.

Man’s Search For Meaning Summary

Typically if a book has one passage, one idea with the power to change a person’s life, that alone justifies reading it, rereading it, and finding room for it on one’s shelves. A Man’s Search for meaning has several such passages. 

Victor Frankel lived through an experience that most of us will ever had to deal with, but came out the other side remarkably a better person because of the experience.  The central idea that has the power to change the readers life, is that forces have the power to take everything you control except for one thing: how you respond.   

Here are many people who are very successful during their working lives, but once they retire they lose all zest for life. Their work had given their lives meaning. Often it is the only thing that gave their lives meaning and without it, they spent day after day sitting at home depressed with nothing to do.  

Success like happiness cannot be pursued, it must ensue and it only does so at the unintended side effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself, or as a byproduct of ones surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen and same for success, you have to let it happen by not caring about it.

Victor’s experiences in a concentration camp  

On day 1 in the concentration camp, 90% of people were sent to the gas chambers. They were shaved and had everything taken away “our nakedness was brought home to us: we really had nothing except our bare bodies”.  One day Victor took care of a man who later died. He stared at the dead man with no emotion at all, the constant death of those surrounding desensitised the prisoners to the loss of life. Food was scarce and was rationed to the last breadcrumb.   

As the inner life of the prisoner became more intense, they paradoxically experienced beauty and nature as they never had before.  Some were able to appreciate the mountains of Salzburg in the sunset wondering “how beautiful the world could be”.  

In the camp Victor asked himself whether life had a purpose. It was his inner reflections that taught him lessons in the darkest moments of his life. 

Suffering is relative: A man’s suffering is similar to that as a behaviour of gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly no matter how big the chamber. This suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little.  

Purpose: Victor helped the dying within the camp “to try and help my comrades as a doctor than to vegetate or finally lose my life as the unproductive labour”. It was simple mathematics, not sacrifice.   

Being worthy of suffering: Any man can decide what shall become of him, mentally and spiritually. ” There is only one thing that I dread, not to be worthy of my sufferings.” To accept suffering gives man an opportunity, even under the most difficult of circumstances to add a deeper meaning to his life. Under any circumstances you can be brave, dignified and unselfish. Here life’s the chance for a man to either make use of, or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him.   

One of Victor’s friends said “In my former life I was spoilt and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously. I am grateful that this fate has hit me so hard”

Decline or the Rise of Man: A man who let himself decline because he could not see the future goal preoccupied himself with retrospective thoughts.  They closed their eyes and thought of the past, life for such people became meaningless. These people believed that the opportunities of life had passed, yet in reality there was an opportunity and a challenge. One could make a victory of these experiences turning life into an inner triumph, or one could ignore the challenge and simply vegetate, as did the majority of the prisoners.   

One day when walking with frostbitten toes and thinking about trading a cigarette for sausage, and the crumb that awaited him for dinner, Victor visualised himself talking to a university about the psychology of camp life.  Through visualization he was able to rise above the situation.   

He who has the why to live can bear with almost any how:  What was needed for most was a change in attitude. It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us “we needed to stop think what is the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned from life, daily and hourly”. Life ultimately means taking responsibility and finding the right answer to problems that life assigns to each individual. Human life under any circumstances never ceases to have meaning, and that this infinite meaning of life includes suffering and dying.   

The existential vacuum: An existential vacuum can manifest itself in a state of boredom. People have the Sunday neurosis, the kind of depression that hits people who become aware of the lack of content in their lives. When the rush of the busy week is over, the void within themselves begins to manifest. Such depression is understandable and a true crisis of pensioners and ageing people.   

Meaning of life: The meaning of life is always changing for a given moment, person to person. It is a bit like asking a chess master “what is the best move in the world?”  

There is no such thing as the best or even a good move, a part from a particular situation in a game and particular personality of the opponent. Everyone has their own specific vocation or purpose to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment. Each situation in life represents a challenge to man and represents a problem for him to solve.  

Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of life is, he must recognize that it is he who is asked.