Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Man's Search for Meaning
Book Review: this book altered how I think, act, lead my life and do business.
Summary: 5 Stars
This book shook me to the core.
I had a huge breakthrough.
I read it six times and will probably read it six more.
Buy it.
Book Review: Should be required reading
Summary: 5 Stars
This book should be required reading for anyone who has ever had the audacity to feel sorry for themselves (which is most of us). The biggest lesson I took from this wonderful book is that choice is everything. I highly recommend it.Book Review: "The future's not set. There's no fate but what we make for ourselves."
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a lovely book. The ideas are innovative & thought provoking and probably worthy of 5 stars. But I think Frankl would respect reviewers who don't give him 5 stars because he is not intent on getting everyone to believe in one set of ideas or one way of interpreting the world. He wants each person to consider creating their own philosophies and meanings. He was not primarily a student of one previously existing psychological discipline; instead, he set out to take the best parts of the ideas he learned and observed, and he created his own psychological theories. This book is worth consideration, even if you find yourself disagreeing with him regularly. I encourage you to make your own evauations of the things he has to say.
I disagree with his position that happiness and success "cannot be pursued"; especially given that his Logotherapy is "not pessimistic but rather activistic." In the same way that his Logotherapy does not consider the "will to meaning" as a secondary drive to either the will to power or pleasure, I do not consider the will to happiness or will to success to be secondary or passive byproducts to other "primary" pursuits. He asserts happiness & success only ensue "as the unintended side-effect of one's dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it . . . success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it." I respectfully disagree. When I read this, alarms go off in my head, like when I hear that G n' R song that suggests "patience" is the solution to whatever the problem was. Or when I hear people say, "There's nothing anyone can do, so just give it to God." Or "That's just the way it is and some things will never change." Oh, don't you believe them. As Frankl may tell you in his recounting of the vacuum of morality & humanity in the concentration camps - when God doesn't address problems in a healthy, ethical or timely manner, sometimes the existential response is to ask God to give the problems back to you so you can try to fix them sooner.
Another criticism of his happiness and success theories is that they seem to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Yes, he doesn't believe the self interested drives to power and pleasure are dominant or primary. But he goes further to suggest that happiness & success are primarily achieved through "surrender" to another person or external cause. Yes, Freudian psychoanalysis can lead to neuroses by focusing too much on oneself. But I think better therapeutic solutions are found by giving value and acknowledgement to BOTH self interests AND the interests of others. To exclude either can lead to dishonest, inconsiderate, or harmful results. Frankl sometimes frames options as needing to choose one OR the other (too often mutually exclusive), and I think he does not consider the option of doing BOTH at key times. Also, he sometimes concedes to an acceptance of suffering more often than I would encourage.
I agree with Frankl that we are not only defined by the circumstances that occur to us. We are defined by how we interpret them and how we respond to them. Whether a person believes in Logotherapy or any other therapy, I think Frankl, in his examples of his therapeutic work with patients, does a good job of getting across the concept that positive changes can occur when people consider alternate ways of perceiving the actions and behaviors happening around them, and consider new ways of responding to them.
Any therapy can be tough, because most therapeutic processes involve losses of pride. They often involve a person making concessions - concessions about their long held, immutable or fundamental core defining beliefs and perspectives. They often involve considering foreign, and previously personally taboo perspectives. And it takes powerful forces sometimes to get some people to consider making such hard concessions - forces such as: potentially losing a loved one, or losing both the House & the Senate and realizing different "mighty mandates" are in town. (Thank God for democracy and free speech because even when they don't always lead to better policies, they at least promote change.)
The Nazis believed that not everyone can or should be allowed to succeed because of their race, religion, status, or philosophies. Frankl's response to the cruel world the Nazis created was to suggest that each individual should be judged by the conduct of their character - by how they responded each day to each hand they were dealt. "Former prisoners, when writing or relating their experiences, agree that the most depressing influence of all was that a prisoner could not know how long his term of imprisonment would be. He had been given no date for his release." Yet each day, prisoners like Frankl chose to respond in the best ways they could under the circumstances. I don't think Frankl wrote primarily because he wanted to become your therapist. I think he wrote to inspire each individual to become so well read and diversely read on religion, ethics, and psychological theories that they become one of their own best therapists. And I thank him for his contributions to encourage each of us in that pursuit.
I started this review by mentioning Frankl set out to take the best parts of the ideas he learned and observed, and he created his own psychological theories. And I finish this review by thanking an old friend, a woman who chose to fight me tooth and nail to encourage me to start to do the same.
Book Review: Contemplation
Summary: 4 Stars
This is an interesting book to read and reflect on your life as well as the world we are creating for our descendants. I do worry about what we are leaving for the generation(s?) to follow.Book Review: Clear, Simple, Profound ...
Summary: 5 Stars
"Man can endure any how as long as he has a why ..." To me, this is the essential take-away of this clear, moving essay by concentration camp survivor Viktor Frankl. He recounts how those who survived the ordeal were often those who could find an aim and purpose outside themselves to keep on going. Man chooses his own attitude toward adversity and, in so doing, transcends life's inevitable suffering.
A great book which merits re-reading periodically again and again...