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: Small Book, Heavy Reading.
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a terrific book about the meaning of Life. However, it is tough reading! You'll find yourself re-reading many passages just to understand the subtleness of the author. It will have a profound effect on anyone searching for some meaning to their lives. Warning: it is sometimes depressing, but enlightening.Book Review: Exceptionally thought provoking
Summary: 4 Stars
This book offers a very insightful look into the human mind through circumstances so dire its almost difficult to contemplate. Fortunately, most of us will never likely come within reach of such dreadful circumstances; however, by means of this book we are able to ascertain meaning by vicariously viewing the experiences of Dr. Frankl and learning from his own thoughts and perceptions about the matter.
This book rates high in its ability to help the reader search for meaning, define purpose, and gain an incredible sense of relativity. I give four stars only as a result of its propensity to read like a psychology text book. I admit, however, that may speak more to my weaknesses and lack of pursuit on such subjects than the quality of the writing. As such, this is certainly not meant as a major detriment as the substance presented is excellent.
Book Review: This is a great book. Just remember it is about the holocaust.
Summary: 4 Stars
i am glad that I read this book. It made me think about life in general.
I am glad that this is out there for people like me who did not live through that era. Great reference book for applications of Psychology.
Book Review: One of the best in the history
Summary: 5 Stars
One of the best books I've read in my life. Recommend to everyone. Life will not be the same after you finish.Book Review: A Priceless Addition to Any Collection
Summary: 5 Stars
This small volume is a priceless addition to any collection of humanitarian ideas. Its subtext makes several interrelated existential points about human suffering and human meaning; points that only those who have known extreme suffering could make with the kind of conviction and eloquence that Dr. Frankel has made here: That while pain and suffering may be relative, even "chosen," the infliction of gratuitous cruelty -- insults, indignities and debasement are absolutes, and is an unforgivable but universal currency applied by all totalitarian systems.
Social and political tyrannies, whether soft or hard, are just opposite sides of the same coin of cultural and existential emptiness. They begin first by destroying the most precious of freedoms, the freedom of thought: effectively creating a "concentration camp of the mind" through social stratification, willful (or benign) neglect, obscene discrepancies in wealth and wellbeing, and by twisted race-based ideologies and other forms of "groupthink" consensus-based political and social orthodoxies. Then come the politics of exclusion, followed by social death - ghettoes and segregation; and then the final stop: unjust physical imprisonment and eventually removal to concentration camps. It is a gradient that leads progressively to walls of hopelessness and despair and that at each step of the way is every bit as cruel in their cumulative emotional and psychological effects as the electrified fences that enclosed the prisoners of Auschwitz.
The existential challenge for the suffer has been put best by Professor Cornel West of Princeton University, who as a self-described "Chekhovian Christian" sees the challenge as follows: "... Being a Chekhovian Christian is refusing to be imprisoned and walled-in by intentionally inflicted misery. It is to wake up each day with a new strategy for survival."
That is exactly what Dr. Frankel did in repeatedly facing-down certain death at the hands of the Nazi war-machine. This book and the Logo-therapy that it gave rise to are fitting living tributes to all of those who died in the European holocaust.