Man’s Search for Meaning

In this best-selling autobiography, Viktor Frankl shares his experiences of surviving the Holocaust and explains how it affected his perception of how humans find purpose in their lives. Frankl believed that man may find purpose in his profession, in his love for another person, and in the bravery needed to face hardship. Viktor Frankl saw the darkest recesses of human depravity, but he never came out of them bitter, angry, or nihilistic; instead, he came out inspired, upbeat, and hopeful by what he saw as man's ultimate freedom and responsibility in life: the ability to choose one's attitude in any given situation.

Introduction 

Avoid aiming for success; the more you focus on it and make it your goal, the more likely you are to fall short of it. Because success and pleasure are not something that can be sought for; rather, they come about accidentally as a result of giving up control over oneself or as a result of dedicating oneself to something bigger than oneself.

1. Memories From A Camp of Concentration 

There is a disease in psychiatry called "delusion of reprieve." The condemned guy is given the impression that he may receive a last-minute reprieve just before his execution. Even so, we clung to sliver of hope and held onto the hope that things would turn out okay.

Indifference 

The symptoms that emerged during the second stage of the prisoner's psychological reactions were apathy, blunting of emotions, and the sense that one could no longer care. Eventually, these symptoms caused the prisoner to become insensitive to beatings on a daily and hourly basis.

Apathy was an essential self-defense technique. All emotions and efforts were focused on saving both the other person's life and one's own while reality dwindled. 

Spiritual Fortitude 

Though they frequently had delicate constitutions, sensitive people used to a full intellectual life may have endured great suffering, but the damage to their inner selves was less severe. They were able to flee their dreadful surroundings and enter a life of spiritual freedom and inner abundance. Only in this manner can one explain the apparent paradox that some prisoners of a less hardy make-up often seemed to survive camp life better than did those of a robust nature.

The essence of love transcends the beloved's physical form and is rooted in their spiritual essence, their inner self. Whether a person is truly present or not, it doesn't matter. Judgement is only appropriate when one asks oneself honestly if, in a similar circumstance, he might not have made the same decision. Freedom to Choose Your Attitude is the one thing that cannot be taken away from a man; everything else is taken away from him except the freedom to choose one's own path.

In the end, it's evident that the prisoner's personality was shaped internally, not just by the effects of the camp, despite circumstances like inadequate food, sleep deprivation, and various mental strains that may have suggested the inmates were obligated to respond in particular ways.

Significance of Suffering.

Suffering must have a purpose if there is any purpose to life at all. As inevitable as fate and death, suffering is a component of life. Human life cannot be complete without both suffering and death. 

The method in which a man accepts his fate and all the agony it implies, the way in which he takes up his cross, affords him enough opportunity even under the most difficult circumstances to add a deeper meaning to his life.

Hope and Health

Those who know how close the connection is between the state of mind of a man his courage and hope, or lack of them and the state of immunity of his body will understand that the sudden loss of hope and courage can have a deadly effect.

What Life Is Expecting of Us 

Really, what was required was a radical shift in our outlook on life. In addition to teaching the hopeless guys that it didn't really matter what we anticipated from life, but rather what life demanded of us, we had to learn for ourselves. Instead of pondering the meaning of life, we ought to consider ourselves as being constantly and hourly questioned by it.

In the end, living is accepting responsibility for solving its issues and completing the tasks it continually assigns to each of us.

There was plenty of suffering for us to get through, so it was necessary to face up to the full amount of suffering, trying to keep moments of weakness and furtive tears to a minimum. But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, as tears bore witness that a man had the capacity for suffering. When a man discovers that suffering is his destiny, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place the bravest of all: the willingness to suffer.

Take Accountability for Your Life

Both human affection and creative effort are impacted by the singularity and individuality that define each person and give their existence significance. Realizing that a person cannot be replaced gives rise to the full realization of a man's responsibility for his existence and continuation.

Two Races of Men

It's clear that knowing a man was a prisoner or a camp guard tells us very nothing about him. Human kindness is present in all groups, including those that are generally easier to criticize. Group boundaries overlapped, so we shouldn't try to make things easier by claiming that some of the men were angels and some were devils. We might infer from all of this that there are only two races of men in the world: the "race" of the decent man and the "race" of the immoral man. Both can be found everywhere and permeate every social group. No organization is made up exclusively of immoral or depraved individuals. In this regard, no group is of “pure race” and therefore one occasionally found a decent fellow among the camp guards.

Freedom 

What was happening to the freed inmates may be referred to as "depersonalization" psychologically. It was all surreal, improbable, like something out of a dream. It was too good to be true.

These men could only be led back to the universal truth that no one is entitled to do wrong, even in cases where they have been wronged by gradual means. 

For the man returning home, the greatest experience of all is the amazing sensation that, after everything he has gone through, he no longer needs to fear anything except God.

2. A Synopsis of Logotherapy: The Greek word logos means "meaning."

• Compared to psychoanalysis, logotherapy is more introspective and less retrospective. 
• Defocusing all vicious-circle formations and feedback mechanisms that are so important in the development of neuroses, logotherapy assists the patient in focusing on the meanings that he hopes to realize in the future. Thus, rather of being continuously encouraged and rewarded, the neurotic's normal self-centeredness is broken up. 
• In logotherapy, the patient is genuinely faced with and reoriented toward the purpose of his existence. And helping him understand this significance will go a long way toward helping him get over his neurosis. 

The Desire for Significance 

• The fundamental drive of humanity is the need for significance in his life and not a “secondary rationalization” of instinctual drives. This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can be fulfilled by him alone; only then does it achieve a significance which will satisfy his own will to meaning.

Existential Annoyance 

• Existential frustration is neither harmful nor abnormal in and of itself. A man's existential distress, rather than a mental illness, is what causes him to worry, even despair, about whether existence is worthy. It was evident in the Nazi concentration camps that people who thought they had a mission to complete were more likely to live. 
  
• Consequently, it is clear that a certain amount of tension that is, the tension between one's current state of affairs and one's ideal future self is the foundation of mental wellness. 
• In reality, what man needs is not a state of relaxation but rather the pursuit of a noble objective, a genuinely worthwhile goal and a freely chosen task.

The Vacuum of Existence

• The major way that the existential vacuum shows up is when one is bored. Psychiatrists are today faced with more problems to solve due to boredom than from distress. These issues are becoming more and more important since the ordinary worker's free time will likely expand significantly as a result of progressive automation. It's unfortunate that a lot of these people won't know what to do with all of their extra time.
  
• A will to power, especially the most basic kind of power, the will to money, might occasionally vicariously compensate for the thwarted want to meaning. In other situations, the desire to pleasure takes the place of the unfulfilled will to meaning. That's why existential frustration often eventuates in sexual compensation. We can observe in such cases that the sexual libido becomes rampant in the existential vacuum.
  

The Meaning of Life

1. The meaning of life varies from person to person, day to day, and hour to hour. Therefore, what matters is not the meaning of life in general, but rather the particular meaning of a person's life at a given moment. 
2. To compare the question in general terms to that of a chess champion: "Tell me, Master, what is the best move in the world?" There is no such thing as the best or even a good move apart from a specific game situation and the unique opponent's personality. The same is true of human existence. One should not look for an abstract meaning of life; instead, each person has their own unique meaning vocation or mission in life to fulfill a certain task that needs to be completed. He cannot be replaced there, and his life cannot be replicated. 
3. As a result, each person's mission and opportunity to carry it out are distinct from one another. The question of what life's purpose is may actually be the opposite, since every circumstance we face poses a challenge to humanity and a problem for him to overcome. In the end, man needs to realize that he is the one who is being asked about the meaning of his life, not the other way around. To put it succinctly, life asks questions of every man, and the only way he can react to these questions is by responding for his own life. 

The Fundamental Nature of Being 

 One becomes more human and actualizes himself to the fullest extent possible the more he forgets himself by devoting himself to a cause to serve or another person to love. According to logotherapy, there are three ways in which we might find this meaning in life: 

1. by producing something or carrying out an action; 
2. by going through something or coming across someone; and
3. by the perspective we choose about inevitable suffering. 

What Love Really Is 

Love makes it possible to see the fundamental qualities and characteristics of the one you are in love with, as well as their potential that is, their unrealized but still-to-be-actualized qualities. You may help someone else realize their potential by showing them love. 

The Significance of Suffering 

We are challenged to improve ourselves when we are unable to alter a circumstance just consider an incurable illness like cancer that is incurable. To be clear, though, pain is not required in any manner to find purpose. I just maintain that suffering can have significance as long as it is, of course, inevitable suffering. Suffering needlessly is not heroic; it is masochistic. Life has significance until the very end, and it keeps meaning literally till the very end, if you accept this challenge to suffer valiantly.

The Super-Meaning 

Rather of enduring life's meaninglessness, as some existential philosophers teach, man is required to bear his inability to understand life's unconditional meaningfulness in terms of reason. Beyond logic lies logos.

The Transience of Life 

Nothing is permanently lost in the past; everything is permanently stored. Man continually chooses from among the multitude of potentialities that exist today; which will be actualized and which will be condemned to nonexistence? Which decision will truly be made once and for all, leaving an enduring "footprint in the sands of time"? Man must choose, at every given time, what will serve as the monument to his life, for better or worse. Why should the young people make the older people jealous? The young whereas the elderly have the facts of their past, has just potential. Not just the truth of labor accomplished and love given, but also the valiant suffering endured.

Psychiatry Made Human Again

In the end, man is self-determining. What he makes of himself is what he becomes, given the constraints of environment and endowment.  Man has two potentialities in every situation: the ability to act like a swine or a saint. The one that comes to pass is determined by choices made, not by circumstances.