With more than 4 million copies in print in the English language alone, Man's Search for Meaning, the chilling yet inspirational story of Viktor Frankl's struggle to hold on to hope during his three years as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps, is a true classic. Beacon Press is now pleased to present a special gift edition of a work that was hailed in 1959 by Carl Rogers as"one of the outstanding contributions to psychological thought in the last fifty years." Frankl's training as a psychiatrist informed every waking moment of his ordeal and allowed him a Man's remarkable perspective on the psychology of survival. His assertion that "the will to meaning" is the basic motivation for human life has forever changed the way we understand our Search for Meaning humanity in the face of suffering. AN INTRODUCTION TO LOGOTHERAPY Fourth Edition Viktor E. Frankl PART ONE TRANSLATED BY ILSE LASCH PREFACE BY GORDON W. ALLPORT BEACON PRESS TO THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHER, Beacon Press 25 Beacon Street Boston, Massachusetts 02108-2892 www.beacon.org Beacon Press books are published under the auspices of the nitarian niversalist Association of Congregations. © 1959, 1962, 1984, 1992 by Viktor E. Frankl Contents All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First published in German in 1946 under the title Preface by Gordon W. Allport 7 Ein Psycholog erlebt das Konzentrationslager. Original English title was From Death-Camp to Existentialism. Preface to the 1992 Edition II PART ONE 05 04 03 02 01 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 Experiences in a Concentration Camp 15 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data PART TWO Logotherapy in a Nutshell 101 Frankl, Viktor Emil. [Ein Psycholog erlebt das Konzentrationslager. English] POSTSCRIPT 1984 Man's search for meaning: an introduction to logotherapy / The Case for a Tragic Optimism 137 Viktor E. Frankl; part one translated by se Lasch; preface Selected English Language Bibliography by of Logotherapy 155 Gordon W. Allport. — 4th ed. p. cm. Includes About the Author bibliographical references (p. ). ISBN 0-8070-1426-5 (cloth) 1. Frankl, Viktor Emil. 2. Holocaust, Jewish (1939—1945)— Personal narratives. 3. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)— Psychological aspects. 4. Psychologists—Austria—Biography. 5. Logotherapy. I. Title. D810J4F72713 1992 i5o.ig'5—dc2o 92-21055 Preface Dr. Frankl, author-psychiatrist, sometimes asks his pa­ tients who suffer from a multitude of torments great and small, "Why do you not commit suicide?" From their an­ swers he can often find the guide-line for his psycho- therapy: in one life there is love for one's children to tie to; in another life, a talent to be used; in a third, perhaps only lingering memories worth preserving. To weave these slender threads of a broken life into a firm pattern of mean­ ing and responsibility is the obJect and challenge of logo- therapy, which is Dr. Frankl's own version of modern exis­ tential analysis. In this book, Dr. Frankl explains the experience which led to his discovery of logotherapy. As a longtime prisoner in bestial concentration camps he found himself stripped to naked existence. His father, mother, brother, and his wife died in camps or were sent to the gas ovens, so that, except­ ing for his sister, his entire family perished in these camps. How could he—every possession lost, every value destroyed, suffering from hunger, cold and brutality, hourly expecting extermination—how could he find life worth preserving? A psychiatrist who personally has faced such extremity is a psychiatrist worth listening to. He, if anyone, should be 8 Preface Preface 9 able to view our human condition existential analysis, which takes wisely and with compassion. Dr. several related forms—the school Frankl's words have a profoundly of logotherapy being one. It is honest ring, for they rest on characteristic of Frankl's tolerant experiences too deep for outlook that he does not repudiate deception. What he has to say Freud, but builds gladly on his gains in prestige because of his contributions; nor does he quarrel present position on the Medical with other forms of existential Faculty of the University of therapy, but welcomes kinship Vienna and because of the renown with them. of the logotherapy clinics that The present narrative, brief today are springing up in many though it is, is artfully constructed lands, patterned on his own and gripping. On two occasions I famous Neurological Policlinic in have read it through at a single Vienna. sitting, unable to break away from One cannot help but compare its spell. Somewhere beyond the Viktor Frankl's approach to midpoint of the story Dr. Frankl theory and therapy with the work introduces his own philosophy of of his predecessor, Sigmund logotherapy. He introduces it so Freud. Both physicians concern gently into the continuing themselves primarily with the narrative that only after finishing nature and cure of neuroses. the book does the reader realize Freud finds the root of these that here is an essay of profound distressing disorders in the anxiety depth, and not Just one more brutal caused by conflicting and tale of concentration camps. unconscious motives. Frankl distinguishes several forms of neurosis, and traces some of them (the noogenic neuroses) to the failure of the sufferer to find meaning and a sense of responsibility in his existence. Freud stresses frustration in the sexual life; Frankl, frustration in the "will-t meaning." In Europe today there is a marked turning away from Freud and a widespread embracing of From this autobiographical there must be a purpose in suffer­ fragment the reader learns much. ing and in dying. But no man can He learns what a human being tell another what this purpose is. does when he suddenly realizes Each must find out for himself, he has "nothing to lose except his and must accept the responsibility so ridiculously naked life." that his answer prescribes. If he Frankl's description of the mixed succeeds he will continue to grow flow of emotion and apathy is in spite of all indignities. Frankl is arresting. First to the rescue fond of quoting Nietzsche, "He comes a cold detached curiosity who has a why to live can bear concerning one's fate. Swiftly, with almost any how." too, come strategies to preserve In the concentration camp the remnants of one's life, every circumstance conspires to though the chances of surviving make the prisoner lose his hold. are slight. Hunger, humiliation, All the familiar goals in life are fear and deep anger at inJustice snatched away. What alone are rendered tolerable by closely remains is "the last of human guarded images of beloved freedoms"—the ability to persons, by religion, by a grim "choose one's attitude in a given sense of humor, and even by set of circumstances." This glimpses of the healing beauties of ultimate freedom, recognized by nature—a tree or a sunset. the ancient Stoics as well as by But these moments of comfort modern existentialists, takes on do not establish the will to live vivid significance in Frankl's unless they help the prisoner story. The prisoners were only make larger sense out of his average men, but some, at least, apparently senseless suffering. It by choosing to be "worthy of their is here that we encounter the suffering" proved man's capacity central theme of existentialism: to rise above his outward fate. to live is to suffer, to survive is to As a psychotherapist, the find meaning in the suffering. If author, of course, wants to there is a purpose in life at all, 10 Preface know how men can be helped to achieve this distinctively human capacity. How can one awaken in a patient the feeling that he is responsible to life for something, however grim his circumstances may be? Frankl gives us a moving account of one collective therapeutic session he held with his fellow prisoners. At the publisher's request Dr. Frankl has added a state­ ment of the basic tenets of logotherapy as well as a bibliog­ raphy. Up to now most of the publications of this "Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy" (the predecessors being the Freudian and Adlerian Schools) have been chiefly in Preface to the 1992 German. The reader will therefore welcome Dr. Frankl's supplement to his personal narrative. Unlike many European existentialists, Frankl is neither Edition pessimistic nor antireligious. On the contrary, for a writer who faces fully the ubiquity of suffering and the forces of evil, he takes a surprisingly hopeful view of man's capacity This book has now lived to see nearly one hundred print­ to transcend his predicament and discover an adequate ings in English—in addition to having been published in guiding truth. twenty-one other languages. And the English editions alone I recommend this little book heartily, for it is a gem of have sold more than three million copies. dramatic narrative, focused upon the deepest of human These are the dry facts, and they may well be the reason problems. It has literary and philosophical merit and pro­ why reporters of American newspapers and particularly of vides a compelling introduction to the most significant American TV stations more often than not start their in­ psychological movement of our day. terviews, after listing these facts, by exclaiming: "Dr. Frankl, GORDON W. ALLPORT your book has become a true bestseller—how do you feel about such a success?" Whereupon I react by reporting that in the first place I do not at all see in the bestseller status of my book an achievement and accomplishment on my part but rather an expression of the misery of our time: if hun­ dreds of thousands of people reach out for a book whose very Gordon W.