Man’s Search for Meaning: A Book Review

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One of the best books to be included in our must-reading list is Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning.

It may be considered an autobiography as it narrates the author's struggle during the Nazi Occupation in Austria. The author's narrative of his experience at the concentration camp effectively arrests the consciousness of a reader who is searching for meaning out of his life. The author and a psychotherapist himself is so honest and straightforward in his experiences which according to Dr. Allport "rest on experiences too deep for deception" and that one is drawn to reflect and examine his own experiences too.

He then directs the reader to an introduction to logotherapy which he can use as a guide to answering the question confronted by life to him as well or used to help others carve the meaning of their own experience. More than an autobiography, it is a self-help book and a training-book considering that it gives advice on how to help others extract the meaning of their existence.

Hence, more than a biography, Frankl delves on logotherapy - the psychotherapeutic technique of helping patients discover their meaning in life in order to be healed of psychosomatic problems. Far beyond psychotherapy which is dependent on the therapist's analysis and recommendations of the circumstances of the patient, logotherapy depends on the decisions of the patient within the guidance of the therapist.

His case for 'tragic optimism' refreshes and reviews the reader on the concept of logotherapy and situates its application to the current human experience.

 Read in two seatings: Finished reading on February 2019

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