I’ve had Man’s Search for Meaning on my TBR since a friend read and reviewed (on another platform), but as you know, my TBR is kind of unmanageable. But then The Orangutan Librarian talked about it in one of her recent posts and that motivated me into borrowing the book. I’m also linking to her original review post that I found because I thought it was a good summary!

Man’s Search for Meaning is a two-part book. The first part covers Victor E. Frankl’s life in a Jewish internment camp in Nazi Germany, which, as he puts it, takes place “in the small ones where most of the real extermination took place”. The camps were more than just Auschwitz, although the way he writes makes that hard to tell. The second part of the book is his explanation of logotherapy, which is his school of therapeutic practice.

For me, part one was the most powerful part. Frankl takes a more dispassionate approach to describing the events that he witnesses, which is actually enough because I found everything so disturbing even with that layer of distance! He talks about the suffering of camp, and how the victims grow numb to the suffering as well, and it is truly a chilling read so see how the Jewish people and those sent to camps were physically and mentally tortured, to the point where some would betray their own people and be part of the guards (the ‘capos’). All this led to one point – would a man give up, or would he find the will to live on?

“We needed to stop asking about the maning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life – daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct.”

For me, one of the most striking things about the book is Frankl’s determination not to see himself as a victim but as a person who, even in the very worst of circumstances, has agency. As he writes in another passage:

“Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to be molded into the form of the typical inmate.

But while I found the first part of the book striking and powerful, I have to admit that I was not a fan of the second half. I really don’t quite get logotherapy even though I gave it a shot and read his explanation. Honestly, if I were to reread this book, I would probably just reread the first half and skip the second half.

All in all, I thought this was a valuable book that chronicles the experience of someone who survived the holocaust. I really admire how Frankl was able to look forward and move forward without bitterness (he even writes that “human kindness can be found in all groups, even those which as a whole it would be easy to condemn“) and it’s clear that he wrote to inspire people to move forward in life through his experiences. If you’re hesitating over the book, I’d recommend just reading the first part, and then see if you want to read on, or not because I think the first part, “Experiences in a Concentration Camp”, can standalone.