Book 31 - More Than Survival

Title: Man's Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy Author: Viktor Frankl Genre: psychological personal recounting

Ho boy. Some heavy, heavy themes were encountered within the pages of this slender book, let me tell you.

Seriously: let me tell you.

Viktor Frankl, a neurologist, psychiatrist, and concentration camp survivor, explores the following question "How was everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the minds of the average prisoner?" His narrative voice balances on the steel edge of scientific removal and emotional involvement. At one point he calmly denotes how humans in traumatic and abhorrent situations have the ability to find true happiness in the confines of their own heads/imaginations, and then uses the heartbreaking personal example of receding into hypothetical conversations with his wife (also captured and most likely dead) within his own skull.

The first part of the book almost goes beyond the horror of the concentration camps, if that makes sense. Frankl himself often references other literature on the subject as he explores logotherapy through the tale of his experiences. Instead of showing the reader the horrors of the gas chambers - which, he says, have already been written about - he shows us what I would deem the smaller moments, the little things. The school of thought around the bread: eat it immediately, or parcel is out over time. How a ladle "from the bottom" of the soup barrel was a luxury, because that's where all the peas were found. The beauty and terribleness of the escapism of dreams.

The last part of the book, the theory-heavy end that unpacks logotherapy itself, is a bit dry. The writing was most effective, at least for an audience like me, when logotherapy was being applied anecdotally - as a lens by which Frankl explores his time in various concentration camps. I checked out more and more as the text increasingly came to resemble any one of the old psych textbooks. The author's examples also became less impactful as they fell into a certain rhythm: here was the issue, I then applied logotherapy (typically through the use of platitudes about the meaning of life/self), and then, LO, all was well.

Meh.

Logotherapy itself is interesting, if not a bit utopian. I would recommend this book mostly for the alternatively angle of a the concentration camps; Frankl manages to find meaning and beauty in devastating places.

Rating: 🍞 🍞 🍞/ 5