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Man's Search for Meaning
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 4 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: Health & Wellness, Psychology & Mental Health
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Editor reviews
Man’s Search for Meaning is the deeply moving autobiographical audiobook written by world-renowned psychiatrist Viktor E. Frankl and narrated by award-winning voice actor Simon Vance. Frankl suffered immeasurable torture and depravity at the hands of Nazi soldiers during World War II. It was during this horrific time in his life that he started to develop the highly effective psychotherapy known as logotherapy. This listening experience is one that sees you explore Frankl’s remarkable life story and his belief that at the very core of what it means to be human lies an unending search for meaning. Available now from Audible.
Summary
Internationally renowned psychiatrist, Viktor E. Frankl, endured years of unspeakable horror in Nazi death camps. During, and partly because of, his suffering, Dr. Frankl developed a revolutionary approach to psychotherapy known as logotherapy. At the core of his theory is the belief that man's primary motivational force is his search for meaning.
Man's Search for Meaning is more than a story of Viktor E. Frankl's triumph: it is a remarkable blend of science and humanism and an introduction to the most significant psychological movement of our day.
Critic reviews
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What listeners say about Man's Search for Meaning
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Overall
- Jim Vaughan
- 02-12-12
Potentially life changing...
So, we all know about the Holocaust, yet this book is a bit different - told with such "tragic optimism" that the message is not moral outrage or repulsion, but of meaning in the midst of unimaginable degradation. The "why" that makes the "how" of suffering bearable. Frankle quotes Nietzsche throughout.
The most moving passages for me were his imagined conversations with his wife, (who probably by that time was dead), which nonetheless gave him the purpose for continuing to live, and the glimpses of Nature, such as sunsets, raw in beauty, beyond the barbed wire.
His message is simple - it is in loving the people we love and in the struggle that our lives demand of us, that we find meaning that transcends the mere pleasure principle. Our own "ontic logos" is individually uncovered, not found through intellectual introspection on "THE meaning of life" (which is a nonsense and which usually just leads to neurosis).
Frankle highlights the contemporary consumerist "tyranny of happiness", which is endemic in the West, so that many patients feel not just unhappy, but deeply ashamed of their unhappiness.
Existentialism is not popular in the zeitgeist, but I think we can learn much from that generation who lived through the War, and the Holocaust, and developed such philosophies of coping with terrible hardship and suffering. By contrast, we can be very superficial, and self centred, and it left me considering what issues I cared about enough to take action on. Would I regret not doing so otherwise? Yes, probably - as an opportunity wasted!
This is a humane, inspiring, potentially life changing book; well narrated, subtle, profound and unpretentious. It deserves the highest rating.
83 people found this helpful
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- Gabe Fleming (Audible staff)
- 05-06-18
The power of perspective
A book to return to again and again, whenever you feel your sense of perspective slipping. This is the story of a concentration camp prisoner whose humanity and intellect saw him through the worst of all times. The author states at the beginning that it is a book about humanity, not a record of the Holocaust or the realities of concentration camp life, and the lightness and readability of the writing is an incredible achievement. Frankl not only survived, but went on to form a school of psychotherapy that is still revered and relevant today. His central idea is that man can choose his attitude even when he loses control of his circumstances. Whatever horrors life throws at us, our thoughts remain our own. Whatever happens, we should be able to put our problems aside and focus on what is decent and humane and brilliant about the world around us. Compared to what Frankl and his generation went through we live in easy, care-free times. If he could keep his humanity and decency intact, the rest of us have no excuse.
28 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Happy customer
- 15-06-16
Brilliant
The first part talks about what he learned in his experiences in concentration camps. It doesn't focus on gory details, but rather what insights can be drawn from the conditions. The second part is an introduction to logotherapy--which seeks to help people to find meaning in their lives and thus fulfillment.
13 people found this helpful
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Overall
- R
- 03-05-08
Throw out your self-help books!
This is an utterly remarkable book for so many reasons. What strikes me most about it is how it really gives meaning to the idea that the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts. What I mean by this is the following: the book is not great psychology, nor great philosophy nor even great narrative. And yet, as a whole I would call it a great book. Why? Because it makes a definitive impact. I cannot say that I walked away from this book unchanged. I suppose it is Viktor Frankl himself who makes all the difference -- in him you find a truly humane, humble and ultimately wise human being. I was truly impressed to hear him quoting Nietzsche while in a concentration camp; this at a time when Nietzsche's work had been distorted and used to promote anti-semitism by the Nazis. One warning though -- his existentialist philosophy is outdated and really needs to be complemented by a contemporary understanding of human nature.
41 people found this helpful
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- MarkPT
- 11-07-16
Eye opening!
I'd split this book into 3 sections.
The first is an amazing account of the war, Frankl's time there and the happenings. It really did open your eyes
The second part of say is about how he helped the people in camp, some links to finding meaning and purpose and crossing the bridge between his time in camp and his use of logo therapy .
The third part is where I tuned out a lot. It's his views and use of logotherapy so can get quite deep - I'm not sure if it's he subject matter or he very English narrator (which works well on the first 2 parts, not as much on the third!) but it was quite specialist!
Still, I'd rate this book highly for the first two sections!
10 people found this helpful
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Overall
- The Vikid Truth
- 19-12-16
Deep and Thought Provoking
This is a bool that make you think to the core of your being, it makes you ask just as the title suggests, what meaning actually is and how you can poses it.
The first half of the book is autobiographical and is an harrowing account of the concentration camps, harrowing but not graphic.
The second half is psychoanalytical and more theoretical.
I absolutely loved this book, I can recommend it to anyone one from young adult upwards.
9 people found this helpful
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- Wayne Flint
- 13-07-15
Valuable insight into mindworks
Very insightful book that is a great addition to anyone interested in what makes any persons struggle worth persevering with. The driving forces that can help someone overcome grief, adversity, when all seems pointless.
So good I ordered the book for someone I know, and as a reference point for some volunteer work I do. Top notch book.
7 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 09-12-16
shook me to the core and built me up again
my first Frankl. just had to finish. Audible is amazing at choosing right voices. grateful.
5 people found this helpful
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- Mr. P
- 06-07-16
well read and structured
the text was insightful and well structured. the narrative of how to make the most meaningful life was given weight by the author's experiences
5 people found this helpful
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- Richard
- 11-09-15
Enlightening
Loved it. Well read Simon enjoyed the smooth connectivity of the various facets of logatheraphy which although a deeply scientific practice I, a layman found it stimulating and simply understandable. Too, Frankls' book gives an unprecedented insight to the total trauma of one's in such predicament, useful therefore in understanding the plight of one's in such a position today, that is long suffering struggles.
5 people found this helpful
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- Troy
- 25-08-15
One of the Most Important Books Ever Written
There are a handful of books that should truly be required and desired reading for everyone across the world. This is one of them. It is simultaneously repulsive and compelling, disheartening and hopeful.
I read this book perhaps 20 years ago. The older I get, the more I find new meaning in it. There are a great many self-help books out there that go on and on and say nothing. Then there's a book like this that offers an unblinking look at one of history's most horrific events from an inside perspective and uses that as a lead-in to offer to us a scientific embrace of the three little words that could mean the most to all of us.
Love. Faith. Hope.
146 people found this helpful
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- Aschecte
- 26-09-18
Adversity-Suffering-Meaning
This is a book I would normally pass on the shelf. A friend who happens to be a Psychologist recommendedI I read this; after a terrible diagnosis I received. Never and I mean NEVER has a book enveloped me, inspired me, or, said exactly what I needed to hear, and on a level compare my own troubles to. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has given up on living a meaningful life; better even know what a meaningful life can be. I would give this book 5 stars, it didn’t solve my problem, but gave me the tools to do so on my own.
84 people found this helpful
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- William
- 03-04-18
I lived in Auschwitz for three hours
My mentor (a man from the Baby-Boomer generation) recommended this book to me by saying, "it was the single most influential book I ever read." With a endorsement like that, I had no choice but to read it. I am happy to say, he did not oversell this book.
The first three hours of Man's Search for Meaning, is a psychological account of Frankl's time in the Nazi prison camps. While I have seen countless documentaries about the atrocities that took place in those camps, Frankl made it far more real.
Frankl explains, not just the physical torments but rather, the mental toll it took on him and the other prisoners. However, Frankl does not attempt to paint himself as a hero - quite the contrary. In perhaps the most sobering line in the book, Frankl says, "We who have come back, by the aid of many lucky chances or miracles - whatever one may choose to call them - we know: the best of us did not return.”
In those first three hours of eloquent narration, I lived in Auschwitz.
The last two hours of the book were not as transcendent but were still fascinating. It describes his psycho-therapeutic method (Logotherapy), which helps a person identify their purpose in life and then to use that individual purpose to overcome the obstacles in their life. Of course, in just two hours there was not a lot of time for great detail but there were still some very solid nuggets of wisdom and several interesting case studies.
Lastly, I would be remiss if I did not mention Simon Vance's brilliant narration. A couple of years ago, I purchased The Complete Sherlock Holmes Collection, narrated by Simon Vance. He has a soothing voice without being monotonous and in the Sherlock Holmes stories, Vance had a nice range of character voices. While there is rare occasion for this in Man's Search for Meaning, Vance's regal voice helps to add weight to this amazing text.
If you are a scholar or just someone who could use a little perspective on your troubles, Man's Search for Meaning is five hours well spent.
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- Derek
- 21-07-15
Read This if You're Very Sick and/or Thinking About Ending Your Life
Does a chronic disease or messed up life have you feeling like you're at the end of the line? Are you feeling like it's time to end your life? Reading/listening to this book may end your suffering. The author, Dr. Frankl, has insights on life that may change your perspective. He was a Jewish doctor in Austria when the Nazis invaded in 1938. He had the opportunity to get out of the country, but decided to stay with his family. That was the wrong choice as he ended up in concentration camps, but this little book was the result. It was/is one of the most compelling that I've ever read. Steven Covey, the self help guru, made mention of this book in the first pages of his bestseller, "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People." It changed him. His self help system was based largely on this book. I could go on, but I'll just say that I read this book when I was in a dark, hopeless place after my doctor told me that my 11 month treatment would have to be extended to 18 months. Perhaps that sounds like no big deal, but I was living on savings and it meant that I would run out of money before the end. Obviously, that had me feeling pretty low. This book changed my perception of my lot and perked me right up! I couldn't change my fate, but I could change the way I thought and dealt with it. Best wishes & I hope you read this!
451 people found this helpful
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- David
- 30-10-11
Great book for those dealing w/ existential issues
Great book for anyone dealing with existential issues or anyone who wants an introduction into a sound anthropological psycho-therapy method. Frankl chronicles his experiences as a concentration camp inmate and from the viewpoint of his psycho-therapeutic / phenomenological method of finding meaning in all forms of existence, even the most sordid ones, and thus a reason to continue living. Through his experience, he developed a method of psycho-therapeutic method that he called logotherapy. His analysis focuses on a "will to meaning" as opposed to Adler's Nietzschean doctrine of "will to power" or Freud's "will to pleasure". Rather than power or pleasure, logotherapy is founded upon the belief that it is the striving to find a meaning in one's life that is the primary, most powerful motivating and driving force in humans. According to Frankl, "We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering" and that "everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances". For Frankl, it was his love for his wife that enabled him to survive Auschwitz and three other camps, not to mention many moments of "luck" or grace. Love, for Frankle, became the highest experience that a human can have. I appreciated the back story of Frankl's experience that lead to his method and agree with his conclusions, but I think some of his premises fall into a naturalistic fallacy. Nevertheless, he has a great ability to put into words the psychological and existential reality that one deals with when suffering or striving to understand a purpose in life.
82 people found this helpful
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- Ann Marie
- 27-12-04
I will isten again and again
The beginning of this book deals with the author's time in concentration camps, and the descriptions are all to the purpose of tracing his observations, which he later builds his theory of logotherapy on. Thus, the descriptions are not horrifying for horrors sake, but serve to educate one regarding the way these experiences were able to be withstood.
There were a few surprises in this book as well. He mentions logotherapy, and paradoxical intention, in relation to its use in treatment for people with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, among other things.
Most importantly, to myself, were the ways he showed how he had developed his ideas on man's search for meaning. These are ideas that he himself used to save his life while enduring four concentration camps. They are not ideals plucked out of the ether and argued with only intellect.
The narrator has a European accent, which I cannot place, but which added greatly to my listening experience. Sometimes the ideas flow thick and fast and it is a challenge to keep up while also taking in completely the ideas you just heard.
This is a book I will listen to repeatedly and learn from on each occassion.
237 people found this helpful
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- Miroslaw
- 11-12-08
Between stimulus and response, there is a space...
"Man's Search for Meaning" is the great summary of Frankl's view on life. Sold in 10 million copies - the book has two distinct parts - the first is a kind of memoir of the horrible time Frankl spent in at least four concentration camps during II World War, including Auschwitz. From all written stories about the life in camp - Frankl's relation is astonishing - there are no gruesome scenes, no ghastly relations - but through some cold description of prisoners shock, apathy, bitterness and finally deformation of morals - Frankl's account is one of the most fearful stories I have ever read. Yet, there is still a small light of humanness, still a germ of meaning in all these atrocities. Let's read: "We have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips."
The second part of the book deals with his LOGOTHERAPY - the fundamental theory Frankl promoted in XX century. Logotherapy seeks the cure for neurosis and existential emptiness in the search for meaning in life. There are passages in the book, also those about love and its importance that make one shiver....
Let's read two citations from this great book:
"An incurable psychotic individual may lose his usefulness but yet retain the dignity of a human being. This is my psychiatric credo."
"Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."
168 people found this helpful
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- Leerkkee
- 14-01-05
Humbling
All the other people that have reviewed this book have captured the content of the book very well. The only thing I have to add is that this is a book about an extraordinary man, with all of the horror he was subjected to he still remained a wonderful human. He is not bitter and does not hate the people who subjected him to these unspeakable acts, instead he tries to find the good or humor in their acts.
This book humbled me; I used to get upset when someone took my parking spot, or cut into my queue but now I smile as I have never had to endure real horror or injustice.
194 people found this helpful
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- Patrick McCarthy
- 23-09-19
Opportunism at its best (worst)
After reading rave reviews about how this book will change your life etc. I was excited to see what it had to impart and finally started this book, after having it on my shelf for many years. I read the first half and listened to the second half. It started off telling me what I wanted to hear, as a counterpoint to self help (that it is up to the individual to decide the meaning of things, personal responsibility, self-determinism) and as such falling in line with an existentialist slant that I've been on as that counterpoint to the self-help genre, which I've found of late to be populated by mostly hucksters, (ultimately helping themselves at the expense of vulnerable people) . The first half moved me, the stories, the unimaginable situation people found themselves in, their bravery in the face of certain death at an uncertain date, and I found his pyscho-analysis of the various approaches to the situation compelling, but even in the first half some little canaries were making themselves known. And then the second half, heavily cited with articles and texts that affirmed his logotherapy, a self-congratulatory tone in anecdotes of people that were miraculously healed by two deftly asked questions as to their view on losing a child, or all their children and wife. This led to what came across as a bunch of psychobabble, especially given that the above two factors had started to arouse my skepticism. At the end he quotes a fellow logoanalyst as saying all we can do is examine the lives of those who have seemed to find the meaning to life, as opposed to those who haven't, which was not only completely counter to his entire thesis, but also wreaked of the same swill that the glut of self-help gurus had been pushing. So I looked him up. Turns out his life in the camp was very different from how it was portrayed (note the audible summary at the top, 'spent YEARS in...',) In reality he was encamped for five months rather than five years, not at Auschwitz at all, but rather in a low-level camp where he was employed as a psycho-hygienist (the term itself another indicator of things not quite right in the book, being very Nazi soundingand apparently adopted by logotherapy from Nazi psychoanalytic practice) In essence, given these revelations, it seems as though he was an opportunist, studying his fellow prisoners to elucidate an already-established theory so as to validate it. In this light he would seem to have greatly diminished, while at the same time profiting off of the very real suffering of millions, and thus just another shill. That is not to say that his theories do not contain some elements that may resonate with some. One bright spot was that I found that all his anecdotes about prisoners could easily be correlated to people who are not the victims of such horror, but who nonetheless suffer from similar hopelessness. That's why I gave the story 2 stars. But ultimately it falls short on me in light of all of this, and leads me to the conclusion that you must figure it out yourself, taking bits and pieces from all these people perhaps but not adopting it wholeheartedly. I find it strange that not one review before mentioned any of this.
35 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 20-12-04
Invaluable path to a meaningful life
Frankel's account of his concentration experience is not as moving as those of Elie Wiesel, but the second half of the book on logotherapy draws together the threads of that experience into a structure for treating patients struggling with the existential crisis of life's meaning. Frankel, the founder of logotherapy (meaning therapy), is with Freud and Adler one of the primary Viennese psychiatrists of the 20th century. For Freud sexual conflicts were key to understanding mental turmoil. For Adler it was the struggle for personal power and superiority. Frankel thought that mental conflicts arose from a desire to know the why of existence. He thought that if we know the why we can live with any what. He said the why is clear if we can love someone and if we can work at something we enjoy.
The concentration camp experience also taught Frankel that he had control over his thoughts and feelings. No SS soldier could change his thoughts. He could always go somewhere in his mind. Frankel foreshadowed the present day's psychology of "think it and you will feel it."
56 people found this helpful