“Man’s Search for Meaning”, Viktor E. Frankl, © 2020.

Why I decided to read this book?
I chose to read this “Man’s Search for Meaning” after noting the recommendation made on the last page of Simon Sinek’s book “Start with the Why” © 2009 (Publisher: Penguin Random House UK.)

This book was first published in German with the title “Ein Psycholog erlebt das Konzentrationslager“ in 1946. I was a bit daunted with the second world war prisoner of war camp context, but it was surprisingly full of interesting observations. Also, the second section includes an introduction to the branch of Psychotherapy called Logotherapy.

My takeaways are as follows:
Logotherapy has 3 main avenues towards the meaning of life, paraphrased as follows:
(1)   Creation of work or the doing something useful (Achievement)
(2)   Experiencing events and people (Compassion or Love)
(3)   Find meaning in suffering and rise above it (Attitude)

A phase from the author that I like is “Saying yes to life in spite of everything”. Frankl also quotes Nietzsche twice; “He who has a WHY to live for can bear with almost any HOW” (p102, p138).

A paragraph in third section explains how to use pain, guilt and death and turn these into human achievement/ accomplishment, self-improvement and responsible action.

Has anyone read this? Any comments? What were your nuggets?