Man's Search For Meaning

The moving true story of psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl's time as a prisoner in Auschwitz and what we can learn from his experience.

OVER 16 MILLION COPIES SOLD

'A book to read, to cherish, to debate, and one that will ultimately keep the memories of the victims alive' John Boyne, author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

'Every human being should read this book' Simon Sinek, author of Start With Why

In 1942, just months after marrying his wife, Viktor Frankl and his family were sent, first to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, and then to Auschwitz.

A prominent Viennese psychiatrist before the war, Frankl was uniquely able to observe the way that he and other inmates coped with the experience of being in in the notorious concentration camp.

During his time in the camps, he noticed that those who comforted others and gave away their last piece of bread often survived the longest. He saw that the kind of person a prisoner became depended, not just the influence of the camp, but on an inner decision. Those who let go of their moral and spiritual selves eventually fell victim to the camp’s degrading effects; those who resisted were able to turn their suffering into a kind of inner triumph.

For Frankl, his experience was proof that everything can be taken from us except the ability to choose our attitude in any given set of circumstances. From this, he came to believe that our deepest desire is to search for meaning and purpose.

One of the seminal pieces of literature to emerge from World War 2, this powerful and inspiring book offers us all a way to transcend suffering and find meaning in the art of living.

Viktor E. Frankl was professor of neurology and psychiatry at the University of Vienna Medical School until his death in 1997. He was the founder of what has come to be called the Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy (after Freud's psychoanalysis and Adler's individual psychology)—the school of logotherapy.

Born in 1905, Dr. Frankl received the degrees of Doctor of Medicine and Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Vienna. During World War II he spent three years at Auschwitz, Dachau and other concentration camps.

Dr. Frankl first published in 1924 in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and has since published twenty-six books, which have been translated into nineteen languages, including Japanese and Chinese. He was a visiting professor at Harvard, Duquesne, and Southern Methodist Universities. Honorary Degrees have been conferred upon him by Loyola University in Chicago, Edgecliff College, Rockford College, and Mount Mary College, as well as by universities in Brazil and Venezuela. He was a guest lecturer at universities throughout the world and made fifty-one lecture tours throughout the United States alone. He was President of the Austrian Medical Society of Psychotherapy.