Exceptionally deep.
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What gives this book a very distinguished credibility and authenticity is the pertinent fact that the author formulated his ideas while as a Holocaust prisoner. Immediately the reader is taken out of the comfort zone as the captive and dehumanising realities of such a barbaric context are presented.
Frankl looks very very deeply at what provides human strength to get over the most forlorn, hopeless and torturing circumstances. Nietzche's dictum "What doesn't kill us only make us stronger?" planted itself in my mind throughout this book and just did not move.
It's very difficult to find any sort of fault with any story where humanity can triumph inhumanity, it really is. There's just such a sense of sadness and misery that the fact that someone can ruminate the meaning of life is relation to love is almost surreal. It's almost as if every veneer of life is stripped back such that all that is left is a naked conciousness which tries to assert itself like a immutable flame which must burn for some intrinsic, innate reason that can only be explained by a very penetrating and intense love.
It's not a scientific approach with a ground breaking theory. It's a remarkable human story containing a most precious and valid reflection from an intelligent man who was lucky and strong enough to make it through something our worst nightmares could not even come close to.
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Throw out your self-help books!
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This is an utterly remarkable book for so many reasons. The work as a whole is 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 it is a truly 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One warning though -- his existentialist philosophy is somewhat outdated and really needs to be complemented by a contemporary understanding of human nature. If this review had been written near the time that this book was first published I would have given it, without reservation, five stars.
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The search for meaning through experience and psychology
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I was shocked by the small size when I received this book from Amazon. I had heard so much about the book, and expected a great deal from it. Compared to most books in the self-help section, this book is tiny, but Frenkl conveys his story clearly and succinctly in 150 pages.
Assuming that his readers will have read or heard the more gruesome details of the concentration camp, Frenkl describes the daily reality of a prisoner's experience. With poignant moments scattered throughout the first (autobiographic) part of the book, he describes how people survived, supported others and died in that world. As a psychologist, he also tells the reader how and why he and others made some of their choices during that time. On its own this is a gripping read.
In the second part of the book, he relates this experience to his own form of psychology - logotherapy. This form of psychology focuses on man's search for the purpose and meaning in life. This part of the book becomes quite academic at times, but is well worth persevering with, to put the earlier part into current context.
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Prepare to be inspired and humbled
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This book was recomneded to me by a good friend, I was hesitant to read it due to the concentration camp element being very upsetting and emotional however I am pleased to say there is enough information about the author first to warm you up and also a lot of reasoning behind his choices of the content he has included and his decision not to go into too much detail over the experiences in the concentration camp, it allows you to understand what was going on in the minds of the prisoners without being too upsetting it also stays very true to the subject matter and only delves a little deeper into the suffering when its necassary to explaine some very difficult subjects, how the choices that we make affect our lives and how ultimatley no matter what hand fate deals us we still have the freedom to choose how we cope a humbling read inspiring and authentic a must.
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"Man is ultimately self-determining",
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Viktor Frankl was a distinguished neurologist and psychiatrist and the founder of logotherapy. He was also the 32 books which were published in 32 languages-
After three horrific years at Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps , Dr Frankl gained his freedom only to learn that his entire family had been murdered. But during , the terrible suffering and degradation of those grim years , he developed his theory of logotherapy.
The first half of the book delves into his experiences in the concentration camps.
The author analyses the character of the Capo-prisoners chosen to be trustees and guards of the other inmates- usually because of their brutality and meanness.
Frankl observes that 'the best of us did not return'from the concentration camps.
He examines three phases of the inmates mental reaction to concentration camp life-the period following his admission ; the period when he is well entrenched in camp routine; and the period following his release and liberation".
Ultimately in recounting the horrors and dehuminization of concentration camp existance , of being continually stalked by death , , Frankl explains how he survived , and kept his humanity at the same time. The author explains how every moment in the camps offered the opportunity to make decisions about whether or not to submit to the powers which "threatened to rob you of your inner self , your inner freedom."
The point made was that ultimately the type of person the prisoner would become , was the result of an inner decision , and not of camp influences alone.
Frankl refers to the martyrs whose behaviour in the camp , whose suffering and death , demonstrated the fact that their last inner freedom could not be lost.
"It can be said that they where worthy of their suffering ; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievment. It is this spiritual freedom which cannot be taken away- that makes life meaningful and purposeful."
Frabkl speaks of the dream which kept him alive in the camp , of lecturing and practising psychiatry- that is essentially G-D's commission to Frankl. The prisoner who lost faith in his future was doomed.
The prisoners said to each other that no earthly happyness could alleviate the suffering they had experienced in the camps , but Frankl writes that "The crowning experience of all , for the homecoming man is the wonderful feeling that , afetr all he has suffered , there is nothing he need fear anymore-except for G-D".
The second part of the book explains Frankl's theory of psychology known as logotherapy.
"According to logotherapy , the striving to find a meaning in one's life is the primary motivational force in man".
Frankl deals with the universality of values. He notes that in the Nazi concentration camps those who knew that their was a task waiting for them to be fulfilled where more likely to survive".
On the meaning of life one cannot live for some general goal alone. That goal must be meaningfully present in every moment to make the moment alive in terms of it's destination and future.
The meaning of life is that G-d asks every person to answer for his or her life i.e "What will you make of your life , my child".
Only personal choices are authentic choices . Life in it's ultimate meaning confronts us with other people whose lives we influence by the way we are towards them.
"A human being is not one thing among others , things determine each other , but man is ultimately self-determining".
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