Man's Search for Meaning

by Viktor Frankl

***Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl has been recommended 5 times in our expert interviews***

In Man’s Search for Meaning Viktor Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist who survived the Nazi concentration camps, argued for the existentialist belief that even in the worst possible conditions, as human beings we still have control over how we think about our situation. The original title of the book, when it was first published in 1946, was Saying Yes to Life Anyway: A Psychologist Survives the Concentration Camp.

Recommendations from our site

“Frankl says, let me tell you and show you how I and my friends lived in the concentration camps. And if I can do it there, and suffer at that level, so you can you.” Read more...

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Michael Gervais,

“Walk into any bookstore and somewhere there’s a shelf that’s labelled self-help. In my view, you can just ignore the whole shelf and read Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.” Read more...

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Chris Kutarna, Political Scientist

“I chose this book because it’s an incredibly powerful and moving example of what existentialist thought can actually be for in real life, what good it can do, how it can help people.” Read more...

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Sarah Bakewell, Philosopher

“He was a psychiatrist in Vienna in the 1930s and then got carted off to Auschwitz with all his family. He was the only one that survived and he wrote this book.” Read more...

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Robert Kelsey, Entrepreneurs & Business People

“Frankl’s time in concentration camps was enlightening for him. He noticed that those most likely to survive had what he called a ‘will to meaning’.” Read more...

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Roman Krznaric, Philosopher