ABSTRACT
In 1945, shortly after his release from a Nazi concentration camp, Viktor Frankl spent nine intensive days writing Ein Psycholog Erlebt das Konzentrationslager, a psychological account of his three years in Auschwitz, Dachau, and other Nazi prison camps. The original German version bears no name on the cover because Frankl was initially committed to publishing an anonymous report that would never earn its author literary fame. Expanded to include a short overview of “logotherapy” (“therapy of meaning”), the English version of Frankl’s book first appeared as From Death Camp to Existentialism and finally under its well-known title, Man’s Search for Meaning (1959/1992). The book detailed Frankl’s harrowing experiences as a prisoner of war and described his desperate efforts, and those of many inmates, to sustain hope in the face of unspeakable suffering. Prisoners who lost meaning simply gave up and died at Auschwitz. But those who managed to wrench some semblance of purpose amid the wretchedness maintained at least some chance for survival, Frankl asserted, although luck played a major role as well. Frankl argued that the human quest for meaning is a fundamental human propensity. Under certain extreme conditions, furthermore, finding meaning could make the difference between life and death.
