Viktor Frankl on the Human Search for Meaning:
Viktor Frankl on the Human Search for Meaning VIKTOR FRANKL “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” BY MARIA POPOVA Celebrated Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl (March 26, 1905–September 2, 1997) remains best-known for his indispensable 1946 psychological memoir Man’s Search for Meaning (public library) — a meditation on what the gruesome experience of Auschwitz taught him about the primary purpose of life: the quest for meaning, which sustained those who survived. For Frankl, meaning came from three possible sources: purposeful work, love, and courage in the face of difficulty. In examining the “intensification of inner life” that helped prisoners stay alive, he considers the transcendental power of love: Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner se