This book is first and foremost about survival. Viktor Frankl was cast into the Nazi network of concentration and extermination camps and miraculously he survived. His account in this book is less about his travails, what he suffered and lost, than it is about the sources for his strength to survive. “He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How.”
He describes poignantly those prisoners who gave up on life, who had lost all hope for a future and were inevitably the first to die. They died less from a lack of food or medicine than from a lack of hope, lack of something to live for. By contrast, Frankl kept himself alive and kept hope by summoning up thoughts of his wife and the prospect of seeing her again.
Frankl’s concern is less so the question of why most died but why anyone at all survived. His experience in Auschwitz reinforced one of his key ideas: Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure but a quest for meaning. The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life.
There are three possible sources for meaning:
Suffering, in and of itself is meaningless, we give our suffering meaning by the way in which we respond to it.
Frankl’s most enduring insight is simply this: Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond in a particular situation. You can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you.
He presents the statement, whether true or not, that human beings are completely and unavoidably influenced by their surroundings. But what about human liberty and spiritual freedom? Is the theory true that man is no more than a product of many conditional and environmental factors – be they of a biological, psychological, or sociological nature? The experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action. Apathy can be overcome, irritability suppressed. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, or independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.
Frankl uses the example of men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They were proof that 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. These men were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom -which cannot be taken away- that makes life meaningful and purposeful.
Man often has two choices in life: live an active life that gives him the opportunity to realize values in creative work. Or, a passive life, which affords him the opportunity to obtain fulfillment in experiencing art or beauty. But there is also purpose in a third way of life -that which is barren of creation and enjoyment- one of suffering. It’s an ineradicable part of life and the way man bears the cross gives him ample opportunity to add a deeper meaning to his life.
Frankl asserts that it doesn’t matter if we have nothing to expect from life. We can still find meaning: “What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life – daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfil the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.” The salvation of man is through love and in love. Even in the harshest parts of the day, exhausted, sleep-deprived, overworked, underfed, Frankl found salvation in the love that he had for his wife: “But my mind clung to my wife’s image, imaging it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.”
Basically, Frankl’s belief is that one’s approach to everything from life-threatening challenges to everyday situations helps to shape the meaning of our lives. Our search for happiness is not grounded in pleasure or material things but rather in finding meaning by the ways of: work, love, and unavoidable suffering. Self-actualization in a nutshell.