Viktor Frankl
Man’s Search For Meaning
Frankl’s thesis:
Life holds a potential meaning under any conditions,
even the most miserable ones (xvi)
Viktor Frankl (1905-1997)




Prisoner in the Nazi
concentration camps at
Auschwitz and Dachau
(1942-1945)
Parents, brother, wife,
and children died in the
camps
Logotherapy –
existential approach to
psychological practice
Rejects the deterministic
view of human nature
(not fatalistic)
Preface
 Methodology: “existential validation” - examine the
most extreme case of apparent meaninglessness and
show meaning is possible even there
 “Validation”
– Not “proof”
– Strong reasons to find reasonable and true; not
contradicted by anything known; “valid”
 “Existential”
– We spent some time examining the “existential
worldview”
– In general it is “based on a person’s lived experience” the
“actual”
The Human Condition
There are six dimensions of the human
condition according to the existential
approach:
1. The capacity for self-awareness
2. Freedom and responsibility
3. Striving for identity and relationship to
others
4. The search for meaning
5. Anxiety as a condition of living
6. Awareness of death and nonbeing
The first stage
 the process of discovering the true nature of
the circumstances of camp life
– Shock
– Humor
– Curiosity
 there are two possible responses:
– acceptance
– suicide
The second stage
 maintaining oneself in these
circumstances
 relative apathy
 survival at all costs
 remnants of humanity
 discovery of the key to survival
The final stage
 release and liberation
 coming back to normalcy
 transition is a process that cannot be
rushed
 the experience of liberation seems
difficult to describe, but results
ultimately in an experience of personal
affirmation, i.e., life is meaningful
after all.
The key to survival (Frankl’s
existentialism)
 The last of human freedoms: to choose your
attitude in the face of life’s circumstances
 Nature of Frankl’s universe: a here-and-now
world of human existence, with every
moment of each person’s life is pregnant with
unique potential for meaning
 Our role: we are free to find meaning in our
lives
Frankl’s Existentialism (cont’d)
 The flaw: while we can readily find meaning
in creativity and relationship, suffering and
death seem to lead us to conclude we are in
fact unfree and our lives at root meaningless to yield the last of human freedoms
 The remedy: accept unavoidable suffering as
a necessary part of human existence, thereby
discovering the existential meaning in life
Frankl’s Existentialist
Perspective
 The "really" real is what I experience
 In any experience I have the freedom to
choose how I will act (not determined)
 Man is driven by a need to find meaning
– not pleasure/pain avoidance (Freud)
– or mastery (Adler/Nietzsche)
 Many problems we face are "meaning"
problems — we fail to see/lack the courage
to find hope; but our freedom to choose
means we have a responsibility to choose
What is Existentialism???
 A slippery concept…an approach to a
way of looking at the world as
opposed to a systematic philosophy
 More a genus of worldviews than a
single species
 Existentialists can be religious (Frankl,
Buber) or atheist (Camus, Sartre)
Common Themes of Existentialism
1. the personal struggle with existence
is the core of what is essentially real
2. this reality can never be abstract and
can only be found in the concrete
circumstances of a person’s life
3. we are free to choose our response to
life’s circumstances
Two Existential Approaches
 A better classification of existentialist
approaches is whether they see
transcendence in reality or simply absurdity
 Transcendence – reality is more than what
we experience with our senses
– e.g. Martin Buber, Viktor Frankl, Søren
Kierkegaard
 Absurd (ab surd = from meaninglessness) –
without meaning, or possibility of meaning;
something completely out of any context
– e.g. Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre
– (Friedrich Nietzsche and Fyodor Dostoevsky are
somewhere in the middle)
Existentialism and Absurdity
 All existentialism confronts the
absurdity of human existence:
– Sartre: "Man is condemned to be free" —
so deal!
– Camus: Sisyphus triumphs by embracing
his fate.
Frankl vs. Absurdity
 Frankl is much more hopeful than others.
 We struggle with meaning not because life has




none, but because it’s “too big” to be fully realized
in any given moment (the only way we can
experience reality).
Contrast Sartre who writes, “Man is condemned to
be free.”
But for Frankl this same freedom holds the
possibility of transcending the apparent
meaninglessness of suffering and death
Frank suggests the reason we fail to see the
transcendental meaning is not because it isn’t there
Rather, it’s too big to fit into human experience