Read Man’s Search
Reading Questions on Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
These questions are listed in the order you will find them in the book.
1. What is the question Dr. Frankl is trying to answer?
2. Who are Capos?
3. What does Frankl say happened when a transport or convoy was announced?
4. Complete: “We who have come back, by the aid of many ______________________
_______________________________________________________________________
did not return.”
5. What value or significance did cigarettes have?
6. What are the “three phases of the inmate’s mental reactions to camp life”?
1. _________________ (p. 12, Pocket ed.)
2. _________________ (p. 35, Pocket ed.)
3. _________________ (p. 133, Pocket ed.)
+Provide some explanation and examples of each of the three.
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Reading Questions II on Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
These questions are listed in the order you will find them in the book.
(The page numbers are for the Pocket edition)
7. What does Frankl say was the culminating point of the first phase? (21)
8. What levity or relief did the prisoners have? (24)
9. About what is the statement “Textbooks tell lies”?
10. In this regard, what surprises does Frankl note?
11. What does the phrase “run into the wire” refer to? (27)
12. What advice does the experienced prisoner give to Frankl and the others?
13. What is the primary feature of the second phase? (32)
14. When the guards mistreated the prisoners, what did Frankl say was worse
than the physical pain? (36)
15. How did apathy enable the prisoners to preserve life? (43-44)
16. As the prisoners regress to primitive concerns, what illustration does Frankl
use to show how bad reality was for prisoners? (45)
17. Frankl reports that prisoners have numerous coping devices. Give details
about these strategies: (51-64)
Eating food-Sex-Travelling through Vienna-Culture-Intellectual sustenance-Nature’s beauty-Art/music/humor—
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Edition
Page
Pocket
75
Passage
Explanation
One Day
Sick bay actually a relief from work
Perspective on misery
Ivan hoped for day off
Pocket
77-8
Frankl choosing to serve as doctor to typhus patients
To do productive labor, even if death resulted; “taken care of”
Ivan felt better after going to work
80
“It was, therefore, in an attempt to save one’s own skin that one
literally tried to submerge into the crowd.”
80-1
private time
83
“little value was placed on life in camp”
83 “One literally became a number”
84 Number exchange for sake of list (Moslem, cf. 29 and 71)
85 Answering truthfully but limited—not calculating
88 resulting in going to a rest camp vs. cannibalism
88-9 Death in Teheran story
89 Fate—apathy usually, then the necessity of choosing not to escape—staying with patients
instead; Red Cross delegate arrive just as camp was about to be evacuated
98 “We found out just how uncertain human decisions are, especially in matters of life and
death.”
98-99 Additional thoughts on apathy
99 hunger; lack of sanitation; no nicotine nor caffeine
Inferiority complex or false superiority
101 inspections are a stress, yet also merely superficial; it was hard to remain balanced
between apathy and anxiety
103 “…What about human liberty?” vs. surroundings or environment
“The experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action.”
104”…everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms—
to choose one’s attitude in any give set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
105”…in the final analysis it becomes clear…inner decision…influences alone.”
106 “If there is a meaning in life at all…. Without suffering and death human life cannot be
complete.”
107 alternatives; “Everywhere man is confronted….”
109 Young woman and tree
110 “provisional existence of unknown limit”; uncertainty-decay Soviet 25-year sentence
112 altered time experience; without future and without goal
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115
Bismarck: “Life is like being at the dentist. You always think that the worst is
still to come, and yet it is over already.”
115-17
imagining himself out of bad circumstances into a better
future…Spinoza quote: “Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as
soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.”
118-20
loss of faith in the future and giving up…prisoner died after dream of
“March thirtieth.”
119
faith in the future connected with the will to live…Nietzsche quote: He who
has a why to live for can bear with almost any how. (121)
122
“…it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life
expected from us….”
125-27
preventing suicide
127-132
Frankl’s speech to fellow prisoners on not giving up; applicable quotes
from Nietzsche: “That which does not kill me, makes me stronger”;
and a poet: “What you have experienced, no power on earth can take
from you.”
133ff. The third stage of a prisoner’s mental reaction: the psychology of the prisoner
after his liberation.
134 The psychological make-up of the guards
137 Two races: decent and indecent…in all groups.
138 The psychology of the prisoner who has been released.
140 Flowers do not evoke feeling…ex-prisoners had to relearn the ability to be
pleased.
140 Depersonalization…dream-like
141 The urge to talk
142 Prayer: “I called to the Lord from my narrow prison and He answered me in the
freedom of space.”
144 Feelings and actions of anger or vengeance
145 Bitterness and disillusionment
147 Nothing left to fear.
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Part Two: Basic Concepts of Logotherapy
1.
Will to Meaning
2.
Existential Frustration
3.
Noögenic Neuroses
4.
Noö-Dynamics
5.
The Existential Vacuum
6.
The Meaning of Life
7.
The Essence of Existence
8.
The Meaning of Love
9.
The Meaning of Suffering
10.
Meta-Clinical Problems
11.
A Logodrama
12.
The Supra-Meaning
13.
Life’s Transitoriness
14.
Logotherapy as a Technique
15.
The Collective Neurosis
16.
The Critique of Pan-Determinism
17.
The Psychiatric Credo
18.
Psychiatry Rehumanized
19.
Postscript 1984
20.
The Case for Tragic Optimism
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