Man's Search For Meaning : Is it worth the suffering?

There are few books which don't need a review or comments but you desire everyone to read and digest them. 

"Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor E. Frankl was published by Rider publication in 1946. It was originally published as "From Death Camp to Existentialism". 

The book is personal experience of the author who was a Jewish psychologist and sent to concentration camp during the Second World War by Nazis. The book is divided into 2 parts namely Experiences in Concentration Camp and Logotherapy, which has been propagated by the author as a new theory. He mentions 3 stages of the Prisoner's mental reaction on being admitted to the camp. The first phase: the period following his admission in the camp which is marked by shock. The second stage is when he is assimilated in the routine of the camp and it becomes his whole life marked by apathy, the main symptom of the second phase was a necessary mechanism of self-defence and the period following release from the camp which is marked by bitterness and disillusionment when he returns to his former life. 

I have reproduced below few quotes from the book verbatim which are complete in themselves.

1. An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behaviour. 
2. When someone is punished without any fault of his, it is not the physical pain which hurts the  most (and this applies to adults as much as to punished children); it is the mental agony caused by the injustice, the unreasonableness of it all.
3. The salvation of man is true love, and in love. 
4. The attempt to develop a sense of humour and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learnt while mastering the art of living. Yet it is possible to practice the art of living, even in a concentration camp, all those suffering is omnipresent, to draw an analogy: a man's suffering is similar to the behaviour of gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul, and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore, the size of human suffering is relative. 
5. No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty, whether in a similar situation, he might not have done the same. 
6. There may be few cases, but they offer sufficient 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. 
7. Dostoevsky said once there is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my suffering.
8. The latin word finis has two meanings: the end or the finish, and a goal to reach. 
9. Nietzsche stated, "who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how."
10. The tasks, and therefore, the meaning of life, differ from man to man, and from moment to moment. 
11. There was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears are witness that a man had the greatest of courage, "the courage to suffer."
12. What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you not only experiences, but all we have done, whatever great thoughts we may have had, and all we have suffered, all this is not lost, though it is passed: we have bought it into being.

In the second part of the book, the author describes his own method of study named logotherapy. He has discussed certain concepts like existential frustration and noogenic neuroses.  He adds that a man’s concern is even his despair over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress, but by no means a mental disease. 

The existential vacuum is prevalent in 20th century and in order to feel connected, the person does either confirmism or totalitarianism in which he wishes persons to act as per his wish. 

The logotherapy believes in the dictum “live as if you were living already for the second time, and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now." According to logotherapy, a person can discover meaning in life in three different ways: 

1. by creating a work or doing a deed 

2. to by experiencing something or encountering someone 

3. by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering. 

On the issue of freedom, which is a buzz word in these times, the author states that "freedom, however, is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is, but the negative aspect of the whole phenomena whose positive aspect is responsibleness. In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into near arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend that the statue of liberty on the East Coast to be supplemented by a statue of responsibility on the West Coast." 

The book ends on a very positive note with quote "Since Auschwitz, we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima, we know what is at stake."

Read and thank me later.