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Later German editions prefixed the title with Trotzdem Ja zum Leben Sagen ("Nevertheless Say Yes to Life"), taken from a line in Das Buchenwaldlied, a song written by Friedrich Löhner-Beda while an inmate at Buchenwald. [4]He draws his insights from occasional tidbits with Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Kafka, whom he considers to have been influential on his thought with regards to the condition of man. He also integrated key psychodynamic concepts which are essential in the practice of therapy, case analyses, and so on. Frankl also concludes that there are only two races of men, decent men and indecent. No society is free of either of them, and thus there were "decent" Nazi guards and "indecent" prisoners, most notably the kapo who would torture and abuse their fellow prisoners for personal gain.

Every human being gets much of his sense of his own reality out of what others say to him and think about him. But many modern people have gone so far in their dependence on others for their feeling of reality that they are afraid that without it they would lose the sense of their own existence.” To love oneself is to love others and to love others is to love oneself. There is no selfishness in genuine caring, compassion, empathy, and kindness. When one is aware, one can let go. By letting go, spontaneous joy comes into living for each moment. One feels an expansion rather than a constriction, actively alive rather than passively existing. This one was a mixed bag for me. I found some of this writing very interesting and insightful, while other parts of the book had me becoming super-frustrated byMay's long-winded prose...

Man's search for himself

Noble, Holcomb B. (September 4, 1997). "Dr. Viktor E. Frankl of Vienna, Psychiatrist of the Search for Meaning, Dies at 92". The New York Times. p.B-7 . Retrieved 22 May 2012. These gifts of humanity come with anxieties and fears, with inner-crises. People still struggle with not only their current states of development, but with all those influences which had come from before. Find sources: "Man's Search for Meaning"– news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( November 2011) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)

I HIGHLY recommend this to be a book you read for the rest of your life. We only have one shot to live our lives. No amount of money, success, property will come close to knowing you lived an honest and authentic life. To create oneself is to transcend the fit of old masks, to move beyond those dependencies of childhood, to seek unfamiliar places that haven’t yet been explored. The mature person has “the capacity to love something for its own sake, not for the sake of being taken care of or gaining a bootlegged feeling of prestige and power. Certainly loneliness and anxiety can be constructively met. Though this cannot be done through the deus ex machina of a ‘cosmic papa,’ it can be achieved through the individual’s confronting directly the various crises of his development, moving from dependence to greater freedom and higher integration by developing and utilizing his capacities, and relating to his fellows through creative work and love.” Author Rollo Reece May was an American existential psychologist and author of the influential book Love and Will. He is often associated with humanistic psychology and existentialist philosophy, and alongside Viktor Frankl, was a major proponent of existential psychotherapy. The book intends to answer the question "How was everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the mind of the average prisoner?" Part One constitutes Frankl's analysis of his experiences in the concentration camps, while Part Two introduces his ideas of meaning and his theory called logotherapy.

My Book Notes

Kitap adından da anlaşılacağı üzere bir insanın benlik inşası ve bulunduğu zamanla ve mekanla bütünleşmesi hakkında yazılmış. Yazarın sade, alıcı ve anlaşılır bir üslubu var; psikoloji kitabı diye kitabı terimlere boğmamış. Benim ise bu kitap hakkında en çok hoşuma giden şey salt psikolojik olarak değil de edebiyat, felsefe, sosyoloji ve hatta uluslararası ilişkilerden bile yararlanarak, sosyal bilimlerin hemen hemen her dalına değinerek ve psikolojiyi ayırmaktan ziyade dış unsurlarla birleştirerek yorumlaması. Çok yönlü bir kitap olması ve okuduğum diğer psikolojik kitaplardan bu yönde ayrılması beni oldukça tatmin etti. Kitapla ilgili iki de eleştirim olacaktı; birincisi 3.bölümde yer alan Yaratıcı Bilinç başlığının çok soyut ve havada kalan bir bölüm olması. Okumakta ve anlamakta oldukça zorlandım. İkincisi ise eleştiriden ziyade kitabın yazıldığı tarihle alakalı. Yazıldığı döneme (ilk yayınlanma tarihi olarak 1953 gösteriliyor yani ikinci dünya savaşından sonraki soğuk savaş dönemi) günümüzde olduğundan daha fazla uyması şaşırtıcı değil ve evet; hala günümüze ışık tutuyor fakat ara ara yapılan yazıldığı döneme ilişkin çıkarımlar bana olmasa da olurmuş dedirtti. Belki kitabın bir “remaster” versiyonu olsa fena olmazmış. Benzer şekilde yazarın “ülkemiz” diyerek Amerikan halkından bahsettiği yerler var. Dediğim gibi; bir yazarın bulunduğu zaman ve mekandan bahsetmesi abes değil tabiki de fakat konu varoluşçu psikoloji olduğundan insan biraz daha genel bir anlatım bekleyebiliyor. He spent the final years of his life in Tiburon on San Francisco Bay, where he died in October 1994. Strictly speaking, the process of being born from the womb, cutting free from the mass, replacing dependency with choice, is involved in every decision of one’s life, and even is the issue facing one on his deathbed. For what is the capacity to die courageously except the ultimate step in the continuum of learning to be on one’s own, to leave the whole? Thus every person’s life could be portrayed by a graph of differentiation — how far has he freed himself from automatic dependencies, become an individual, able then to relate to his fellows on the new level of self-chosen love, responsibility and creative work?”

However, aspects of the book have garnered criticism. One of Frankl's main ideas in the book is that a positive attitude made one better equipped for surviving the camps. Richard Middleton-Kaplan has said that this implies, whether intentionally or unintentionally, that those who died had given up and that this paved the way for the idea of the Jews going like sheep to the slaughter. [12] Holocaust analyst Lawrence L. Langer criticises Frankl's promotion of logotherapy and says the book has a problematic subtext. He also accuses Frankl of having a tone of self-aggrandizement and a general inhumane sense of studying-detachment towards victims of the Holocaust. [13] [14] These are not "stages" in the traditional sense. A child may certainly be innocent, ordinary or creative at times; an adult may be rebellious. The only association with certain ages is in terms of importance: rebelliousness is more important for a two year old or a teenager. People can create themselves by being aware of themselves as thinking-feeling-intuiting creatures deeply connected to nature. Their “selves” are not merely a sum of “roles” that they should perform to be accepted by the group. Each human can rather be fully integrated within themselves, fulfilling their potentialities. After going over the roots of the predicament and the etiology of the malady, May launches into what could aptly be called a neo-Freudian counter to Roger's and Maslow's humanistic psychology. At times it was incredibly insightful; at other times, it was infuriatingly limited; and at yet other times, painstakingly plodding in the writing and analysis. In short, it captured the best and the worst of the Freudian tradition. In his diagnosis, May was in abundant company, including the authors mentioned above. He was also clearly following in the footsteps of Freud and among others Karen Horney. In this vein, one of the frustrating limitations of the Freudian and neo-Freudian tradition was the use of individual case histories as evidence to support their theories. May was a product of this tradition and falls victim to this limitation. At best, an individual case history is an illustration; it is by no means a proof of concept. There are more than a few striking examples where this led May askew and on occasion to gross over-generalization. As a diagnostic tool for the culture, his replacement of the Orestes complex for Oedipus still seems incredibly off the mark. American has, historically and until the very recent past, been a culture that left the business and public sphere to men and largely delegated the home quarter's to the wives. While there are certainly individuals who deal with overbearing mothers, America has never been a matriarchy outside of the domestic quarters. Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager ("A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp").

Open Library

People often don’t know what they truly feel or want. They sense something missing inside themselves, an existential emptiness, an anxiety that gnaws deeply at their insides. While anxiety confuses reality, people can still choose to constructively engage with these negative feelings. “Just as anxiety destroys our self-awareness, so awareness of ourselves can destroy anxiety.” As time passed, however, the prisoner's experience in a concentration camp became nothing but a remembered nightmare. What is more, he comes to believe that he has nothing left to fear "except his God" (p. 115). Social acceptance seems like a cure to existential angst, but it only temporarily relieves loneliness, fear, and anxiety. People seek approval from others while symbolically returning to the warmth of the womb, and in turn, sacrificing freedom for dependency.