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Man’s Search for Meaning is a classic and an international bestseller. But as author Viktor E. Frankl describes, he originally planned to publish the work anonymously and only changed his mind at the urging of some friends. He wrote the book over the course of just nine days, not to gain fame, but to prove by the example of his own experience that “life holds a potential meaning under any conditions, even the most miserable ones.” The two main parts of the book are intended to complement each other. The first part, an autobiographical account of camp life, provides “existential validation” for the second part, where the lessons of Part One are distilled into a summary of the principles of logotherapy, a form of psychological treatment Frankl developed before the war. He concludes the preface by describing his decision to remain with his parents in Vienna, even though this meant likely deportation to one of the feared camps he had heard of, rather than to make use of his American immigration visa. He made his decision when he saw on his father’s desk a marble fragment salvaged from a synagogue destroyed by Vienna’s National Socialists. The gilded Hebrew letter on the fragment stood for one of the Ten Commandments: “Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days might be long upon the land.”

Read about the background of Man’s Search for Meaning author Viktor E. Frankl.

Next section Part One (Induction and Adjustments)

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