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The second and shorter of the book’s two main parts summarizes the tenets of logotherapy, an approach to psychological treatment Frankl developed before he was deported. What he saw in the concentration camps convinced him of the soundness of his method. Compared to psychoanalysis, logotherapy is focused less on the past and more on the future. Instead of encouraging introspection, it seeks to break the patient out of vicious mental circles that foster the development of neuroses. Frankl declares that human beings have a need for their lives to have some purpose—a “will to meaning.” He contrasts this view with Sigmund Freud’s claim that human beings primarily seek pleasure (“the will to pleasure,” as Frankl puts it) and with Alfred Adler’s view that human beings strive to attain superior status over others (“the will to power,” a phrase Adler took over from Friedrich Nietzsche). Where the “will to meaning” is concerned, Frankl believes that surveys of different groups of people (including French psychiatric patients and American college students) confirm this psychic need or drive to be very real. A lack of “felt meaning” in one’s present life can lead to psychological problems; neuroses formed in this way are “noögenic” because their origin is in the mind (the Greek word is nous). This is an existential problem, not a problem rooted in unconscious or instinctual mental processes.

Read about Main Idea #3: Some things can be achieved only when they are not consciously attempted.

Elaborating on the existential problem, Frankl suggests that inner tension is “an indispensable prerequisite of mental health.” What Frankl appears to have in mind is that what gives meaning to life is some purpose or goal, the fulfillment of which requires struggle, and that therefore a person whose life is meaningful will always be under a certain load. The opposite state is boredom, a sort of “existential vacuum.” Logotherapy seeks to aid the patient in filling this vacuum, but there is no universal recipe, no single best way to live a meaningful life. Everyone must meet the challenge of living meaningful lives in the context of their individual situations. That said, there are three paths, broadly speaking, to a meaningful life. First, a person might set out to create some work or perform some deed. Second, a person might find meaning in experiencing something or loving someone. And third, a person might find meaning by taking the right kind of attitude toward suffering. Frankl believes the first category to be self-explanatory and therefore says little about it. In the second category, he mentions (unfortunately without elaboration) the experience of goodness, truth and beauty in nature or culture. He says more about love: it is (he asserts) not secondary to, or derived from, sex. If anything, sex is properly understood as an expression of love, which promotes the development of the full potential of both the lover and the beloved. As for the third category, Frankl suggests that one can (depending on circumstance) view suffering as something to be endured for another’s sake, or simply as a challenge to be faced up to bravely. He offers examples from his clinical experience to illustrate what he means.

Read an an explanation of a quote (#2) about the three paths to a meaningful life.

Frankl goes on to describe some specific techniques of logotherapeutic treatment. The most important of these is “paradoxical intention,” which involves a deliberate effort to bring about the thing one is suffering from or seeking to avoid. For instance, a person suffering from insomnia might be advised to try to stay awake for as long as possible. Sleep then comes more easily. Frankl gives other examples in the same vein, related to sexual difficulty, to stuttering, to excessive sweating, and even to chronic writer’s cramp. To conclude Part Two, Frankl circles back to the problem of the existential vacuum. The root source, Frankl believes, of the boredom and lack of meaning many people experience is what he calls the nihilistic philosophy of “nothingbutness,” the theory that “man is nothing but the result of biological, psychological, and sociological conditions, … the pawn and victim of outer influences or inner circumstances.” Frankl insists that, on the contrary, human beings are free to choose how they live their lives, in ways that cannot be predicted in advance. Even a severely psychotic patient retains a “residue of freedom” that confers dignity.

Read about how man needs meaning more than he needs pleasure or status (Main Idea #1).

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