En esta noticia
In September 1942, Viktor Emil Frankl, a Jewish Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist, was arrested and sent to a Nazi concentration camp along with his wife and parents. Three years later, when the camps were liberated, most of his family had died, including his wife. He survived as prisoner number 119104.
From that experience came one of the most influential self-help books of the 20th century: Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl wrote the book over a nine-day period, and it was released in German in 1946. 13 years later, in 1959, the English translation was published and became an international bestseller.
Frankl saw this success as a symptom of the “mass neurosis of modern times,” since the title promised to deal with the question of life’s meaningfulness.
The importance of attitude when facing challenges
While in the camps, Frankl noticed that the prisoners who found a reason to live were better able to endure suffering. And from this idea comes one of the book’s central hypotheses: When people cannot change what happens to them, they can still decide how to face it.
“When we are no longer able to change a situation—just think of an incurable disease such as inoperable cancer—we are challenged to change ourselves,” he wrote.
In another well-known passage, he added, “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.”
What was Frankl’s reason to keep going
Frankl described how he helped two fellow prisoners who had lost all hope. The key was helping them see that life still expected something from them. For one, it was a child waiting for him abroad; for the other, a series of books he needed to finish.
A person who knows the “why” of their existence, Frankl wrote, “will be able to bear almost any ‘how.’”
What is the difference between happiness and meaning?
Frankl, who founded logotherapy, known as the third Viennese school of psychotherapy after those of Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler, believed that happiness should not be chased directly. “Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue,” he wrote.