Review ~ Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankel

TITLE: Man's Search for Meaning
AUTHOR: Viktor Frankl
COPYRIGHT: 11/9/2004
TYPE: audio book
PAGES: 184
SERIES:
no

REASON FOR LISTENING:
I have been wanting to read this book for a while and thought it would be a great first audio read.

SUMMARY
Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl's memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Between 1942 and 1945 Frankl labored in four different camps, including Auschwitz, while his parents, brother, and pregnant wife perished. Based on his own experience and the experiences of others he treated later in his practice, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. Frankl's theory-known as logotherapy, from the Greek word logos ("meaning")-holds that our primary drive in life is not pleasure, as Freud maintained, but the discovery and pursuit of what we personally find meaningful.

At the time of Frankl's death in 1997, Man's Search for Meaning had sold more than 10 million copies in twenty-four languages. A 1991 reader survey for the Library of Congress that asked readers to name a "book that made a difference in your life" found Man's Search for Meaning among the ten most influential books in America. 

THOUGHTS/OPINIONS
This was a deep book and at times I found it hard to continue to listen to it. Which could be a good thing that I used it as a audio or a bad thing depending how you look at it. This was an honest to God approach of a therapy discovered through heartache and trials. This man went through things that most of us couldn't even phantom in our worst of nightmares and yet came out of it was positive thoughts and regards. He also set forth on a "purpose" driven quest to help others find just that their purpose. Logotherapy isn't a hard therapy to grasp. Sure it has a lot of different phrases or meanings but in general the purpose behind it is simple. When people have a why they can survive almost any how. When people have a meaning or purpose to live for the things done to them won't matter and they can forge through it.

WHAT I LIKED
* The man was very honest with his experience and trials. He admitted the times that it didn't go the way it should of the times he had all but given up. He admitted his faults things he wishes he had done different and the times where sheer luck is what prevented him from passing. Yet at the same time he also admitted the good things he had done in such a humble manner it was as if he didn't realize what a difference they had made.
*It was a hard book to listen to and yet it was an easy book to get sucked into. The horrors where the hardest but the way they were told were so real, so vivid, you almost couldn't help but image what it was like for him.
* The therapy issue at the end was easy to understand and came with great examples of how to use logotherapy and when to use it. As well as numerous stories that came with it and examples that proved when to pull out what technique and why.

WHAT DID NOT WORK FOR ME
* The person reading the book attempted accents that lost me.
* The person reading the book at times was almost too dry (not his fault it was a hard listen)
* This was a very difficult book to listen to in a car heading to a place that was also going to tell me of horrors and terrors. Not really a "light" listen to or "light read"

FAVORITE PART/FAVORITE QUOTE
"He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how"
"Emotion which is suffering ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and concise picture of it"
"What is really needed is a fundamental change in our attitude towards life"
Fear brings about that which one is afraid of

RECOMMEND TO A FRIEND?
I do recommend this book. It is heavy but the lessons learned from it are so worth it.

READING CHALLENGE
new author challenge

TOTAL BOOKS READ THIS YEAR
34