Man's Search for Meaning cover
Purpose & Meaning

Man's Search for Meaning

Viktor E. Frankl · 1946

We can't always choose what happens — we can choose what it means.

Summary

A Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist, Frankl draws from his concentration camp experience to argue that the deepest human drive is not pleasure or power, but meaning. Those who survived the camps, he observed, were often those who held onto a why — a person to live for, work to finish, a purpose. Out of this came logotherapy: the therapeutic search for meaning even in unavoidable suffering.

Key highlights

More in Purpose & Meaning