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Publisher's Summary

Internationally renowned psychiatrist, Viktor E. Frankl, endured years of unspeakable horror in Nazi death camps. During, and partly because of, his suffering, Dr. Frankl developed a revolutionary approach to psychotherapy known as logotherapy. At the core of his theory is the belief that man's primary motivational force is his search for meaning. 

Man's Search for Meaning is more than a story of Viktor E. Frankl's triumph: it is a remarkable blend of science and humanism and an introduction to the most significant psychological movement of our day.
©1959, 1962, 1984 Viktor E. Frankl (P)1995 Blackstone Audiobooks
Philosophy Psychology
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What the critics say

"An enduring work of survival literature." (The New York Times)

Editorial Review

Through his experiences in a concentration camp, Vienna-born Viktor Frankl unpacks logotherapy in a nutshell, offering listeners a new way to give life meaning.

As a coping mechanism for dealing with the trauma of Nazi concentration camps in Auschwitz, Austrian psychiatrist Viktor E. Frankl learnt to focus on a continual search for meaning in order to make sense of the chaos and pain around him, and find strength through the very essence of human existence. Through this practice, he developed logotherapy, which in turn provided the inspiration and foundation for his renowned book, Man's Search for Meaning. Viktor Frankl presents this work of psychotherapy, which addresses mental health and our relationship with the meaning of life. By focusing on a sense of purpose and meaning in everything, he believes that human beings can lead a meaningful life and find the inner purpose in all people and all things.

As a World War II Holocaust survivor, Dr. Frankl saw tragedy and hardship. What’s more, he experienced the true meaning of a sacrifice in his own life. This suffering forced him to find his own way of coping, and eventually led to the theory of logotherapy and finding the will to meaning. A revolutionary work of psychology, this book and its practices have been widely praised and accepted across the literary, psychiatry and science worlds. One of the most influential books on psychoanalysis, Man's Search for Meaning has become one of the forerunners of the study of existential analysis and human freedoms.

This audiobook adaptation has been translated to English and narrated by Simon Vance. Vance is an experienced and decorated reader, who has won a number of Audie Awards for lending his voice to great books. He brings a clarity and serious tone to this title, delivering this insightful content with ease.

What listeners say about Man's Search for Meaning

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    5 out of 5 stars
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True soul of humanity

Page after page of the distilled soul of humanity.

Dripping with the reality of true human essence.

Reading this book, you can not help but liberate your understanding of potential for the greatness of the human spirit; standing against adversity, pushing again darkness, and in simple common sense way, making a humble effort which makes a difference, finding meaning not only for yourself, but others.

Victor Frankl, I am deeply grateful for your remarkable life, a voice from the past, so relevant to today.

I am indebted to your insights, to your courage, to your work of perseverance, and for this book which is a triumph of the human spirit.

8 people found this helpful

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  • tox
  • 2020-06-23

A sad but introspective analysis

I love and loathe how men can take the human mind and condense it to such simplicity as cause = affect, it always seems to lead to a feeling loss of control over one's fate or mental being.
Equally a good psychology book should leave you ravished for mental resource and fortitude, then when placed in ones library shelf, it acts as a perverted statue that you can gaze on and say " I got through that and was only a little scarred" .
To that end it's a fantastic read if you enjoy the act of mental masochism.
I do recommend this book, and even think it should be nominated or investigated as a required reading in high school, but only for those who desire to expand their minds and are willing to pay the mentioned mental tax.
"I got through that just barely and was only scared and scarred a little"

6 people found this helpful

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Incredibly Interesting

This book was so interesting, it really makes you think. The conclusions that Mr. Fankl drew from his experiences have changed the way that I look at things. #Audible1

5 people found this helpful

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Everyone should read this book before they die.

Frankl's work changed psychiatry. He would ultimately inspire generations of physicians and psychologists alike to focus on meaning through human experience.

8 people found this helpful

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Why is this not a standard school text?

In our age of grasping for meaning, while simultaneously excising faith from our lives, we have a great need for the legacy of Dr Frankl. So too do we need the reminder that inhumanity did not end with the closing of Auschwitz. There are decent people and there are the indecent people, and this is not confined to any particular time or place.
Meaning exists, we have but to take responsibility for it.

3 people found this helpful

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Powerful

Amazing book, that everyone should read, going through hard times or not, its a must read.
This is giving me another perspective of my life and the situation I’m in that I cannot change.
Im so happy i found this book at the right time, it was the time where some really dark thoughts started manifesting, and this masterpiece gives me such a great perspective on suffering and life in general.
Thank you Dr. Frankl, your work and help is very appreciated 🙏🏽

2 people found this helpful

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Meaningful and rich

This book should be a basic read for anyone who is capable of breathing. I am thankful for having read and having access to this book..

1 person found this helpful

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Eye opening

It made me reflect on my very privileged life and my pettiness when things don’t go my way. It was painful to hear of the unneeded and cruel suffering that was enforced and the importance of speaking out. The endurance and strength of others was
incredible and unimaginable. It makes me want re prioritize what I give importance and attention to. It makes me want to see the value in life, my own and others where I can contribute.

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Short and insightful!

It was great, I was hesitant but it was worth it -- it's short and captivating

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condensed wisdom

Very compelling, thought-provoking therapeutic philosophy that was accessible and rich. Definitely worth the read. Great reader who effortlessly nails the accents and German vocabulary.

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  • Troy
  • 2015-08-25

One of the Most Important Books Ever Written

There are a handful of books that should truly be required and desired reading for everyone across the world. This is one of them. It is simultaneously repulsive and compelling, disheartening and hopeful.

I read this book perhaps 20 years ago. The older I get, the more I find new meaning in it. There are a great many self-help books out there that go on and on and say nothing. Then there's a book like this that offers an unblinking look at one of history's most horrific events from an inside perspective and uses that as a lead-in to offer to us a scientific embrace of the three little words that could mean the most to all of us.

Love. Faith. Hope.

146 people found this helpful

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  • Aschecte
  • 2018-09-26

Adversity-Suffering-Meaning

This is a book I would normally pass on the shelf. A friend who happens to be a Psychologist recommendedI I read this; after a terrible diagnosis I received. Never and I mean NEVER has a book enveloped me, inspired me, or, said exactly what I needed to hear, and on a level compare my own troubles to. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has given up on living a meaningful life; better even know what a meaningful life can be. I would give this book 5 stars, it didn’t solve my problem, but gave me the tools to do so on my own.

84 people found this helpful

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  • William
  • 2018-04-03

I lived in Auschwitz for three hours

My mentor (a man from the Baby-Boomer generation) recommended this book to me by saying, "it was the single most influential book I ever read." With a endorsement like that, I had no choice but to read it. I am happy to say, he did not oversell this book.

The first three hours of Man's Search for Meaning, is a psychological account of Frankl's time in the Nazi prison camps. While I have seen countless documentaries about the atrocities that took place in those camps, Frankl made it far more real.

Frankl explains, not just the physical torments but rather, the mental toll it took on him and the other prisoners. However, Frankl does not attempt to paint himself as a hero - quite the contrary. In perhaps the most sobering line in the book, Frankl says, "We who have come back, by the aid of many lucky chances or miracles - whatever one may choose to call them - we know: the best of us did not return.”

In those first three hours of eloquent narration, I lived in Auschwitz.

The last two hours of the book were not as transcendent but were still fascinating. It describes his psycho-therapeutic method (Logotherapy), which helps a person identify their purpose in life and then to use that individual purpose to overcome the obstacles in their life. Of course, in just two hours there was not a lot of time for great detail but there were still some very solid nuggets of wisdom and several interesting case studies.

Lastly, I would be remiss if I did not mention Simon Vance's brilliant narration. A couple of years ago, I purchased The Complete Sherlock Holmes Collection, narrated by Simon Vance. He has a soothing voice without being monotonous and in the Sherlock Holmes stories, Vance had a nice range of character voices. While there is rare occasion for this in Man's Search for Meaning, Vance's regal voice helps to add weight to this amazing text.

If you are a scholar or just someone who could use a little perspective on your troubles, Man's Search for Meaning is five hours well spent.

75 people found this helpful

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  • Derek
  • 2015-07-21

Read This if You're Very Sick and/or Thinking About Ending Your Life

Does a chronic disease or messed up life have you feeling like you're at the end of the line? Are you feeling like it's time to end your life? Reading/listening to this book may end your suffering. The author, Dr. Frankl, has insights on life that may change your perspective. He was a Jewish doctor in Austria when the Nazis invaded in 1938. He had the opportunity to get out of the country, but decided to stay with his family. That was the wrong choice as he ended up in concentration camps, but this little book was the result. It was/is one of the most compelling that I've ever read. Steven Covey, the self help guru, made mention of this book in the first pages of his bestseller, "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People." It changed him. His self help system was based largely on this book. I could go on, but I'll just say that I read this book when I was in a dark, hopeless place after my doctor told me that my 11 month treatment would have to be extended to 18 months. Perhaps that sounds like no big deal, but I was living on savings and it meant that I would run out of money before the end. Obviously, that had me feeling pretty low. This book changed my perception of my lot and perked me right up! I couldn't change my fate, but I could change the way I thought and dealt with it. Best wishes & I hope you read this!

451 people found this helpful

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  • David
  • 2011-10-30

Great book for those dealing w/ existential issues

Great book for anyone dealing with existential issues or anyone who wants an introduction into a sound anthropological psycho-therapy method. Frankl chronicles his experiences as a concentration camp inmate and from the viewpoint of his psycho-therapeutic / phenomenological method of finding meaning in all forms of existence, even the most sordid ones, and thus a reason to continue living. Through his experience, he developed a method of psycho-therapeutic method that he called logotherapy. His analysis focuses on a "will to meaning" as opposed to Adler's Nietzschean doctrine of "will to power" or Freud's "will to pleasure". Rather than power or pleasure, logotherapy is founded upon the belief that it is the striving to find a meaning in one's life that is the primary, most powerful motivating and driving force in humans. According to Frankl, "We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering" and that "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". For Frankl, it was his love for his wife that enabled him to survive Auschwitz and three other camps, not to mention many moments of "luck" or grace. Love, for Frankle, became the highest experience that a human can have. I appreciated the back story of Frankl's experience that lead to his method and agree with his conclusions, but I think some of his premises fall into a naturalistic fallacy. Nevertheless, he has a great ability to put into words the psychological and existential reality that one deals with when suffering or striving to understand a purpose in life.

82 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
  • Ann Marie
  • 2004-12-27

I will isten again and again

The beginning of this book deals with the author's time in concentration camps, and the descriptions are all to the purpose of tracing his observations, which he later builds his theory of logotherapy on. Thus, the descriptions are not horrifying for horrors sake, but serve to educate one regarding the way these experiences were able to be withstood.

There were a few surprises in this book as well. He mentions logotherapy, and paradoxical intention, in relation to its use in treatment for people with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, among other things.

Most importantly, to myself, were the ways he showed how he had developed his ideas on man's search for meaning. These are ideas that he himself used to save his life while enduring four concentration camps. They are not ideals plucked out of the ether and argued with only intellect.

The narrator has a European accent, which I cannot place, but which added greatly to my listening experience. Sometimes the ideas flow thick and fast and it is a challenge to keep up while also taking in completely the ideas you just heard.

This is a book I will listen to repeatedly and learn from on each occassion.

237 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
  • Miroslaw
  • 2008-12-11

Between stimulus and response, there is a space...

"Man's Search for Meaning" is the great summary of Frankl's view on life. Sold in 10 million copies - the book has two distinct parts - the first is a kind of memoir of the horrible time Frankl spent in at least four concentration camps during II World War, including Auschwitz. From all written stories about the life in camp - Frankl's relation is astonishing - there are no gruesome scenes, no ghastly relations - but through some cold description of prisoners shock, apathy, bitterness and finally deformation of morals - Frankl's account is one of the most fearful stories I have ever read. Yet, there is still a small light of humanness, still a germ of meaning in all these atrocities. Let's read: "We have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips."

The second part of the book deals with his LOGOTHERAPY - the fundamental theory Frankl promoted in XX century. Logotherapy seeks the cure for neurosis and existential emptiness in the search for meaning in life. There are passages in the book, also those about love and its importance that make one shiver....

Let's read two citations from this great book:

"An incurable psychotic individual may lose his usefulness but yet retain the dignity of a human being. This is my psychiatric credo."

"Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."

168 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
  • Leerkkee
  • 2005-01-14

Humbling

All the other people that have reviewed this book have captured the content of the book very well. The only thing I have to add is that this is a book about an extraordinary man, with all of the horror he was subjected to he still remained a wonderful human. He is not bitter and does not hate the people who subjected him to these unspeakable acts, instead he tries to find the good or humor in their acts.

This book humbled me; I used to get upset when someone took my parking spot, or cut into my queue but now I smile as I have never had to endure real horror or injustice.

194 people found this helpful

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  • Patrick McCarthy
  • 2019-09-23

Opportunism at its best (worst)

After reading rave reviews about how this book will change your life etc. I was excited to see what it had to impart and finally started this book, after having it on my shelf for many years. I read the first half and listened to the second half. It started off telling me what I wanted to hear, as a counterpoint to self help (that it is up to the individual to decide the meaning of things, personal responsibility, self-determinism) and as such falling in line with an existentialist slant that I've been on as that counterpoint to the self-help genre, which I've found of late to be populated by mostly hucksters, (ultimately helping themselves at the expense of vulnerable people) . The first half moved me, the stories, the unimaginable situation people found themselves in, their bravery in the face of certain death at an uncertain date, and I found his pyscho-analysis of the various approaches to the situation compelling, but even in the first half some little canaries were making themselves known. And then the second half, heavily cited with articles and texts that affirmed his logotherapy, a self-congratulatory tone in anecdotes of people that were miraculously healed by two deftly asked questions as to their view on losing a child, or all their children and wife. This led to what came across as a bunch of psychobabble, especially given that the above two factors had started to arouse my skepticism. At the end he quotes a fellow logoanalyst as saying all we can do is examine the lives of those who have seemed to find the meaning to life, as opposed to those who haven't, which was not only completely counter to his entire thesis, but also wreaked of the same swill that the glut of self-help gurus had been pushing. So I looked him up. Turns out his life in the camp was very different from how it was portrayed (note the audible summary at the top, 'spent YEARS in...',) In reality he was encamped for five months rather than five years, not at Auschwitz at all, but rather in a low-level camp where he was employed as a psycho-hygienist (the term itself another indicator of things not quite right in the book, being very Nazi soundingand apparently adopted by logotherapy from Nazi psychoanalytic practice) In essence, given these revelations, it seems as though he was an opportunist, studying his fellow prisoners to elucidate an already-established theory so as to validate it. In this light he would seem to have greatly diminished, while at the same time profiting off of the very real suffering of millions, and thus just another shill. That is not to say that his theories do not contain some elements that may resonate with some. One bright spot was that I found that all his anecdotes about prisoners could easily be correlated to people who are not the victims of such horror, but who nonetheless suffer from similar hopelessness. That's why I gave the story 2 stars. But ultimately it falls short on me in light of all of this, and leads me to the conclusion that you must figure it out yourself, taking bits and pieces from all these people perhaps but not adopting it wholeheartedly. I find it strange that not one review before mentioned any of this.

36 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
  • Amazon Customer
  • 2004-12-20

Invaluable path to a meaningful life

Frankel's account of his concentration experience is not as moving as those of Elie Wiesel, but the second half of the book on logotherapy draws together the threads of that experience into a structure for treating patients struggling with the existential crisis of life's meaning. Frankel, the founder of logotherapy (meaning therapy), is with Freud and Adler one of the primary Viennese psychiatrists of the 20th century. For Freud sexual conflicts were key to understanding mental turmoil. For Adler it was the struggle for personal power and superiority. Frankel thought that mental conflicts arose from a desire to know the why of existence. He thought that if we know the why we can live with any what. He said the why is clear if we can love someone and if we can work at something we enjoy.
The concentration camp experience also taught Frankel that he had control over his thoughts and feelings. No SS soldier could change his thoughts. He could always go somewhere in his mind. Frankel foreshadowed the present day's psychology of "think it and you will feel it."

56 people found this helpful

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  • ahmad atieh
  • 2019-10-07

loved it!!

loved it, perfectly written and straight forward. can be confusing at time so keep focus

1 person found this helpful

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  • David
  • 2019-04-19

Meaning of suffering

His mean philosophy is basically if you look backward of your situation in a theorithical future, you will find meaning in your suffering, and will help you go through

1 person found this helpful

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  • Tsvetina Bacheva
  • 2022-02-03

Best book ever

So much wisdom based on research and experience the author has. It is not an autobiography, neither a scientific paper. It’s the perfect mix of both.

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  • Bea
  • 2021-07-24

À must read for every human

A truly life-changing book that opens your eyes on the meaning of life. So rich in fact that it deserves several reads. Truly amazing.

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  • Anonymous User
  • 2021-03-06

an antidote against nihilism

recommended by Dr jordan peterson, it makes a lot of sense in regard of his philosophy, highly appreciated