Man’s Search for Meaning is the chilling yet inspirational story of Viktor Frankl’s struggle to hold on to hope during the unspeakable horrors of his years as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps. 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 those he treated 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.

Through every waking moment of his ordeal, Frankl’s training as a psychiatrist lent him a remarkable perspective on the psychology of survival. As a result of these experiences, 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. Frankl’s assertion that “the will to meaning” is the basic motivation for human life has forever changed the way we understand our humanity in the face of suffering.

Frankl’s riveting memoir was named one of the Ten Most Influential Books in America after a 1991 survey by the Library of Congress and Book of the Month Club. This revised and updated version includes a new postscript: “The Case for a Tragic Optimism.”

Viktor Frankl is known to millions of listeners as a psychotherapist who has transcended his field in his search for answers to the ultimate questions of life, death, and suffering. Man’s Search for Ultimate Meaning explores the sometimes unconscious basic human desire for inspiration or revelation and illustrates how life can offer profound meaning at every turn.

Born in 1905 in the center of the crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire, Viktor Frankl was a witness to the great political, philosophical, and scientific upheavals of the twentieth century. In these stirring recollections, Frankl describes how as a young doctor of neurology in prewar Vienna his disagreements with Freud and Adler led to the development of “the third Viennese School of Psychotherapy,” known as logotherapy; recounts his harrowing trials in four concentration camps during the War; and reflects on the celebrity brought by the publication of Man’s Search for Meaning in 1945.

Upon his death in 1997, Viktor E. Frankl was lauded as one of the most influential thinkers of our time. The Unheard Cry for Meaning marked his return to the humanism that made Man’s Search for Meaning a bestseller around the world. In these selected essays, written between 1947 and 1977, Dr. Frankl illustrates the vital importance of the human dimension in psychotherapy. Using a wide range of subjects—including sex, mortality, modern literature, competitive athletics, and philosophy—he raises a lone voice against the pseudo-humanism that has invaded popular psychology and psychoanalysis. By exploring mankind’s remarkable qualities, he brilliantly celebrates each individual’s unique potential, while preserving the invaluable traditions of both Freudian analysis and behaviorism.

Vom Autor des Bestsellers “… trotzdem Ja zum Leben sagen” Viktor E. Frankl.
“Wer ein Warum zu leben hat, erträgt fast jedes Wie” – nach diesem Motto erforschte Viktor Frankl, wie Sinnerfüllung auch angesichts schwerer Schicksalsschläge möglich ist und Menschen in die Lage versetzt, in Krisenzeiten seelisch heil zu bleiben.
Viktor Frankl war ein österreichischer Neurologe und Psychiater. Während des Zweiten Weltkriegs verbrachte er drei Jahre in Auschwitz, Dachau und anderen Konzentrationslagern.
Er begründete die Logotherapie und Existenzanalyse, die vielfach auch als die “Dritte Wiener Schule der Psychotherapie” bezeichnet wird.
Lebenssinn und Resilienz stehen im Mittelpunkt der von Frankl begründeten Logotherapie, seiner Auseinandersetzung mit Holocaustüberlebenden und seiner kritischen Haltung gegenüber der inneren Leere der modernen Konsumgesellschaft.
Dieses Hörbuch lädt ein, den großen Humanisten neu zu entdecken. Seine Texte aus sechs Jahrzehnten zeigen den Brückenschlag, den Frankl zwischen Psychologie und philosophischer Lebenskunst vollzogen hat.
In diesem Hörbuch erfahren wir unter anderem über:
– Leidensfähigkeit und Leidbewältigung
– Sinnsuche und Sinnfindung
– Die Bedeutung der menschlichen Freiheit
– Verborgene innere Kräfte des Menschens.
“Ein Warum – das ist ein Lebensinhalt; und das Wie – das waren jene Lebensumstände, die das Lagerleben so schwierig machten, dass es eben nur im Hinblick auf ein Warum überhaupt tragbar wurde” – Viktor E. Frankl.

Find hope even in these dark times with this rediscovered masterpiece, a companion to his international bestseller Man’s Search for Meaning.

Eleven months after he was liberated from the Nazi concentration camps, Viktor E. Frankl held a series of public lectures in Vienna. The psychiatrist, who would soon become world famous, explained his central thoughts on meaning, resilience, and the importance of embracing life even in the face of great adversity.

Published here for the very first time in English, Frankl’s words resonate as strongly today—as the world faces a coronavirus pandemic, social isolation, and great economic uncertainty—as they did in 1946. He offers an insightful exploration of the maxim “Live as if you were living for the second time,” and he unfolds his basic conviction that every crisis contains opportunity. Despite the unspeakable horrors of the camps, Frankl learned from the strength of his fellow inmates that it is always possible to “say yes to life”—a profound and timeless lesson for us all.