Victor E. Frankl Writes of the Meaning and Purpose of Life and Humanity essays

Victor E. Frankl Writes of the Meaning and Purpose of Life and Humanity essays Victor E. Frankl is known both as an internationally famous psychiatrist, and as the author of Man's Search for Meaning, noted as one of the top 10 influential books in America by a Library of Congress survey. Frankl's work has been widely read, and 151 books have been published about Frankl and his work in 15 different languages. He had received 29 Honorary Doctorates, and lectured at 209 universities. He passed away in Man's Search for Meaning starts with a deeply descriptive look at Frankl's five-year imprisonment in Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps. The second section of his work is a detailed description of logotherapy, the psychotherapeutic model developed by Frankl. He sees the human desire for meaning and purpose in life as the fundamental driving force of humanity. In Man's Search for Meaning, Frankl manages to successfully marry an abstract psychological theory with a deeply human, Frankl's fundamental tenets of existentialism focus closely on the "will to meaning", which is simply humankind's need to find purpose and meaning in life. Frankl sees humankind's basic underlying motivation in life as the need to live a purposeful and meaningful life. Frankl embraces individual freedom, the subjective understanding of life, and individuality in his discussions about the purpose and meaning of life. As such, Frankl clearly considers existentialism to be valuable to the quest for wisdom. Frankl's comments about spiritual freedom are sometimes profound and insightful. In the midst of his time in the concentration camp, and forced into yet another day of hard labor, and fighting a deep fear of his wife's death and torture, he begins to understand that spiritual freedom is found within. Frankl writes, "A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so ...