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book1946

Man's Search for Meaning

Disciplines:
psychology
existentialism
philosophy/meaning
wwii/holocaust

Summary

Viktor Frankl's 1946 account of surviving Auschwitz — arguing that finding meaning in suffering is the primary human drive — founding logotherapy — one of the most widely read books of the 20th century (16M copies).

Core Contribution

Creates logotherapy as a psychological framework — Man's Search for Meaning uses Frankl's Auschwitz experience to argue that meaning (not pleasure or power) is the primary human motivation; the book's combination of psychological theory and Holocaust memoir gives it an authority no purely theoretical work could match.

Historical Influences

Sigmund Freud Alfred Adler Nietzsche

Intellectual Lineage

Viktor Frankl Written in 9 daysTranslated from GermanBeacon Press Named 'most influential book in America' — Library of Congress survey

Allied Works

The Will to Meaning Meditations Night

Contemporaries & Peers

No recorded contemporaries.

Minds Influenced

Existential psychology Positive psychology

Intellectual Posterity

Man's Search for Meaning Logotherapy 'Everything can be taken from a man but one thing'Meaning as primary motivation

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Man's Search for Meaning

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