Victor Frankl

Austrian psychiatrist who survived Auschwitz and Dachau — losing his wife, parents, and brother — and whose Man's Search for Meaning (1946) argued that the search for meaning (not pleasure or power) is the primary human motivation, founding logotherapy.

Argued that the last human freedom is the freedom to choose one's attitude toward unavoidable suffering — those who survived the concentration camps longest were those who found meaning in their suffering — making meaning-making not a luxury but a survival mechanism and a philosophical obligation.