Editor's entry
~1 min readViktor Frankl's account of survival in four Nazi concentration camps including Auschwitz, paired with a clinical exposition of logotherapy — his school of psychotherapy organised around the proposition that the primary human drive is not pleasure (Freud) or power (Adler) but the search for meaning. The first half is memoir; the second is the theory drawn from it.
First published in German in 1946 as …trotzdem Ja zum Leben sagen, it appeared in English in 1959 as From Death-Camp to Existentialism and was retitled Man's Search for Meaning in the 1962 expanded edition. The Beacon Press paperback now in print runs roughly 165 pages and adds a postscript on the case for tragic optimism.
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Contents
4 chapters- Preface to the 1992 Edition
- Part One: Experiences in a Concentration Camp
- Part Two: Logotherapy in a Nutshell
- Postscript 1984: The Case for a Tragic Optimism
Reception
editor-collectedRepeatedly listed among the most influential books of the 20th century — a Library of Congress "most influential" selection, named by Holocaust historians as one of the essential primary survivor accounts, and consistently in the top tier of psychology bestsellers since publication. Sales estimates exceed 16 million copies. Logotherapy itself is more contested inside academic psychology than the book's reputation suggests; meta-analyses are mixed and the discipline's institutional presence has waned. The memoir's standing is independent of and stronger than the therapy's.
Index reception note
Frequently asked
3 questions- What is Man's Search for Meaning about?
- It is Viktor Frankl's 1946 account of surviving four Nazi concentration camps including Auschwitz, paired with a clinical exposition of logotherapy — his school of psychotherapy built on the proposition that the primary human drive is the search for meaning rather than pleasure or power.
- How is the book structured?
- In two parts. Part One is the memoir of camp life; Part Two is the theoretical exposition of logotherapy drawn from it. The Beacon Press edition currently in print adds a 1984 postscript, "The Case for a Tragic Optimism".
- How widely has the book sold?
- Sales estimates exceed 16 million copies across more than fifty languages. A 1991 Library of Congress / Book-of-the-Month Club survey named it among the ten most influential books in the United States.
Catalogue record
- Author
- Viktor Frankl
- Title
- Man's Search for Meaning
- Original title
- …trotzdem Ja zum Leben sagen: Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager
- Publisher
- Beacon Press
- Year
- 1 January 1946
- Pages
- 165
- Language
- English
- ISBN
- 9780807014295
- Shelf
- Philosophy · Consciousness · Awakening
Availability
By the same author
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