Victor E. Frankl: Finding Meaning In Life

During the Holocaust Victor E. Frankl, an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist spent three years as a prisoner in concentration camps. His wife, mother, father, and brother died in the camps. Frankl was faced with extreme hunger, horrible living conditions, and debilitating diseases. Even after experiencing horrible life changing suffering he found a way to find hope and meaning to his life. He shares the psychological perspective on how everyday life in a concentration camp was interpreted in the mind of prisoners. Frankl believed, “the greatest task for a man is to find their meaning in life”. According to Frankl there are three possible sources of meaning that can be found thru work, love, and thru courage during difficult times. Thru his experience in the camps where he found his meaning in life, Frankl shares his creation of logotherapy that is based on the idea that everyman man has a primary motivational force which is to find meaning in life.
The initial psychological state Frankl observed was shock. Prisoners initial arrival to the camps where they were stripped of everything. Frankl remembers, “we really had nothing now except our bare bodies; all we possessed, literally, was our naked existence”. All prisoners felt
Some prisoners refused to appear weak in the face of life and death. Frankl tells us that if you develop a positive outlook in life you can find meaning in any situation. Many of us will never experience torture but we should still hold out ground against everyday challenges, to laugh at them and never give up. Frankl would say, “accept suffering as a part of life and you can endure any kind of