At the end of the year, usually beginning in November, I find myself more interested in the meaning of life. This year, I have contemplated how different ideas about life’s meaning have influenced the way we think about ourselves.
For example, Freud’s work was based on his thoughts about sex and plumbing. Adler, who followed Freud, proclaimed that the drive for power gives life meaning. While plumbing and power are essential when you need them, these seem too small to capture something as important as the meaning of life.
Viktor Frankl’s approach to meaning seems more real to me. Frankl was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist. His most famous book is “Man’s Search for Meaning.”
With his family, in 1941, Frankl was forced into a Nazi concentration camp. He lost his wife and parents to the horrors of the camp. Frankl endured the grief of losing his family and four years of slave labor and inhumane treatment to survive the concentration camp.
He was liberated from the camp in 1945 by American troops. He returned to his home in Vienna and, at the end of the year, published a book describing his experience and how it informed his new approach to psychiatric care, which he called “logotherapy.”
In 1955, his book was translated and published in the U.S. as Man’s Search for Meaning.
Frankl’s basic idea is that even when we think we have lost all control over our lives, even like a prisoner in a concentration camp, we still control and are responsible for our attitude. In the darkest pit, we always retain the freedom to choose what makes our lives meaningful. By holding onto what gives us meaning, we survive and even grow despite what others do to us or against us.
What drives Frankl’s point home for me is something that was lost in translation. The German title of Frankl’s book published in the U.S. as Man’s Search for Meaning was Nevertheless, Say ‘Yes’ to Life: A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp.
Whatever happens, nevertheless, say “yes” to life!