

VIKTOR E. FRANKL
AND THE SEARCH FOR MEANING
21 REFLECTIONS ON LIVING WITH PURPOSE

The Companion to MAN’S SEARCH FOR MEANING
VIKTOR E. FRANKL
AND THE SEARCH FOR MEANING
VIKTOR E. FRANKL
AND THE SEARCH FOR MEANING
21 Reflections on Living with Purpose
A COMPANION
A COMPANION
PAM ROY MOIRA HUMMEL
ALEXANDER VESELY-FRANKL
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First published in the United States of America by Beacon Press in 2025
First published by Rider in 2025 1
Copyright © Pamela M. Roy and Moira Hummel 2025
Excerpt(s) from Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl.
Copyright © 1959, 1962, 1984, 1992, 2024 by Viktor E. Frankl.
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FROM PAM
For my daughters, Emily, Rachel, and Allison, and youth everywhere yearning to discover meaning in their lives.
FROM MOIRA
For Brian, Becky, Joe, Tori, Jessica, Noah, Kathy, and my parents with many thanks for your love and support.
FOREWORD
Many people are familiar with the name of my grandfather, Viktor Frankl, but few know much about his message. He is often recalled as a Holocaust survivor, but in reality, that experience played a small role in his overall life’s work. His greatest contribution to humanity was recognizing meaning as a central factor in mental health.
My grandfather’s interest in psychology started at an early age. He enrolled in adult night classes when he was in junior high school. His first article was published when he was eighteen, and by the time he was twenty-two, he was lecturing on the meaning of life. In 1930, at the age of twenty-five, he organized youth counseling centers in Vienna, successfully combatting the epidemic of teen suicides that would occur around the time report cards were issued. Within a year, suicides dropped to zero. By the time he completed medical school, he had developed a specialty in psychiatry and neurology with a focus on treating suicidal patients.
His views about meaning brought him into conflict with Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler, the founders of modern psychotherapy. As a teenager, he corresponded with Freud, and
then joined Adler’s school for a time. While my grandfather acknowledged the importance of their work, he went on to establish his own theory, which is often referred to as the third Viennese school of psychotherapy. He named the theory logotherapy, from the Greek for “healing through meaning.”
Years before World War II, he treated thousands of suicidal patients at psychiatric hospitals and developed the core principles of logotherapy. The completed manuscript of his first book about it was confiscated when he was sent to Auschwitz. He was thirty-seven years old at the time. His encounters with the worst of human conditions ended up providing him with an unwanted laboratory that confirmed his theory. He saw that those who were oriented toward a meaning to be fulfilled were more likely to survive.
After the war, he taught throughout the United States and held professorships at Harvard, Stanford, Southern Methodist University, and Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. The English translation of his book Man’s Search for Meaning was published in 1959 and became an international bestseller. My grandfather saw this not so much as a personal achievement but as a symptom of the mass neurosis of modern time, since its title promised to deal with the question of life’s meaningfulness. Decades later, the book still shows up consistently on Amazon’s top 100 books.
Logotherapy as a psychological practice is hard to standardize, package, and market, so it has not gained as much traction in the United States as it has in other parts of the world. It recognizes that every person is unique and cannot
fit into a standardized theory. Requiring creativity and flexibility, therapy at its best is as much an art as a science. He liked to refer to American neurologist George M. Beard, who noted that if two cases of neuroses were treated the same way, at least one was treated improperly.
I was lucky enough to grow up knowing my grandfather both personally and professionally. He encouraged my love of filmmaking when I was a teenager and also supported my decision to become a logotherapist when I was an adult. I have had the privilege to archive innumerable videos and interviews of him throughout his life. These are constant reminders of his timeless wisdom and his wonderful sense of humor—another quality he believed to be a resource of healing and well-being.
I met Pam and Moira while we were working together on a film project. Friends for over forty years, they were inspired to write this thought-provoking book about meaning because of their concern for America’s youth and the growing epidemic of mental illness. They recognize the importance of my grandfather’s philosophy of life and have used it to guide their own lives and raise their children. Just as he did, they see the bigger picture, the underlying problems, and the systemic issues that need to be addressed. My grandfather would be pleased that they are introducing his ideas to a new generation of readers.
—Alexander Vesely-Frankl
INTRODUCTION
“People may have enough to live by; but more often than not they do not have anything to live for.”
As human beings, we are motivated to find meaning. However, meaning is unique to each person. It cannot be created or given to us—it must be discovered. Our search for meaning is a personal journey that each of us must take. This book encourages that journey. Through inspiring quotes from Viktor Frankl and accompanying exercises for self-discovery, it offers twenty-one reflections on topics such as purpose, freedom, and self-transcendence. These reflections can be contemplated over twenty-one days or twenty-one years. They can be done in any order and revisited at any time. They simply create space for you to become more aware of who you are and how you fit into the world. Life has meaning under all circumstances, including the most undesirable. Even if our only source of meaning is our attitude toward an unavoidable situation, we have the freedom and responsibility to answer the demands life presents
to us. No matter where you are in your life, this book facilitates the search for meaning, which is our primary motivation for living.
The life and work of Viktor E. Frankl (1905–1997) inspired this book. From the time he was a young boy, Frankl believed that meaning was central to life.
As a neurologist and psychiatrist, he studied it. As a philosopher, he sought to understand it. As a survivor of concentration camps during the Holocaust, he lived it. Frankl’s life journey showed him that “he who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” This statement by Friedrich Nietzsche anchored Frankl’s belief that discovering our why—the meaning we attach to our lives—is essential to our health and well-being.
Before the onset of World War II, Frankl had developed a theory called logotherapy, which literally means “healing through meaning.” His extensive university training, combined with his experiences working in suicide clinics and living in concentration camps, reinforced his theory. While logotherapy is a form of psychotherapy (part of humanistic and existential psychology), it is also a philosophy for life, focusing on meaning, freedom, and responsibility. For the purposes of this book, we use its guidance as a life philosophy rather than for its clinical application.
Over a nine-day period following the war, Frankl wrote his best-selling book, Man’s Search for Meaning. According to a 1991 survey by the Library of Congress, the book is considered “one of the ten most influential books in America.” The first part of the book describes the horrors of the Holocaust, when Frankl lost his parents, his brother, his wife, and his unborn child. The second part introduces and explains logotherapy, which focuses on what is right with us, our humanity and our meaningful futures. Man’s Search for Meaning has inspired millions around the world.
Logotherapy recognizes the interrelationship of the mind, body, and spirit. It teaches that there is a spiritual dimension to being human that is alive and well in each one of us. This “human spirit” gives us the ability to step outside ourselves and reflect on our lives, provides us with goals and direction, and generates freedom of choice. It is what distinguishes us from other mammals—not falling under the umbrella of any religion but instead representing the essence of our humanness. Our human spirit is always healthy and has vast untapped resources. When we ignore or suppress it, we can become distressed. Throughout time, the defiant power of our human spirit has inspired our evolution. It is constantly striving to push us forward, from who we are to what we can become.
When our search for meaning is denied or ignored, we experience an inner void that Frankl termed an “existential vacuum.” It is this vacuum that can lead to anxiety, depression, aggression, addiction, and even suicide. We can see the telltale signs of this existential vacuum everywhere in our culture, affecting all ages, races, and socioeconomic levels. Every era has its own collective neurosis, and this existential vacuum is ours.
Like all humans at any time, we want to avoid the suffering caused by guilt, pain, and death—the “tragic triad” that Frankl explains is part of being human. For Frankl, suffering is not the same as despair—despair is suffering without meaning. Suffering is unavoidable. Despair involves choice. Indeed, our resistance to examining our suffering for meaning leads to despair, which, in part, results in the epidemic levels of self-harm, addiction, mental illness, and suicide.
Our culture’s current focus on the pursuit of happiness is actually one of the causes of our existential vacuum and feelings of despair. We feel ashamed if we are unhappy, as if it were a disease. It is not possible to be happy all the time; it is an unattainable goal. Life
brings with it some unavoidable, unhappy experiences. The choices we make and how we deal with these times give our lives meaning and, thus, fulfillment. Frankl’s work shifts our focus away from the naïve pursuit of happiness to the mature pursuit of meaning.
As you will discover through the reflections to come, meaning is all around us and available to us at any moment. It can be found through:
• making a difference in the world through our actions, our work, or our creations
• experiencing something (truth, beauty) or encountering someone (love)
• adopting a courageous and exemplary attitude in situations of unavoidable suffering
As humans, we are characterized by our spirituality, our freedom, and our responsibility. But too often, we choose not to take responsibility for ourselves. We want someone else to be responsible for us, to provide us with certainty in an uncertain world. We like to turn over responsibility to corporations, governments, schools, churches, and even medical professionals. But finding and fulfilling meaning is our personal task, not something we can delegate.
Each of us is unique and irreplaceable. That existential void we feel is real and an affliction of our time. However, reaching into that void to discover meaning will free us to become who we are meant to be. The philosophy of logotherapy teaches responsibility as the cornerstone of freedom. It seeks to prevent spiritual distress and the resulting mental illnesses with a focus toward the future and our unique role in shaping it.
Most of all, logotherapy encourages us toward self-transcendence, the ability to share our authentic self with others to better a worthy cause or to love another. This is the highest goal of human beings, and it has the power to change the world.
“A human being is not one thing among others; things are determining each other, but man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes, he has made out of himself. In the concentration camps, e.g., in this living laboratory and on this testing ground, we were watching and witnessing one part of our comrades behaving like swine while others were behaving like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions.”
PURPOSE
“A man* who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the ‘why’ for his existence and will be able to bear almost any ‘how.’”
We need to know we matter in the world, that there is a place for our uniqueness, and that what we have to contribute cannot be offered by anyone else. When we believe we are no more valuable than a manufactured widget, suicide can feel like a reasonable option. This feeling of despair happens when we lose sight of our distinct contribution to the tapestry of life.
Mark Twain said, “The two most important days of our life are the day we are born and the day we figure out why.” We are invaluable to the world—we all have a purpose for being here.
*Befitting the era of his writing, Viktor Frankl used “man” to refer to humankind—it is not related to gender. he ‘why’ there are can
Purpose is something we discover, and for each person it is different. We can find it only in the context of our lives—through our contributions, our relationships, our experiences, and our attitudes. Purpose is not about tallying up individual achievements. Purpose is about consciously forging our own path. It involves listening to our conscience, trusting its guidance, and taking action. When we are able to see the many meaningful moments we create and experience, whether they are big or small, we will not throw away our life. We recognize our significance and importance.