A hundred books before the centenary!
(93) Man in search of meaning
Viktor Frankl, an Austrian Jewish psychiatrist who was sent to Nazi forced labor camps during World War II, compiled his bitter and painful experiences and memories of standing on the verge of death in a book called Man in Search of Meaning.
From this book, which has been translated into different languages and is the most famous and important among the 31 works of the author, at least nine million copies were sold until his death.
As a young man, he received a doctorate in neurology and psychology from the University of Vienna – and later received one hundred and twenty honorary doctorates from all over the world – based on his experiences in prison, he invented the school of semantic therapy, which became the third school of psychiatry in Vienna after the views of Freud and Adler. is counted
In this readable and effective book, he accurately and attractively narrates his experiences and memories from his time in prison and tortures and hunger in the face of death and describes what kept him alive.
In a part of the book, after describing the arrival of the train carrying the prisoners to the Auschwitz camp, he writes:
I tried to gain the trust of one of the prisoners. I secretly went to him and pointed to the paper tube that was in the inner pocket of my coat and said: Look, these writings are a scientific book and then it describes how he faces various hardships and goes to the point of death many times.
The painful experience of the camp reaches a place where all his equipment and clothes
They take it and burn the original manuscript of his book and nothing is left for him except his naked body. He has lost all his loved ones and only the hope for the future and the motivation to write his book again keeps him alive.
He who witnessed his father’s death in the camp and also his mother and fiancee were handed over to cremation ovens, he came to believe that in such conditions, only the prisoner’s idea of the future can keep him upright from the inside and make him resistant to external pressures. And he narrates how the prisoners who had a photo of their family, how every night when they fell on the ground like a corpse after exhausting work, they found a new life and stayed alive by looking at the same photo and hoping to return.
This issue caused the initial idea of the school of meaning therapy to form in his mind and gradually become complete, because he saw the therapeutic role of meaning with his own eyes and touched the wonderful and miraculous effect of this life-giving elixir with all his heart.
He sometimes asked his patients who had very difficult mental conditions and suffered from various life problems: Why don’t you commit suicide? And then you try to find a way to restore them mentally and spiritually from their answers.
Man’s book in search of meaning, which at first glance seems like a fictional and effective and unforgettable novel of a bitter personal experience, has skillfully explained the basic concept and the core of his thought in the memoirs of the writer.
Just when communist ideas were scattered all over the world and tried to deny any transcendental concept and make everyone believe that there is nothing but matter and material relations in life, Dr. Frankel’s book paid attention to spirituality. He made an opinion and influenced the hearts and lives of millions of people in the world.
This book has been translated and published in Persian several times by different translators.
(Note from Shahrara newspaper)
https://telegram.me/morzaeri
The writings and selections of Mohammad Reza Zairi
If you know it, take a look and introduce it to your friends
This post is written by monese_ghamgosar