Man’s Search for Meaning – Summarized for Busy People: Based On the Book By Viktor Frankl

Love, in logotherapy, is not simply the satisfaction of sexual drives—that would be sex, but sex is only one of the vehicles for the expression of love.

Logotherapy allows the individual to discover the meaning in her life in three ways: (1) by creating work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; or (3) by her attitude towards unavoidable suffering

ells an individual what she has to do, according to Frankl, and sometimes he wouldn’t even know what he wants to do. So, he would then fall into doing what other people what others do (conformism) or doing what other people want her to do (totalitarianism).

man is able to live and even to die for the sake of his ideals and values.”

Compared to psychoanalysis, logotherapy is less deterministic and introspective; rather, it focuses on the future and the meaning there is in fulfilling what’s in the future. Logotherapy, in other words, is a meaning-centered psychotherapy. Freudian psychoanalysis focuses on the pleasure principle and Adlerian psychoanalysis focuses on success but logotherapy allows the patient to discover the meaning of their lives—a “will to meaning.”

This uniqueness and singleness which distinguishes each individual and gives a meaning to his existence have a bearing on creative work as much as it does on human love.”

everything can be taken from a man but one thing—the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.”

The Meaning of Love

Understanding the innermost part of one’s personality can be done through loving another and love is the way through which she will see the uniqueness and essence of another. This will allow her to see the potential in them that has not yet been actualized. The loving person is then placed in a unique position

Logotherapy allows the individual to discover the meaning in her life in three ways: (1) by creating work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; or (3) by her attitude towards unavoidable suffering. The second may point towards one’s experience in nature and culture or towards by loving and experiencing the uniqueness of another being