His story and this book have inspired many, including Steven Covey, of Seven Habits fame.

Frankl observed that many of the prisoners died when undergoing less hardship and suffering than those who survived. The survivors tended to be people who envisioned a future for themselves despite their present suffering, people who believed they had a meaning in life and did not surrender to despair.

He developed a psychological treatment method called logotherapy. According to Frankl, logotherapy is striving to find a meaning in one's life as the primary force. Frankl would help patients improve their mental health by helping them to discover meaning in their lives.

Although Frankl calls himself an existentialist, his is not the existentialism of despair of Sartre or Camus. Frankl is a scientist who believes that a valuable method of learning is to gather empirical knowledge from experience. He wholeheartedly embraces life and believes we can make our lives rich with meaning.

There is so much wisdom in this book that I can only give you a taste. It should b

self-transcendence of human existence." "The more one forgets himself-by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love-the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself."(P115) Therefore self-actualization is not attainable. Frankl believes that the more an individual strives for it the more he would miss it. So self-actualization then becomes a byproduct of self-transcendence. Finding a meaning to life can be discovered in three ways. The first is by creating a work or doing a deed. This does not need much explanation, it just means that an individual can find meaning to life in his work or by doing deeds. The second way to find meaning in life is by experiencing something or by experiencing another human being. An individual can experience happiness, beauty in nature, and truth; all these things can give meaning. One can also experience a human being by loving him. I would like to think that Frankl believes that a man finds true meaning by loving another!

Austria has produced three major psychologists in the twentieth century: Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler and Victor Frankl. Each emphasized a different impulse at the core of our nature. Adler claimed the will to power to be the primary drive, while Freud championed the will to pleasure -- primarily sexual gratification -- to be our elemental psychological drive. Frankl maintained, however, that the will to meaning lies at the heart of our psychology and is the elemental driving force in the human personality.

One of my favorite books is Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. Frankl was a Jewish psychologist who was placed in a concentration camp by the Nazis in World War II. He survived the war, and wrote Man's Search for Meaning as a reflection on his experiences and what he had learned.

Everyone wants a reason to keep hope alive and keep going. Frankl shows how to find it or create it. His life and work stand as powerful evidence for this innate human necessity: imprisoned by the Nazis, threatened by death and disease for months on end, he nonetheless found the purpose and sense of direction to create Man's Search for Meaning, his most influential work. In his trademark no nonsense, down-to-earth style, he explains how anyone even someone who is terminally ill can not only find meaning in his or her life but also make a valuable contribution to society.

e available in any public library, so get a copy and read it.

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