Resumo de Man's Search For Meaning

Logotherapy, considered to be the third Viennese school of psychotherapy, (after Freud?s psychoanalysis and Adler?s individual psychology) was developed by Viktor Frankl primarily when he was a prisoner in Auschwitz during the Nazi holocaust. The theory is based on three main tenets: that the human soul can find a meaning to life even under practically unbearable circumstances; that the quest for a meaning is a central motivation in one?s life; and that every person has the liberty to discover what has meaning to him or her. The first part of the book describes Frankl?s mental struggle with the concentration camp?s monstrosities, and how he and some fellow prisoners preserved their mental liberty and hope, and even a sense of humor, despite practically unbearable physical agony in the hand of their tormentors. The Nazis confiscated all of the prisoners? personal belongings upon arrival at the camp, and so Frankl lost the manuscript of the psychiatric thesis he had been working on before the holocaust. Despite the practically impossible conditions and probably because of them, Frankl developed his theory basing it on his harsh experience. According to logotherapy, concentrating on the meaning of one?s life, maintaining some hope for the future and holding on to anything that is positive in the present, help one?s soul to overcome immense difficulties and physical suffering. This theory, with which Frankl helped himself and other prisoners to survive by being determined to maintain their humanity under infernal conditions, enabled him to assist patients in his psychiatric clinic after the war. Among examples that he gives in his book is the story of a woman who wanted to kill herself after losing her son. He persuaded her that by preserving the memory of her son in her mind she gives a purpose to her life, and by coping with her pain she dignifies his memory. In one of the techniques in logotherapy, called ?paradoxal intention?, a person who is irrationally panicked by certain situations into an embarrassing response (such as blushing or sweating) learns by this technique to decide to paradoxically aspire to this response, and by this aspiration actually prevents it from occurring. Frankell ikes to cite Nietzsche's words, 'He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how'.

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