Embracing hope On freedom, responsibility & the meaning of life

The late Viennese psychiatrist and Auschwitz survivor applies his humanistic psychology to the horrors of the Holocaust and modern anomie in this resonant collection of lectures and articles. In a lecture from December 1946, Frankl (Man's Search for Meaning) outlines the roots of a modern worldview that relieves people of "individual responsibility," against which he asserts the individual's power to create meaning, even in the hellish confines of concentration camps. Three other pieces--a 1955 article in an Austrian medical journal, a 1977 interview from a Canadian TV program, and a 1984 lecture--delve deeper into these themes and his "logotherapy," a "meaning-centered approach to mental health" that calls for personal growth through purposeful work, love, and the transcendence of suffering. To illustrate the latter, Frankl provides moving case studies of people who surmounted personal trials, including a young man paralyzed below the neck who took psychology courses--using a stick clenched in his teeth to type--and became a counselor. Though there's a noticeable lack of rigor in Frankl's theorizing, the message is moving and his lyrical prose will stick in readers' minds ("Life is a constant process of dying, the continuous withering away of something... a constant farewell"). It's an inspiring introduction to Frankl's thinking. (Aug.)

A celebrated psychotherapist and philosopher offers insight into why humanity must persevere in its quest to find meaning in everyday life. Frankl, the author of international bestsellerMan's Search for Meaning, has long been considered one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century. Yet not all of his work has been translated or made available to wider reading audiences. The four pieces that comprise this collection--three essays and one interview with the author on Canadian TV--were written or transcribed between 1946 and 1984; all deal with the inevitability of human suffering and eternal struggle to find hope and peace. In the opening essay, the author reflects on the transience of human life and the responsibility of each individual to not only "recognize opportunities for meaning" but also fulfill them despite any suffering that person may be experiencing. Turning tragedy into triumph and suffering into an achievement mitigates transience, opening the door to meaning, and all depends on individual choice because, as Frankl explains in the piece that follows, meaning "can be found irrespective of the environmental situation." In the third essay, the author suggests that such modern-day ills as fanaticism and collectivist thinking are really signifiers of the existential emptiness that arises from feelings of purposelessness. The way human beings can move past that emptiness is by resisting the temptation to do nothing and--and, as Frankl discusses in the last essay--taking "responsibility (for choices and actions) in the face of transience" and suffering. These essays are without a doubt the products of the difficult, often alienating century in which they were written, but the wisdom--and, perhaps more importantly, hope--they offer during a time of competing global emergencies and the threat of human extinction is both comforting and necessary. Decades-old writing that remains timely. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.