Viktor Frankl was not only a survivor of the Holocaust, but a man whose experience of suffering became the foundation for one of the most enduring psychological frameworks of the 20th century. A trained neurologist and psychiatrist, Frankl was imprisoned in several Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz, where he endured unthinkable deprivation, brutality, and loss. It was in the depths of that suffering—not removed from it, but immersed in it—that he began to form the ideas that would later become the basis for his life’s work: logotherapy.
Frankl’s philosophy is rooted in a single, powerful belief: that human beings are motivated not by pleasure or power alone, but by the search for meaning—a purpose, a reason, a logos. In Greek, logos means “reason” or “word,” but for Frankl, it came to represent the inner purpose that gives our lives significance. This wasn’t an abstract theory—it was something he witnessed firsthand in the camps. He observed that the people who were most resilient, the ones who seemed to survive the unendurable, were those who could locate some deeper reason to keep going.
“Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.”
This is the essence of logotherapy: helping individuals uncover their why. Unlike other schools of psychology that look backward into trauma or inner conflict, logotherapy is forward-facing. It challenges us not to ask what we expect from life, but rather what life expects from us. It’s a subtle but profound shift—from victimhood to responsibility, from despair to purpose. Even in the face of uncontrollable suffering, Frankl believed we retain the freedom to choose how we respond.
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
Frankl’s philosophy was not born in a lecture hall or academic journal, but in the bitter cold of concentration camps—through hunger, humiliation, and the daily confrontation with death. It was there, in the most dehumanising of conditions, that he discovered a truth that transcends context, that meaning can be found anywhere, even in suffering. Especially in suffering.
Summary of Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
The first part of Man’s Search for Meaning is not theoretical—it’s brutally personal. Frankl begins by describing the moment he was deported to the Nazi concentration camps, initially arriving at Auschwitz. Like so many others, he was crammed into a cattle car, stripped of all personal belongings, and subjected to the immediate dehumanisation that began upon arrival. Within moments, he was separated from his wife, his parents, and his colleagues—most of whom he would never see again.
The prisoners were sorted into two lines—life or death—by a mere glance from an SS officer. Frankl, by a chance of fate, was sent to the line that would survive, at least for the time being. From there, the psychological transformation began. Prisoners were stripped not only of their possessions but of their identities. They became numbers, their heads shaved, their clothes replaced with tattered uniforms, their individuality erased.
What follows is a harrowing account of life inside the camps, where survival depended not just on physical strength but on mental and emotional resilience. The days were structured around brutal labour, freezing conditions, starvation, and the constant threat of arbitrary death. Frankl details the extreme degradation he and others endured, from working in frozen fields without gloves, to being beaten without reason, to watching fellow inmates collapse from exhaustion only to be discarded like broken tools.
One of the stories Frankl shares is about a fellow inmate who dreamt that liberation would come on a specific date. As that date approached and no sign of rescue came, the man’s hope faded—and with it, his will to live. He died shortly after the date passed. Frankl uses this as a chilling example of the direct link between meaning and survival. When hope is lost, life itself can slip away.
Another powerful moment comes when Frankl, while enduring a brutal day of forced labour, looks up at the sunrise. Despite everything, he feels a moment of spiritual clarity—a recognition of beauty and transcendence even amid suffering. These small moments of internal freedom, he argues, are what make life bearable. The guards could control his body, but not his response to his suffering.
Throughout the first section, Frankl refrains from focusing on the political horror of the camps. Instead, he turns inward—documenting what happens to the human spirit under the most inhumane conditions. What becomes clear is that those who survived weren’t always the strongest or the smartest, but often those who could still find meaning, however fragile, in their suffering.
This is not a story of heroism or triumph in the traditional sense—it’s a raw, unflinching account of suffering endured and observed. But within that suffering, Frankl begins to sketch the philosophical foundation for what will later become logotherapy: the belief that life has meaning under all circumstances, and that our ultimate freedom lies in choosing our attitude, even when everything else is taken from us.
What is Logotherapy?
As mentioned above, logotherapy is Viktor Frankl’s unique contribution to psychology—a school of thought that places the search for meaning at the centre of human motivation. Unlike Freudian psychoanalysis, which emphasizes the pursuit of pleasure, or Adlerian psychology, which centres on the will to power, Frankl believed that our deepest drive is the will to meaning. This belief wasn’t born in an academic institution but in the darkest imaginable place—the Nazi concentration camps, where Frankl witnessed firsthand what happened to the human soul when everything—freedom, dignity, even hope—was stripped away.
What makes logotherapy so profound is its radical insistence that meaning is always available to us, even in suffering. In fact, Frankl goes further: suffering doesn’t negate meaning—it can become the very ground on which meaning is discovered. This wasn’t a romantic idealism. It was forged in a context where the brutal, mechanical stripping away of human identity was a daily ritual. Yet even in this setting, Frankl observed that individuals who could find some personal significance—some “why”—were more likely to psychologically and spiritually survive than those who couldn’t.
This leads to one of Frankl’s most powerful insights: suffering, when it is unavoidable, can be a path to meaning. If life has meaning, then all of life has meaning—including suffering. And if suffering is a part of life, then our task is not to avoid it at all costs, but to respond to it with purpose. This idea resonates with the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, whom Frankl often references in support of his views. Nietzsche famously said, “He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.” Frankl took this insight and extended it: it’s not just that we can endure suffering if we have a why, but that the act of enduring suffering with dignity and purpose becomes the why itself.
In practical terms, logotherapy is about helping people uncover that meaning. It doesn’t impose answers—it asks questions. It encourages individuals to confront their lives not as passive victims of fate, but as active participants in their own story. It teaches that no matter how desperate the circumstances, we always retain the freedom to choose our response, and in that response lies the seed of meaning.
Frankl’s point isn’t that all suffering is good or desirable—far from it. Rather, he insists that when suffering is inevitable, we can still redeem it through the attitude we adopt. In a world obsessed with comfort and avoidance of pain, logotherapy offers something deeply countercultural: the idea that value can be found not in what we flee from, but in what we face.
Through logotherapy, Frankl gives us a framework that is not just therapeutic but existential. It does not promise happiness—it promises depth. It does not erase pain—it honours it. And above all, it affirms that in even the bleakest conditions, meaning remains not only possible, but necessary.
