cover image Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning

Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning

Viktor Emil Frankl. Basic Books, $24.95 (200pp) ISBN 978-0-306-45620-6

Viennese psychiatrist Frankl (born in 1905, he died earlier this month) completed Man's Search for Meaning, a founding text of survivor literature, after taking furtive notes on scraps of concentration camp paper. Fifty years, 10 million copies and 33 other books later, Frankl expands upon the ideas broached in his seminal work with this amalgam of speeches and updated versions of previous publications. Potential readers, however, will need a vast grasp of philosophic and psychiatric jargon to understand most of this book, as the author is still doing ideological battle with his contemporaries from the 1930s, Freud and Adler, and is most often writing for peers. Ever the optimist, Frankl claims that to be human is to yearn for meaning in our lives. ""Ultimate"" meaning, an existential truth of self, is, he says, found through the acceptance of responsibility and by transcending the self through work and love. Jokes and anecdotes enliven parts of the book but their frequent duplication cries out for judicious editing. The final chapter, a 1985 speech from which the book takes its title, is in plain English and would have been better placed at the front. Although Frankl's preface attests to his involvement with this edition, it is hardly a fitting sequel to his universally beloved masterwork or a substantial valedictory effort. (Oct.)