Mans Search for Meaning - Book Review

Mans search for meaning - book review by Isabella Juan

Dr. Frankl reveals in his book the three phases in the mental reactions of the prisoners in concentration camps. Phase I - Camp internship. Phase II - Life in the camp. Phase III - Liberty.

The symptom that characterizes phase I is shock. Phase II is getting "adapted" to life in the camp, which means apathy or emotional death. No dreams, hunger loses its importance yet a prisoner feels like if he was a corpse. And absolute sexual desire absence. There's also religious concerns, and improvised prayers on any corner. Desire for solitude - prisoners wished to have moments to themselves and their thoughts. Love became the last and highest goal to which every man could aspire. Love was salvation. Arts such as songs, poems, jokes had one only goal and was to help the prisoners forget. The prisoner that lost faith in the future, was condemned. Third phase - from the anxiety to a big state of calmness, although, lack of happiness, depersonalization, a constant complaint "We didn't belong to that world", they passed from being oppressed to oppressors, a need for care, bitterness and disillusion.

Frankl's and the other prisoners' lives was hard first of all because they only ate soup and crumbs of bread. Once in a day. They worked for extensive hours without rest otherwise they got whipped. Frankl looked for a way to survive and he even became friends with a capo who invited him to seat with him when it was the time to eat, and that way Frankl was more secure and had a chance to live a few more weeks.

One of the things that surprised me was that the prisoners got so beated that they felt less pain each time - I felt kind of a connection. When they slept, it was the only way to get away from the real world and forget what was happening, even nightmares were better thatn what they were actually living in those camps.

Logotherapy is a way to motivate willingness to a human being to live. In the book, the way to apply this term and reflect it in the texts, in every thing that happened to him in the camps, Frankl always used his psychiatrical abilities and everything he studied for many tears like when the soldiers threatened him to death he used sympathy, and when he earned the sympathy of some of the capos, he felt even more secure.

Frankl wants to let the reader know that if he or she proposes to thyself a goal, he or she can afford it depending on his or her efforts. After reading this book, I stay uncomfortable because the nazis took advantage of these humble persons to make them work hard and then burning them, whiles they worked so hard and then burning them, whiles they worked so hard until the last strengths they had, the soldiers beat and tortured them, they didn't even give them the sufficient food they needed to recharge energies, it was a