Man's Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy

Few books in recent decades have had the continuing impact of Dr. Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning -- the classic best seller now considered to be one of the most important contributions to psychiatry since the writing of Freud. In it, Dr. Frankl gives a moving account of his life amid the horrors of the Nazi death camps, chronicling the harrowing experience that led to his discovery of his theory of logotherapy. A profound revelation born out of Dr. Frankl's years as a prisoner in Auschwitz and other concentration camps, logotherapy is a modern and positive approach to the mentally or spiritually disturbed personality. Stressing man's freedom to transcend suffering and find a meaning to his life regardless of his circumstances, it is a theory which, since its conception, has exercised a tremendous influence upon the entire field of psychiatry and psychology. Here, Dr. Frankl not only describes the genesis and development of logotherapy but also explains its basic concepts, and in this revised and enlarged edition, has included a new chapter, entitled "The Case for a Tragic Optimism," in which he updates theoretical conclusions of the book. The result is an invaluable work by one of the world's preeminent psychiatrists.

Viktor E. Frankl is Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at the University of Vienna Medical School and Distinguished Professor of Logotherapy at the U.S. International University. He is the founder of what has come to be called the Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy (after Freud's psychoanalysis and Adler's individual psychology) -- the school of logotherapy.

Born in 1905, Dr. Frankl received the degrees of Doctor of Medicine and Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Vienna. During World War II he spent three years at Auschwitz, Dachau and other concentration camps.

Dr. Frankl first published in 1924 in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and has since published twenty-six books, which have been translated into nineteen languages, including Japanese and Chinese. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard, Duquesne and Southern Methodist Universities. Honorary Degrees have been conferred upon him by Loyola University in Chicago, Edgecliff College, Rockford College and Mount Mary College, as well as by universities in Brazil and Venezuela. He has been a guest lecturer at universities throughout the world and has made fifty-one lecture tours throughout the United States alone. He is President of the Austrian Medical Society of Psychotherapy.