Viktor Frankl did not, by any means, live an ordinary life.

Born into a Jewish family in Austria, he developed an early interested in psychology and psychiatry, and began a successful career in Vienna, at the time the capital of psychoanalysis. In the early 1940s, he and his family were deported, and between 1942 and 1945, Frankl survived a total of four Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz.

His family’s sole survivor, he took meticulous notes during his time in the camps, contemplating survival mechanisms and psychological strategies that he noticed that the other prisoners would use. 

After the war these notes became the foundation of a new school of psychology, logotherapy, which focuses on the future and man’s ability to endure suffering through a search for purpose.

Frankl believed that humans are motivated by a “will to meaning”; very few people are comfortable believing that we are alive by chance, and that there is no inherent meaning or reason for our existence.

Based in his personal experiences from Nazi camps, he wrote that, “everything can be taken from a man but one thing, the last of the human freedoms, to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances”. 

This sentiment may sound harsh but is actually a message of hope: regardless of what happens outside of ourselves, we can still control our own reactions, and thus also our state of mind.

This gives agency to everyone, regardless of circumstances. “Logos” is the Greek word for “meaning”, and logotherapy thus helps patients find personal meaning in their lives. As Frankl wrote in his seminal Man’s Search for Meaning, originally published in German already in 1946 (and translated to English in 1959):

“For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment. To put the question in general terms would be comparable to the question posed to a chess champion: ‘Tell me, Master, what is the best move in the world?’ There simply is no such thing as the best or even a good move apart from a particular situation in a game and the particular personality of one's opponent. The same holds for human existence. One should not search for an abstract meaning of life. Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfilment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone's task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it.”

Frankl believed that life’s meaning can be experienced in roughly three different ways: by creating a work or doing a deed; by experiencing something or encountering someone; and by the attitude taken towards unavoidable suffering. In all circumstances, regardless of how dire they seem, life still has meaning.

According to Frankl, it is a fundamental part of human nature to want life to have a sense of purpose, and this strife is also part of making life appear meaningful..

Happiness, according to Frankl, is a side-effect of experiencing life as meaningful; we enjoy life when we think we are engaged in meaningful activities.

This is also Frankl’s greatest contribution: he had seen the worst that humans were capable of, and still believed in everyone’s unique value and the dignity of humanity, regardless of past actions or current situation.

In his own words: 

“As we see, a human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy, last but not least, through actualizing the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation.”

Further reading: 

Viktor Frankl

Man’s Search for Meaning

London: Rider, 1959