Viktor Frankl’s moral masterpiece is a deep, moving and insightful read that will change your perspective on life. It inspires awe, gratitude, despair and hope for the human condition all at once.

This book deeply moved me, having read it, I now promise to do my best to be grateful. The piece sets the context for the book and summarises the deep themes that Frankl explores.

The Book and its Background

Frankl was already a psychiatrist by the time he found himself in a crammed carriage rolling towards an unknown destination; like others, weary yet hopeful, he did not anticipate the destination would be the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Already, the prisoners were filed and sifted in two directions from the station by an SS officer; 90% went to certain death, the other 10%, Frankl included, were to begin an excruciating and long journey that broke and remolded, over and over again, their conception of how much they could bare in this life. The best place to immerse yourself in what that looked and felt like, is in his testimony, rather than here.

But in essence, this is what the book discusses; what humans from all groups, creeds and positions are capable of. In the camp, from all quarters, there were valiant displays of virtue, terrible displays of vice, great acts of will, as well as the dereliction of life and meaning itself. Viktor was fascinated by this, and partly clung onto his life and his sense of meaning so that he could explain how all this could be so.

Now Frankl was working on a manuscript for a book that would become his life’s work. He lost this very early on, but tried to keep his memory of it and leveraged his experiences in camp for his life’s work, alongside the beautiful memory and imaginary interactions he had with his wife.

Frankl’s key finding of why prisoners’ survived or died in the camps, was that the prisoner’s that retained a sense of hope, and of meaning about why they were choosing to bare their suffering, kept a sense of vitality and spirit that helped them to survive and even find moments of beauty and joy in their lives.

‘A man with a why, can bare almost any how’ — Nietzsche

The key themes of the book

For interest and without going into too much detail, here are the key themes and insights that are explored. To really get the impact from this book, I honestly recommend that you personally immerse yourself in it.

• Will, Endurance: Viktor discovered our ability to persevere is more malleable than most people think; physically and mentally, prisoners endured what virtually everyone would consider to be tortuous conditions, and did so for years. Some even were able to keep a sense of humour and to enjoy moments during this. There is a part of the human spirit which is indefatigable; we need only to stay connected to it.
• Fate: From what I understood, Viktor saw fate as a mysterious thing that could not be rationally knowable. This said, the person that caves into apathy is someone who would surely be carried off by life’s currents, rather than courageously answering to the questions life demanded of a person. We get chances to answer to life’s challenges with our moral responses, and thus influence our own and others’ fate in this way.
• Meaning/Logos: To paraphrase Viktor: ‘logos is beyond logic’; there is a logic to meaning but it does not encapsulate it. Each person has a unique logos, which is found in what we value (purpose), believing we can attain it (hope), and that we have a practical way of realising it (a means). The prisoners that had these components; a meaning, hope, and a belief, could in their case survive camp life. They were the ones most likely to survive. This is a powerful principle of life.
• Meaning and Physical Vitality: An interesting observation by Frankl of himself and others in the camps, was that when epidemics spread, the prisoners would be more or less impacted by illnesses such as typhus, depending on their belief in their Meaning. This idea achieved some validation from a camp doctor that confirmed the most deaths occurred shortly after 1944’s Christmas, a time prisoners hoped would mark the end of the war and their liberation. When this failed to materialise, the extinguishing of hope fed into the decline of physical vitality.
• Nuance of Good and Evil: Viktor found virtue and vice in all corners of camp life. There were kindly guards and marshals, appalling prisoners, and many in all groups that existed in a state of passive insensitivity; doing no-extra to make things better or worse. Implicitly, virtuous acts seemed to correlate with the preservation of one’s own and others’ lives and character. The generosity of support that prisoners gave to each other despite their deep physical frailty, is utterly remarkable.
• The Role of Spirituality: In times of desperation, we can turn to God and our souls. Spirituality and religion was a big part of life and death in the camp. Viktor found his own salvation in his spirit and as did others, and it played a big role in one’s preservation and salvation in the camps.

In all, this is a wonderful book, that once read, will change your life. At minimum, it will inspire you to be more grateful and change your attitude to life. And perhaps, it might just transform you to the core.