# "Man's search for meaning" I HAVE to get this book



## backagain (Aug 8, 2009)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_Search_for_Meaning



> Viktor Frankl's 1946 book Man's Search for Meaning *chronicles his experiences as a concentration camp inmate and describes his psychotherapeutic method of finding a reason to live*.





> Frankl identifies three psychological reactions experienced by all inmates to one degree or another: (1) *shock* during the initial admission phase to the camp, (2) *apathy* after becoming accustomed to camp existence, in which the inmate values only that which helps himself or others survive, and (3) *reactions of depersonalization, moral deformity, bitterness, and disillusionment* if he survives and is liberated.
> 
> Frankl *concludes that the meaning of life is found in every moment of living; life never ceases to have meaning, even in suffering and death.*





> *The first is depersonalization?a period of readjustment, in which a prisoner gradually returns to the world*. Initially, the liberated prisoners are so numb that they are unable to understand what freedom means, or to emotionally respond to it. *Part of them believes that it is an illusion or a dream that will be taken away from them*.





> This begins the second stage, in which* there is a danger of deformation. As the intense pressure on the mind is released, mental health can be endangered*. Frankl uses the analogy of a diver suddenly released from his pressure chamber. He recounts the story of a decent friend who* became immediately obsessed with dispensing the same violence in judgment of his abusers that they had inflicted on him.*





> *The last stage is bitterness at the lack of responsiveness of the world outside?a ?superficiality and lack of feeling...so disgusting that one finally felt like creeping into a hole and neither hearing nor seeing human beings any more*





> *Worse was disillusionment, which was the discovery that suffering does not end*, that the longed-for happiness will not come


Wow. I can completely relate in the sense that everything he says is true when it came to my own deciding factors leading up to depersonalization and the resulting effect on me and my views. Except this guy didn't smoke dank all day like I did to try to escape all of it. <- I'm gonna want to have the book definitely.


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