If you haven’t yet read Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning, I suggest you soon do so.
Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist whose entire family was taken and eventually deported to Auschwitz, the World War II German prisoner of war labor camp for captured Jews. He was one of the few who survived after spending three years in four different Nazi POW camps.
In the book he described the horrors of the experience, but he also used it as a psychological study of ALL participants, captors as well as prisoners; and he explained how humanity was in short supply except for those with unshakable resolve and the strength of mind over whatever was happening to them at the time.
He later formed his own theory on the ‘aberration versus the resiliency of human behavior’ and developed his own psychological approach to treating his clients, called “Logotherapy,” based primarily on his personal experiences in the camps.
I read this book over twenty-five years ago and I still can recall how I felt while reading it. So as a fellow world resident who had also ‘searched for meaning’ much of my adult life, I can say that this book might help shift your perspective on YOUR life in a way that few others can.
It’s well worth a read.
Excerpt from Wikipedia below describing the book’s contents and value:
“…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. In a group therapy session during a mass fast inflicted on the camp’s inmates trying to protect an anonymous fellow inmate from fatal retribution by authorities, Frankl offered the thought that for everyone in a dire condition there is someone looking down, a friend, family member, or even God, who would expect not to be disappointed. Frankl concludes from his experience that a prisoner’s psychological reactions are not solely the result of the conditions of his life, but also from the freedom of choice he always has even in severe suffering. The inner hold a prisoner has on his spiritual self relies on having a hope in the future, and that once a prisoner loses that hope, he is doomed.
Frankl also concludes that there are only two races of men, decent men and indecent. No society is free of either of them, and thus there were “decent” Nazi guards and “indecent” prisoners, most notably the kapo who would torture and abuse their fellow prisoners for personal gain…. “(Wiki)
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FINDING YOUR TRUTH 