Reading & the Good Life
Join the conversation; February’s theme is The Art of a Meaningful Life (Register here). We begin exploring the classic Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl this Friday (3 Feb at Noon EST).
Reading & the Good Life is a space for connection, contemplation, and conversations on the art of living.
This Week’s Selected passages:
In spite of all the enforced physical and mental primitiveness of the life in a concentration camp, it was possible for spiritual life to deepen. Sensitive people who were used to a rich intellectual life may have suffered much pain (they were often of a delicate constitution), but the damage to their inner selves was less. They were able to retreat from their terrible surroundings to a life of inner riches and spiritual freedom. Only in this way can one explain the apparent paradox that some prisoners of a less hardy make-up often seemed to survive camp life better than did those of a robust nature. […]
— Man’s Search for Meaning, Ch. 1
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A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth—that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. […]
— Man’s Search for Meaning, Ch. 1
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There were times, of course, when it was possible, and even necessary, to keep away from the crowd. It is well known that an enforced community life, in which attention is paid to everything one does at all times, may result in an irresistible urge to get away, at least for a short while. The prisoner craved to be alone with himself and his thoughts. He yearned for privacy and for solitude. […]
— Man’s Search for Meaning, Ch. 1
Who is Viktor Frankl?
Viktor Frankl (born March 26, 1905, Vienna, Austria—died September 2, 1997, Vienna), Austrian psychiatrist and psychotherapist who developed the psychological approach known as logotherapy, widely recognized as the “third school” of Viennese psychotherapy after the “first school” of Sigmund Freud and the “second school” of Alfred Adler. The basis of Frankl’s theory was that an individual's primary motivation is the search for meaning in life and that the primary purpose of psychotherapy should be to help the individual find that meaning.
After earning a doctorate in medicine in 1930, Frankl joined the Am Steinhof psychiatric hospital staff in Vienna, where he headed the female suicide prevention program from 1933 to 1937. He subsequently established a private practice but, being Jewish, was forced to close it after Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938. He then became chief of neurology at Vienna’s Rothschild Hospital, which served the Jewish population. Anti-Semitism was on the rise, however, and in 1942 Frankl and his family were sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, where his father perished.
In 1944 the surviving Frankls were taken to Auschwitz, where his mother was exterminated; his wife died later in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. As Frankl observed the brutality and degradation around him, he theorized that those inmates who had some meaning in their lives were more likely to survive; he tried to recreate the manuscript of a book he had written before his capture.
Source: Britannica Encylopedia
If you are available on a Friday (at Noon EST), feel free to drop into one of our Reading & the Good Life meetups (Register here). It’s a highly casual space for connection and conversations on the art of living.
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Thank you for reading; I hope you found something useful.
Until next time, be wise and be well,
P.S. Feel free to comment, ask questions, or suggest future reads!