This book had been on my list for a good number of years before I finally decided to read it. I wasn’t really sure what to expect, but with a background interest in psychology and stories from world war 2, I thought I’d probably take something from it either way. 

It was an interesting approach, with Frankl putting his experiences as a prisoner into the context of a psychological theory, something I haven’t really seen before. His experiences were similar to others described, but with some additional perspectives from being a doctor at the camps too, however he chose to omit the graphic details as these have been covered in other literature. 

The whole basis of the theory to me seems to stem around finding meaning in life, regardless of your surroundings and situation. Having seen many prisoners give up in the camps and pass away a few days later, Frankl identifies this as being because they gave up hope for the future and therefore had no meaning to live for anymore. 

He describes a huge amount of suffering, but emphasises that there can still be meaning found within this, and that we need to change our perspective on this to include pride in suffering. It’s all about “filling the existential void”, in whatever way you can, whether that is in an obvious way, or whether you need to dig deeper to find the positives and opportunities later caused by this suffering. Maybe it’s a bit of a cop out “just be happy”, but I think there is some value in his theories and it would be an interesting angle to consider for treating patients from a psychological perspective.

I’m no longer in the field of psychology myself, but I still found this book interesting. Some of the writing towards the later half of the book became a bit textbook-like and I found myself zoning out a bit, but otherwise I appreciated and quite enjoyed this book.