This month I listened to a classic in psychotherapy, Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl.
It is a relatively short book divided into two parts. In the first half, the author presents an autobiographical account of his time spent in several Nazi concentration camps during WWII. He acknowledges that much has been written from survivors (even in the time of the book's initial publication in 1946), so he chose to focus on the psychological effects during his imprisonment. As a psychologist and neurosurgeon before the War, he had a unique perspective of analyzing the horrors first hand, which, is the reason he chose to write the book in the first person rather than anonymously as he originally intended.
The second half of the book Frankl calls, Logotherapy in a Nutshell. This is his personal thesis on psychology which has often been placed in the category of existentialism. I found parts of this half interesting, including studies which scientifically confirm several tenants of the Law of Attraction, even without intending to. His methods discussed sometimes gave patients an immediate cure by providing them with a new perspective of how to view their "problem" or their reason for living.
As a psychologist starting out in Vienna in the early 1900s, Frankl was naturally a student of Fruedian theory. One part I considered particularly profound was his comments on Frued's thesis that if men were stripped of their role in civilization, down to their natural essence, they would work together to solve common problems such as hunger. Frankl returned to his experience in the holocaust and showed the opposite is true. When stripped from civilized society, man is unmasked and their true nature is exposed. Good men can become evil and simple men can rise to hero.
