He observed that survival in the camps was not purely about physical strength or luck. It was about attitude . He famously wrote: "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way."
: An essay on this topic would contrast Frankl’s "will to meaning" with Freud’s "will to pleasure" and Adler’s "will to power," highlighting how Logotherapy focuses on the future and the human spirit's ability to transcend its environment.
: This essay theme explores Frankl’s observation that prisoners who envisioned a meaningful future or held onto specific tasks—such as Frankl’s own desire to rewrite his lost manuscript—showed greater psychological resilience and survival rates.
If you are reading in the 21st century, you likely are not in a concentration camp. Yet, you may feel a similar sense of emptiness. Frankl called this the existential vacuum —the feeling that life is boring, pointless, or absurd.
This is Frankl’s most radical contribution. What if you are in a situation where achievement is impossible (you are chained to a wall) and love is absent (you are utterly alone)? Is life meaningless? No.
