emotionally respond to it. Part of them believes that it is an illusion or a dream that will be taken away from them. In their
first foray outside their former prison, the prisoners realized that they could not comprehend pleasure. Flowers and the
reality of the freedom they had dreamed about for years were all surreal, unable to be grasped in their depersonalization.
The body is the first element to break out of this stage, responding by big appetites of eating and wanting more sleeping.
Only after the partial replenishing of the body is the mind finally able to respond, as "feeling suddenly broke through the
strange fetters which had restrained it" (p.111).
This begins the second stage, in which there is a danger of deformation. As the intense pressure on the mind is released,
mental health can be endangered. Frankl uses the analogy of a diver suddenly released from his pressure chamber. He
recounts the story of a friend who became immediately obsessed with dispensing the same violence in judgment of his
abusers that they had inflicted on him.
Upon returning home, the prisoners had to struggle with two fundamental experiences that could damage their mental
health: bitterness and disillusionment. The last stage is bitterness at the lack of responsiveness of the world outside—a
"superficiality and lack of feeling... so disgusting that one finally felt like creeping into a hole and neither hearing nor seeing
human beings any more" (p.113). Worse was disillusionment, the discovery that suffering does not end, that the longed-for
happiness will not come. This was the experience of those who—like Frankl—returned home to discover that no one awaited
them. The hope that had sustained them throughout their time in the concentration camp was now gone. Frankl cites this
experience as the most difficult to overcome.
As time passed, however, the prisoner's experience in a concentration camp became nothing but a remembered nightmare.
What is more, he comes to believe that he has nothing left to fear "except his God" (p.115).
In a 1991 survey conducted for theLibrary of Congressand theBook of the Month Club,Man's Search for Meaningwas
named one of the 10 most influential books in the US.
[7]
At the time of Frankl's death in 1997, the book had sold over 10
million copies and had been translated into 24 languages. As of 2022 the book has sold 16 million copies and been printed in
52 languages.
[8]
Gordon Allport, who wrote a preface to the book, described it as a "gem of dramatic narrative" which "provides a compelling
introduction to the most significant psychological movement of our day".
[9]
Sarah Bakewell
describes it as "an incredibly
powerful and moving example of what
existentialist
thought can actually be for in real life"
[10]
while
Mary Fulbrook
praises
"the way [Frankl] explores the importance of meaning in life as the key to survival."
[11]
However, aspects of the book have garnered criticism. One of Frankl's main ideas in the book is that apositive attitudemade
one better equipped for surviving the camps. Richard Middleton-Kaplan has said that this implies, whether intentionally or
unintentionally, that those who died had given up and that this paved the way for the idea of the Jews goinglike sheep to the
slaughter
.
[12]
Holocaust analyst
Lawrence L. Langer
criticises Frankl's promotion of logotherapy and says the book has a
problematic subtext. He also accuses Frankl of having a tone of self-aggrandizement and a general inhumane sense of
studying-detachment towards victims of the Holocaust.
[13][14]
In his bookFaith in Freedom, psychiatristThomas Szaszstates that Frankl's survivor testimony was written to misdirect,
and betrays instead an intent of a transparent effort to conceal Frankl's actions and his collaboration with the Nazis, and
that, in the assessment ofRaul Hilberg, the founder ofHolocaust Studies, Frankl's historical account contains distortions
akin to Binjamin Wilkomirski's memoirs, which were translated into nine languages before being exposed as deeply
problematic (and according to the most radical interpretation false) in Hilberg's 1996 Politics of Memory.
[15]
Szasz's
criticism of Frankl is not universally embraced.
[16]
Similarly, Hilberg's allegations have been rebutted by several
reviewers.
[17]
Comparison between Frankl's memoirs and Wilkomirski's memoirs leveled by Szasz, however, could
legitimately be dismissed altogether as an inapt and misleading analogy insofar as questions arose (and remained) as to
whether or not Wilkomirski had ever been an inmate at a concentration camp, whereas this was never a question in Frankl's
case: there is no doubt that he is a survivor.
Briefly: Conflicting views about the nature of memory under extreme conditions, as well as the sort of instinctual
opportunism (for the sake of survival) or positive thinking mentality that often (one might even say 'usually' or 'almost
always') correlated with long-term survival in the Nazi death camps, makes the memoir an important document of witness
during the holocaust but also highlight the way in which it displays the cognitive and psychological limits of representing a
situation like the Nazi extermination from an 'impartial' first person perspective.
Based on a suggestion in Man's Search for Meaning, a proposed Statue of Responsibility has been designed by Utah
sculptor Gary Lee Price and endorsed for construction by the Utah governor. In the book, Frankl makes the following
statement about the sculpture:
