Customer Reviews
Away with the existential vacuum! - By: calmly, 15 Oct 2007 
"We psychiatrists are neither teachers nor preachers but have to learn from the manin the street, from his ... self-understanding, what being human is all about". Of all those who applied existentialism to psychotherapy & to the efforts of human beings to help themselves, perhaps none has done so with as much wisdom as Viktor Frankl.
Although I didn't connect with the first 50 or so pages of this book, after that I was challenged & inspired by Frankl. His concerns, the "existential vacuum", the depressing impact of an "indoctrination into reductionism", the irreducibility of our experience, "responsibility as the essence of existence", these are well worth being reminded of.
That a "machine model" or "rat model" is not the best way to view human beings, does it seem such a revelation? Frankl observed how some young people had begun to view their ideals & altruism as hangups, how they had been engagingin fruitless "hidden motive" games. He wondered if behavioral scientific therapeutic programs didn't fail to take into account the specialness of people to find meaning, to transcend & to detach themselves from their situations. He called for responsibility & a recognition that we all proceed into the unknowable.
Frankl's approach is quite different from that of Freud, Jung, Skinner or even Rogers (Frankl at least creditsin this book Rogers with "de-ideologizing psychotherapy"). His work still lives on, as for examplein the United States through the Franklian Psychology (Logotherapy/Existential Analysis)doctoral program offered through Graduate Theological Foundation. Frankl himself, as he makes clearin this book, suggested a concept of spirituality & religion that "goes far beyond the narrow concepts of God as they are promulgated by some representatives of denominational religion", one that encompassed even atheism.
It would seem unfortunate if Frankl & his existential analysis that assumed a "will to meaning" were forgotten. Existentialism remains one of the great reponses of Western civilization to the challenges of life & Viktor Frankl one of its best practical advocates. I realize I need to read more about Frankl, logotherapy & existential analysisin general. It may be the best expression of a sacred view of being human we havein the West.
Interesting but a bit dry - By: , 21 Feb 2001 
I did enjoy reading this book, but found it a bit slow goingin places. I much prefered Ken Wilber's "A Theory of Everything" or Deepak Chopra's "How to Know God".
A "ultimate" thank to Dr. Frankl - By: , 22 Feb 1999 
Henry Charrier was the man who made the first move to change thingsin my mind, soin my life with his book "Butterfly". Then, Frankl came up just to make me jump into a deep anxiety & depression but then took me out into a calm place brightened by sunlight inwhich i could see my past & self-created future...
