Man's Search For Meaning Summary

Cancer—a six letter word that can easily change someone’s life forever. In this case, it was a teenage girl’s life. She was eighteen at the time and had her whole life ahead of her. She was your typical high school senior, anxiously awaiting her prom and graduation. She would be starting college soon, and because of this, her mom thought it would be a good idea for her to take a visit to the family doctor for a checkup. The doctor’s appointment was typical: they had checked her height, weight, body temperature, and blood pressure. Everything seemed to be going fine until the nurse felt a lump on her neck. The nurse immediately reported her findings to the doctor, and the doctor ordered for a biopsy to be done. A few days later the results came in, and sure enough, it was cancer. Viktor E. Frankl was a psychiatrist who experienced one of the most horrendous events in history. Frankl was sent to a concentration camp during the holocaust. In his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl shares with us his experiences in the Nazi death camps. He paints for his readers a picture of the everyday lives of
Determinism implies that a person cannot avoid being influenced by his surroundings, but Frankl believes that a person does have a choice in whether or not a person is influenced by the things around him. Frankl tell us that “the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him—mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp,” (66). Frankl also believes that the choice the people about their attitudes towards certain