Man’s Search for Meaning: Logotherapy: Introduction Summary & Analysis

Frankl tells the reader that the original version of this book did not include a discussion of logotherapy, but he has added one on because so many people have asked for it. His full explanation of logotherapy fills twenty volumes in German, so what he presents here is a much-condensed version of his ideas on therapy. He starts out by defining logotherapy in relation to psychoanalysis: it is “less retrospective and less introspective.”

Frankl named his practice logotherapy after the Greek word logos, which means “meaning.” His form of therapy is oriented around helping patients find meaning in their future, in contrast to the psychoanalytic practice of solving a patient’s problems by focusing on his or her past. In logotherapy, which is also called “The Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy,” the most important force in a man’s life is his desire to find meaning. While Freud speaks of a “will to pleasure” and the psychologist Alfred Adler speaks of a “will to power,” Frankl focuses on a “will to meaning.”