A worthy read and Frankl’s voice is exceptional – both serious, yet intimate and casual. His precepts are worth thinking on. Some of which I document here for accessibility:

Nietzsche: He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How.

Logotherapy is less retrospective and less introspective than psychoanalysis. It focuses rather on the future, on the meanings to be fulfilled by the patient in his future.

The striving to find a meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in man. A will to meaning vs. will to pleasure or will to power.

What matters is not the meaning of a person’s life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment…chess example: Tell Me, Master, what is the best chess move in the world? — Simply no such thing — situational and individual.

We can discover life in three different ways:
1. Creating a work or doing a deed
2. Experiencing something or encountering someone
3. By the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering

Man’s main concern is not to gain pleasure or avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life. That is why man is even ready to suffer, on the condition, to be sure, that his suffering has meaning…provided certainly that the suffering is unavoidable. If it were avoidable, however, the meaningful thing to do would be to remove its cause, be it psychological, biological or political. To suffer unnecessarily is masochistic rather than heroic.

…Seemed to me I would die in the near future…my concern than different than others…Their question was, “Will we survive the camp? For it not all this suffering has no meaning.” The question which beset me was, “Has all this suffering, this dying around us, a meaning? For if not then ultimately there is no meaning to survival; for a life whose meaning depends upon such a happenstance – as whether one escapes or not — ultimately would not be worth living at all.

The question was whether an ape which was being used to develop poliomyelitis serum, and for this reason punctured again and again, would ever be able to grasp the meaning of its suffering. Unanimously, the group replied that of course it would not; with its limited intelligence, it could not enter into the world of main, the only world in which the meaning of suffering would be understandable…And what about man? Are you sure that the human world is a terminal point in the evolution of the cosmos? Is it not conceivable that there is still another dimension, a world beyond man’s world; a world in which the question of an ultimate meaning of human suffering would find an answer?

Paradoxical intention: Fear replaced by a paradoxical wish…fear of perspiring in public, anxiety about it then brings it on and worse, to cut this circle formation I advised the patient to deliberately show people how much he could sweat…whenever anxiety triggered: I only sweated out a quart before, but now I’m going to pour at least ten quarts!”…freed himself from it in a week.

Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them. In other words, man is ultimately self-determining. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment.

A human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy through actualizing the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation.

Existential vacuum: a feeling of emptiness and meaninglessness.

Tragic optimism:
1. Turning suffering into a human achievement and accomplishment
2. Deriving from guilt the opportunity to change oneself for the better
3. Deriving from life’s transitoriness an incentive to take responsible action