Analysis Of Viktor E. Frankl´s Man's Search For Meaning

In Viktor E. Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl documents in great details his time as an inmate at Auschwitz in his book where he ties in his personal experiences and analyzes existential concepts concerning the human psyche. While exploring whether human existence is contingent on a person’s responsible-ness, even in the most extreme and unpleasant situations, Frankl illuminates on key ideas concerning suffering, human existence, and the meaning of life. This paper will be exploring Franks’s Man’s Search for Meaning and his ideas on logotherapy methods and his personal experiences in Auschwitz in relationship to Jonathan Haidt’s The Happiness Hypothesis, where Haidt explores the notion that the purpose of adversity is to “reach the highest levels of strength, fulfillment, and personal development”, in which I compare both comprehensive texts and contend that adversity that doesn’t inflict lasting trauma is beneficial for human’s happiness and realization of potential (Haidt 136).
In order to gain a greater understanding of adversity, specifically to the context of Viktor E. Frankl’s own experiences in Man’s Search for Meaning, it is essential to define the adversities that are presented respectively in Frankl’s Man's Search for Meaning and Haidt’s The Happiness Hypothesis. In Frankl’s Man’s …show more content…
Moreover, the implications of the adversity hypothesis consider suffering necessary for humans to maximally benefit from it but only if it occurs during the right time (typically young adulthood), to people who have the social and psychological resource to rally up to the challenge, and to the right degree (where the adversity is not too severe to cause PTSD) (Hadit