Viktor Frankl (1905–1997) was a philosopher, practicing therapist, and author of 39 books who created the theory and exercise of logotherapy, a school of psychotherapy that described a search for life’s meaning and purpose as a central, if often-untapped, human dynamic. As he wrote, “We must decide…what will be the monument” of our existence. From 1942 to 1945 he was imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps, where his parents and brother were murdered (his sister escaped). He resumed his practice and teaching after the war.

Frankl’s best-known book is his publication of A Psychologist’s Experiences in the Concentration Camp, released in German in 1946 and translated into English in 1959 as Man’s Search for Meaning. Though reflecting on his wartime incarceration, Frankl’s argument for self-determination applies broadly to conditions of abandonment and loneliness.

Historian and author Dennis B. Klein, director emeritus of the Jewish studies program and the Master of Arts in Holocaust and Genocide studies program at Kean University, reviews Frankl’s work, exploring three influential responses to what he called “inner emptiness”: how meaning-making can interrupt inertia and disquiet; why meaning-making is nonetheless unequal to the governing habit of problem-solving and the quest for recognition; and steps to energize daily routines.

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