The Feeling of Meaninglessness: A Challenge to Psychotherapy and Philosophy

Batthyany's extensive introduction shows how Frankl's thought took shape: a 21-year-old medical student first using the term «logotherapy» in 1926, his move away from Freud toward Adler, and his expulsion from Adler's society in 1927 for «unorthodox views». Having set up youth counseling centers in Vienna, Frankl noticed that student suicides spiked around report-card days and organized a special campaign — the theory grew directly out of clinical practice.

The most moving part of the essay concerns the war years: in 1942 Frankl was deported with his family to Theresienstadt, where he joined a volunteer group that sought out ghetto inmates at risk of suicide. He survived four camps but lost his father, mother, brother and wife. Batthyany recalls his famous line: «Man is that being who invented the gas chambers; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with a prayer on his lips.»

Frankl's own text opens with the paper «The Feeling of Meaninglessness»: according to a survey of 500 young people in Vienna, the share suffering from it rose from 30% to 80% in two years; the existential vacuum crosses the border between capitalist and communist countries «without a visa». The cause is clear: unlike animals, humans are not told by instinct what they must do, and unlike in the past, tradition no longer tells them what they should do. So people either do what others do (conformism) or what others want them to do (totalitarianism).

Frankl criticizes the idea of «self-actualization»: people can fulfil themselves only by reaching out toward a meaning beyond themselves — a task, another person; self-transcendence is the essence of existence. He argues that the mass emphasis on sexual «performance» breeds anxiety and neurosis, and that «sex inflation» leads to devaluation. The organ of meaning is conscience — but conscience can err, so meaning cannot be handed to anyone; each person must find it for themselves.

The second paper turns to the therapist's role: the search for meaning is not pathological but the surest sign of being human, and interpreting it as illness robs patients of the fruits of their spiritual struggle. Frankl distinguishes forms of reductionism — «psychologism», «pathologism» and «noologism» — and tells the ironic story of being summoned by the Gestapo in 1941, only to find the officer seeking therapy for his own phobia under the guise of «a friend's» problem.

The most powerful scene is a conversation with a rabbi who lost his first wife and six children in Auschwitz and has now fallen into despair because his second wife has turned out to be infertile. Frankl uncovers his deepest fear and opens up a new way of seeing his suffering — for the first time in years, the rabbi finds relief. The episode brings the book's central thesis to life: unavoidable suffering can be turned into an achievement through the right attitude, and life does not lose its meaning until the last breath.

• The papers come from different years, so some ideas are repeated
• The theoretical texts are enlivened by short clinical vignettes
• Batthyany's introduction puts the book in context and is a useful road map for first-time readers of Frankl
• The Turkish translation is heavy on terminology; some sentences need a second reading