For a while now I’ve been meaning to mention some books that have been on my mind and on my bookshelves — some newly published, most quite old. The problem is that with any good book, there are a hundred different things to talk about, and I never have the patience to write a comprehensive review. Capsule reviews, on the other hand, don’t give you a chance to say much of interest. So I’m going to limit myself to some random thoughts about random books, with the hope that whatever I say piques your interest enough to read the full work. (It goes without saying that I’ll only mention books worth reading. It’s hard enough for most people to pick up a book, so why waste your time on a mediocre one?)

Today I’ll discuss a book by book by Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, which was first published in 1959. It is perhaps the most accessible book by a psychiatrist you will ever read. The first part tells the story of Frankl’s experiences as a prisoner of Nazi concentration camps during World War II. The second part outlines the tenets of logotherapy, an approach to psychotherapy that maintains that what drives human beings is not the search for pleasure or power, but rather meaning — however the individual defines it.

What Frankl does in his relatively short book can only be called ambitious — who else would dare to have subject headings like “The Meaning of Life” and “The Essence of Existence”? Yet, unlike so many self-help gurus and modern-day philosophizers, Frankl manages to rise above caricature. One reason, of course, is the iconic horror of what he and others experienced in Auschwitz, Dachau, and other Nazi-run camps. Frankl’s autobiography is the grim foreground of the book’s first part and the essential background of its second, offering us a rare glimpse of humanity at its worst and best. When Frankl speaks of the meaning of life, we know his words to be credible, the testament of a man who survived life at its cruelest and salvaged meaning from its most nihilistic depths.

But this is not just a Holocaust story. What I found to be most valuable in Frankl’s book is its insistence that the lessons of Auschwitz apply in any situation, in any individual’s life. Fate, in fact, matters little. What matters is how human beings respond to it. Can we find meaning in our suffering, regardless of how arbitrary and maddening it may seem? Do we bear the inevitable misfortunes that befall us — all of us, eventually — with grace and dignity? Indeed, many of us are blessed with liberties and comforts unknown to the camp prisoner, and yet we still show an inability to make use of the most fundamental freedom of all — the freedom “to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”

This is not to say that all of Frankl’s fellow prisoners (or even Frankl himself, as he suggests in the book) chose virtuously in the concentration camp. The majority did not. There were many, in fact, who allowed the brutality of the conditions there to eviscerate their humanity. These men were selected to be Capos — prisoners with special privileges — and as Nazi stooges they treated their fellow prisoners more cruelly than the guards themselves, Frankl points out. Likewise, among the guards there were many who perversely enjoyed their work of torture and killing, and yet there were also a few who showed unexpected kindness to their prisoners. It seems the same choice was posed even to them, the captors: Would they allow the baseness of their surroundings to destroy them? “It is apparent that the mere knowledge that a man was either a camp guard or a prisoner tells us almost nothing,” Frankl writes.

Human kindness can be found in all groups, even those which as a whole it would be easy to condemn. The boundaries between groups overlapped and we must not try to simplify matters by saying that these men were angels and those were devils. Certainly, it was a considerable achievement for a guard or foreman to be kind to the prisoners in spite of all the camp’s influences, and, on the other hand, the baseness of a prisoner who treated his own companions badly was exceptionally contemptible. Obviously the prisoners found the lack of character in such men especially upsetting, while they were profoundly moved by the smallest kindness received from any of the guards. I remember one day a foreman secretly gave me a piece of bread which I knew he must have saved from his breakfast ration. It was far more than the small piece of bread which moved me to tears at that time. It was the human “something” which this man also gave to me — the word and look which accompanied the gift.

Frankl here shows a remarkable ability to empathize even with his Nazi captors, and in doing so he demonstrates the fundamental truth of his teaching: the ability of every individual to reject the corruption and the blindness of hate and to see the world as it is, without illusion, without cynicism.

Tomorrow I’ll talk about what meaning Frankl’s book has for a modern culture obsessed with avoiding suffering.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen