What Viktor Frankl thinks about happiness
Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist (1905 to 1997) and Holocaust survivor who founded logotherapy, a school of psychotherapy that treats the search for meaning as the central human motivation.
Everything they publish, on ppll ↗
Viktor Frankl did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
10 dated positions, c. 1984–1992 to c. 1946–1992, in their own words. Our reading of what Viktor Frankl has said — not written or endorsed by them.
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Their wordsLife ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.
↗Man's Search for Meaning (Beacon Press, 2006 edition; Part One tr. Ilse Lasch)books.google.com All 21 from this book
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Their wordsit did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life - daily and hourly.
↗Man's Search for Meaning (Beacon Press, 2006 edition; Part One tr. Ilse Lasch)books.google.com All 21 from this book
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Their wordsFor the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour.
↗Man's Search for Meaning (Beacon Press, 2006 edition; Part One tr. Ilse Lasch)books.google.com All 21 from this book
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Their wordsEveryone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment.
↗Man's Search for Meaning (Beacon Press, 2006 edition; Part One tr. Ilse Lasch)books.google.com All 21 from this book
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Their wordsIn other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.
↗Man's Search for Meaning (Beacon Press, 2006 edition; Part One tr. Ilse Lasch)books.google.com All 21 from this book
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Our readingThe more a person forgets themselves in a cause or in love for someone, the more human they are
Their wordsThe more one forgets himself—by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love—the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.
↗Man's Search for Meaning (Beacon Press, 2006 edition; Part One tr. Ilse Lasch)books.google.com All 21 from this book
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Their wordsIt is one of the basic tenets of logotherapy that man's main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life.
↗Man's Search for Meaning (Beacon Press, 2006 edition; Part One tr. Ilse Lasch)books.google.com All 21 from this book
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Their wordsIn some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.
↗Man's Search for Meaning (Beacon Press, 2006 edition; Part One tr. Ilse Lasch)books.google.com All 21 from this book
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Our readingHappiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue
Their wordsBut happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue.
↗Man's Search for Meaning (Beacon Press, 2006 edition; Part One tr. Ilse Lasch)books.google.com All 21 from this book
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Their wordsAs to the causation of the feeling of meaninglessness, one may say, albeit in an oversimplifying vein, that people have enough to live by but nothing to live for; they have the means but no meaning.
↗Man's Search for Meaning (Beacon Press, 2006 edition; Part One tr. Ilse Lasch)books.google.com All 21 from this book