“Man’s Search for Meaning”

by Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor Frankl’s groundbreaking book, originally published in 1959, details his experience as a prisoner of war during World War II, his post-war development of a school of psychotherapy called logotherapy, and his imagining of the transformative power of the practice on the human mind for future generations. At its core, Man’s Search for Meaning explores sufferingnot how to prevent suffering, but how one may find meaning in it, and the necessity of discovering meaning for surviving the impossible. Frankl explores spiritual survival, articulating the mind’s control over the body, the importance of perspective. Unlike many books of the Holocaust genre, Frankl’s firstperson account of the horrors of Nazi occupation do not lean on or into emotion - this most shocked me about this book. I definitely felt while reading it, but its telling resonates from the psychiatric perspective. The author almost comes across detached from the experience, as if having watched himself endure torture from outside of his own body.

In the preface, Frankl stresses the Nietzsche saying, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” Frankl’s book meditates on the why and how. Frankl spent three years in the camps, first Auschwitz and then Dachau. His prior training as a doctor afforded him insight into his fellow prisoners’ physical conditions, recognizing when someone’s days were numbered. Unless outright targeted for execution or succumbing to disease, many perished when they lost hope. Frankl learned to identify the signs, trying to intervene and shift one’s perspective toward what might be waiting once the war was over.

Frankl’s matter-of-fact style of writing focuses the reader on the mental tensions rather than the physical atrocities. He writes, “What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.” Though intently focused on seeing his family again, Frankl wanted to finish his book on the meaning of life - the prior draft having been lost in the occupation. The second section of the book focuses on a clinical, though readable, defining of logotherapy - eschewing a focus on pleasure for a search for meaning. Frankl emphasizes personal responsibility and the psychiatrist’s role in centering the patient’s wherewithal to determine his/her own life - not what happens to a person, but how one responds to it.

I started this book with deep breaths, preparing myself for a disturbing, unsettling read. And while Frankl does account for those realities, the text rises above them, allowing the readers to ponder the meaning in our own lives. He stresses that one’s degree of suffering is relative to an individual’s experience. He does not believe he has suffered more than others, though most of us would disagree. If you find yourself pulled toward the Holocaust genre, this book provides a unique meditation on suffering - sustaining purpose within and beyond the experience. If you find yourself avoiding this type of memoir but remain Holocaust curious, Frankl’s dispassionate telling is a comfortable place to start.

“Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him.”

REVIEW BY MEREDITH MCKINNIE

by Allan J. Lichtman

In Lichtman’s book centered on the history of voting rights in America, the most surprising revelation is the book’s premise. The framers, our forefathers, never enshrined the right to vote in the Constitution. The legal act of voting was always in contention within each state, complicated by states vying for political power by expanding and restricting the right to vote. Now a Distinguished Professor of American History at American University, Allan J. Lichtman first delved into the topic of voting rights as a graduate student at Harvard. He wrote his thesis on the Civil Rights Act of 1965 and was provided access to historical records and interviewed attorneys affiliated with the case. Dismayed at the lack of progress on the issue since the historic legislation in 1965, Lichtman began working on voting rights cases, serving as an expert witness and advocate. Using personal anecdotes and detailed accounts of legislative twists and turns, Lichtman chronicles the winding road of American voter enfranchisement, still yet to be fully realized.

The first five chapters of the book cover voting rights legislation, both expanding and restricting the vote, through the 1960s. Initially, the framers extended voting rights to white, male property owners, narrowing the scope of who made decisions for the masses. Without power and capital, the mass of Americans had no voice. The promise of democracy remained out of touch with limits further implicated by race, gender, and immigration status. The tension of who was allowed to vote when and where was further complicated as states used the issue to collect political favor and prestige. For example, in the South, giving women the right to vote proved beneficial when considered alongside the reality of allowing black men to vote. The major movements in our country - Suffrage, Feminism, Civil Rights - all coalesced around voting and expressing one’s voice at the ballot box. Americans understood that to be adequately represented, representatives must be beholden to their constituents.

The final chapters of the book explore more recent arguments around voting rights and the Supreme Court’s decisions regarding such issues. Chapter 7 explicitly details the presidential election of 2000, in which George W. Bush beat out Al Gore, after a contested and close race in the state of Florida, a state governed by Bush’s brother Jeb. The case exemplifies the tangled web of voting laws, determined by state, country and/or parish. In acknowledging the United States as both a republic and a democracy, the battle between federal rights and state rights, particularly on the issue of voting, Lichtman explores where America has been to illustrate how the country could possibly move forward.

“The advancement of voting rights in the United States has not by any means followed a straight line of continuous disenfranchisement.”

REVIEW BY MEREDITH MCKINNIE