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Question: How useful is Viktor Frankl's book 'Mans search for meaning' to teenagers!?
How can the book help teenagers possibly with problems they are having!?Www@QuestionHome@Com


Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:
Teenagers obviously have all sorts of problems that "Man's Search For Meaning" won't help them with!. It's not written specifically for teenagers; it's not even really a self-help book in the modern sense!. That said, I think that the book is an approachable and easy-to-read introduction to the idea of self-actualization, or even a kind of rudimentary existentialism!. The idea that life can be meaningful, and moreover that you can create meaning in your own life through the choices you make, is very powerful!.

The lives of teenagers unfold in a very arbitrary way; they have to go to school and study things they don't care about for reasons they don't care about, they have to work at jobs they don't like, they have to do more-or-less what their parents say!. They don't have a lot of power!. It can be frustrating; it can feel like the whole world is arbitrary and futile!. Perhaps, then, Frankl's work is especially relevant to teenagers!. Maybe if more young people were to find in their lives the capacity for real meaning, they would be less inclined to escape from their situations via drugs, drinking, casual sex, etc!., and more likely to face their systemic institutional persecution as thinking adults!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

Frankl's book also points out 'four wall do not a prison make', in other words, no matter how bad you think you're being treated, you have the freedom of choice between stimulus and response!. Once you realize this, no one can hurt you without your permission and a world of freedom opens up!.

That's what I got out of it!.

How can this be of use to teens!? Letting go of the self-imposed shackles from their parents, teachers and peers and going out into the real world a free person!.

T

PS, To this day, I'm still amazed at the way they were released from camp!.Www@QuestionHome@Com