Dr. Frankl, author-psychiatrist, sometimes asks his patients who suffer from a multitude of torments great and small, “Why do you not commit suicide?”
From their answers he can often find the guide-line for his psycho-therapy: in one life there is love for one’s children to tie to; in another life, a talent to be used; in a third, perhaps only lingering memories worth preserving.
To weave these slender threads of a broken life into a firm pattern of meaning and responsibility is the object and challenge of logotherapy, which is Dr.
Frankl’s own version of modern existential analysis.
— Gordon W. Allport, the preface to Man’s Search for Meaning, 1985, Washington Square Press
