Preface to the 1984 Edition

THIS BOOK HAS NOW LIVED TO SEE ITS SEVENTY-third printing in English – in addition to having been published in nineteen other languages. And the English editions alone have sold almost two and a half million copies.

These are the dry facts, and they may well be the reason why reporters of American newspapers and particularly of American TV stations more often than not start their interviews, after listing these facts, by exclaiming: “Dr. Frankl, your book has become a true bestseller – how do you feel about such a success?” Whereupon I react by reporting that in the first place I do not at all see in the bestseller status of my book so much an achievement and accomplishment on my part as an expression of the misery of our time: if hundreds of thousands of people reach out for a book whose very title promises to deal with the question of a meaning to life, it must be a question that burns under their fingernails.

To be sure, something else may have contributed to the impact of the book: its second, theoretical part (“Logotherapy in a Nutshell”) boils down, as it were, to the lesson one may distill from the first part, the autobiographical account (“Experiences in a Concentration Camp”), whereas Part One serves as the existential validation of my theories. Thus, both parts mutually support their credibility.

I had none of this in mind when I wrote the book in 1945. And I did so within nine successive days and with the firm determination that the book would be published anonymously. In fact, the first printing of the original German version does not show my name on the cover, though at the last moment, just before the book’s initial publication, I did finally give in to my friends who had urged me to let it be published with my name at least on the title page. At first, however, it had been written with the absolute conviction that, as an anonymous opus, it could never earn its author literary fame. I had wanted simply to convey to the reader by way of a concrete example that life holds a potential meaning under any conditions, even the most miserable ones. And I thought that if the point were demonstrated in a situation as extreme as that in a concentration camp, my book might gain a hearing. I therefore felt responsible for writing down what I had gone through, for I thought it might be helpful to people who are prone to despair.

And so it is both strange and remarkable to me that – among some dozens of books I have authored – precisely this one, which I had intended to be published anonymously so that it could never build up any reputation on the part of the author, did become a success. Again and again I therefore admonish my students both in Europe and in America: “Don’t aim at success – the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run – in the long run, I say! – success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.”

Should the following text of this book, dear reader, give you a lesson to learn from Auschwitz, the foregoing text of its preface can give you a lesson to learn from an unintentional bestseller.

As to this new edition, a chapter has been added in order to update the theoretical conclusions of the book. Drawn from a lecture I gave as the honorary president of the Third World Congress of Logotherapy in the Auditorium Maximum of Regensburg University in West Germany (June 1983), it now forms the “Postscript 1984” to this book and is entitled “The Case for a Tragic Optimism.” The chapter addresses present-day concerns and how it is possible to “say yes to life” in spite of all the tragic aspects of human existence. To hark back to its title, it is hoped that an “optimism” for our future may flow from the lesson learned from our “tragic” past.

V.E.F.

Vienna, 1983