A treatise by a Holocaust survivor who is also a psychotherapist. His take on existentialism seems to fit very closely with the beliefs I have developed since high school. The existentialists, as I was taught, said that life has no meaning beyond what you yourself bring to it. That's fine as far as it goes. What Frankl says in this book is that you MUST bring meaning into your life, it's one of your central motivations as a human animal. He saw this in the camps, and he describes how he found he could prevent prisoners from mentally giving up in the camps (an act which would swiftly be followed with a depressed immune system, a lack of hunger, and a swift death from typhus) and how this experience changed his thinking as a therapist after his release. If you are in school, and have become upset by reading Albert Camus' The Stranger, this would make a perfect companion volume to that excellent yet disturbing book.