Man's Search for Meaning

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. What do you know about the Holocaust? When and why did the Holocaust occur?

Teaching Suggestion: The Holocaust, the Nazis’ systematic genocide of European Jews (and other minority groups) between 1941 and 1945, is an extremely sensitive subject and should be treated as such. Though this is a historical event that many find disturbing, it is important to learn about it and to understand its causes and effects—how Hitler’s regime and propaganda demonized the Jews, the racist ideology of the “Aryans,” and how the idea for the “Final Solution” emerged from growing German demoralization during World War II. Understanding the Holocaust is important when approaching Frankl’s book, which centers around the author’s experiences in a concentration camp during the Holocaust.

• This article from the Holocaust Encyclopedia offers an introduction to the Holocaust.
• This educational page contains lessons on the concentration camp at Auschwitz, where Frankl was sent; the first lesson provides a helpful introduction to the site.

2. Think about what you know about the field of psychology in the 19th and 20th centuries.