The Will to Meaning

Viktor E. Frankl, the Holocaust survivor who founded logotherapy, sets out the foundations of his method, a form of psychotherapy built on the idea that people are driven by the search for meaning in their lives. Compiled from his speeches, the book places logotherapy beside other leading schools of psychotherapy and explains the techniques Frankl used with patients to combat what he called the existential vacuum. He also discusses the emptiness people feel in modern life and describes how the approach can treat neuroses. The book is regarded as a key work of meaning-centered therapy. First published in 1969, it later returned in a carefully re-edited version, the first since 1988.

Ryan Holiday includes it in his Books to Base Your Life On reading list.