From Death-Camp to Existentialism: A Psychiatrist's Path to a New Therapy [Man's Search for Meaning]

Boston: Beacon Press, 1959. First English Language Edition. Hardcover. Very good/very good. First English Language Edition. Hardcover. This is a presentable first printing of the first edition in the English language of one of the most influential books of all time. Originally published as From Death-Camp to Existentialism, it is best known today as Man's Search for Meaning and it is the work of Viktor Emil Frankl (1905–1997), psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, providing an account of Frankl's years in four different concentration camps, including Auschwitz, while his pregnant wife and family lost their lives, as well as introducing his theory known as logotherapy, the idea that our life's primary drive is not pleasure as Freud proposed, but the creation of meaning. It was this making of meaning in one's life that Frankl believed helped him and others survive the Holocaust. When Frankl passed away in 1997, From Death-Camp to Existentialism, retitled Man's Search for Meaning, had sold over 10 million copies and had been translated into 24 languages.

8 1/4" X 5 1/2". xii, [ii], 111pp. Presents nicely in protective archival sleeved dust jacket. Mild wear to price-clipped dust jacket, with rubbing to edges and extremities, hint of chipping to tail of spine and bottom corner of rear panel, sunning to spine, and light dust soiling to rear. Burgundy cloth over boards, with death camp outline stamped in blind to upper board and spine lettered in white. Lean to spine. Gentle bumping and rubbing to tail of spine, else fine. Light marginalia to gently age-toned pages, mostly confined to underlines and annotations in blue ink to last 14 pages—"Basic Concepts of Logotherapy." A presentable first printing in original dust jacket of one of the most influential books of all time. (Inventory #: 17046)