Man’s Search For Meaning --- by: Viktor E. Frankl (1959, 2006)

This book was a gift from a friend of mine. I’m surprised that I have never read it before now. It is extremely well known and revered, and exactly the kind of book that would have piqued my interest if I had ever picked it up and read the back cover.

It is the memoir of a Jewish psychiatrist who survived several years in various Nazi death camps. He uses his experiences there to illustrate his ideas about the psychological (and/or spiritual) importance of finding a reason to live (i.e. meaning). He also writes some about the psychoanalytical therapy technique based on this principle that he developed and calls “logotherapy”.

I really like the way he thinks, and his ideas are extremely consistent with my own (especially since my “epiphany”, which in a real sense was no more than my own personal realization that all my suffering was for a reason – i.e. I found the exact kind of “meaning” that Frankl writes about in this book). My only real critique is that he doesn’t acknowledge the fact that while everyone has a choice in how they respond to injustice and suffering, not everyone REALIZES that they have a choice; and this realization is NOT a choice, but a kind of gift (in the same sense that good health is a gift).

The Serial Killer Whisperer: How One Man's Tragedy Helped Unlock the Deadliest Secrets of the World's Most Terrifying Killers --- by: Pete Earley (2012)

I read this book only because the "Whisperer" it is about wrote to me and offered to be my friend. Normally I wouldn't read a book that so obviously sensationalizes rape and murder for corporate profit, unless I have some special interest, and in this case, because the man that this book is supposed to be about wrote to me, I did.

Of course, the book is about rape and murder, and murdering murderers as it turns out (one of the murderers in this book ended up being executed because of this book, which the author boasts about in this current edition), and it's depiction of the "Whisperer" is - according to what the "Whisperer" told me himself in his letters - extremely lacking and outright erroneous (though I wonder then why he promotes the book himself on his own personal website...?).

As for me, as soon as I learned that the "Whisperer" is still actively involved with marketed media organizations (apparently with T.V. and movies these days) I informed him that I could no longer correspond after exchanging just three letters. I wished him the best of luck and promised not to spill any of the "secrets" (my terminology) he revealed to me in his letters on this blog. So I wont.