The Preface introduces the work’s central theme. As Frankl explains, he wants readers prone to “despair” to see in his story a model for maintaining a sense of purpose amid hardship. Finding Meaning in Extreme Conditions thus emerges as the text’s principal concern, and not simply because of Frankl’s stated intention. Rather, he implies that his own purpose in life is bound up in this project: 

I had wanted simply to convey to the reader by way of a concrete example that life holds a potential meaning under any conditions, even the most miserable ones. And I thought that if the point were demonstrated in a situation as extreme as a concentration camp, my book might gain a hearing. I therefore felt responsible for writing down what I had gone through, for I thought it might be helpful to people who are prone to despair (4).

This passage foreshadows Frankl’s later discussion of how the desire to write and publish this work fortified him amid his struggles in the concentration camps. The book itself is thus an act of meaning-making of the kind Frankl discusses. 

The story Frankl tells at the end of the Preface describes the first (and one of the most important) existential choices that he made during the war and his imprisonment. It reveals a great deal about his character at the very beginning of the narrative: He chose love and loyalty for his family over personal safety. This hints that those values would be central to the meaning he eventually constructed during his time in Auschwitz, but it also suggests another theme: Faith as an Expression of Humanity’s Deepest Impulses. Inspired by a religious text, Frankl accepted the precarity of life in Nazi-controlled Austria, implicitly trusting God to see him through.