Reading List · Lisanne Swart
Authors Like
By Lisanne Swart · 6 authors · Meaning & Survival · Updated July 2026
Viktor Frankl survived Auschwitz and turned that experience into a psychological theory rather than only a memoir: that the will to find meaning, not pleasure or power, is the primary human drive, and that meaning remains available even in conditions designed to strip it away. Man's Search for Meaning sits at the intersection of Holocaust testimony and clinical psychology, and its authority comes from having been lived rather than theorized first. The writers below share that same intersection of direct extremity and hard-won insight, or extend Frankl's ideas about meaning into new contexts.
Readers who enjoy Viktor Frankl often turn to Elie Wiesel for a more literary Holocaust testimony, Primo Levi for the most precisely observed camp memoir in the canon, Edith Eger for a psychotherapist's later working-through of her own survival, Hannah Arendt for the political and philosophical analysis of the system that made the camps possible, Rollo May for existential psychology developed outside the camps, and Irvin Yalom for a contemporary therapist extending Frankl's meaning-centered approach into clinical practice.
Similar Voice & Approach
Elie Wiesel
Wiesel's Night is the other essential Holocaust memoir most readers encounter alongside Frankl's, though its register is different: where Frankl builds toward a psychological theory of meaning, Wiesel stays inside the raw, unresolved experience of watching faith and family and self collapse under systematic violence, offering testimony rather than a framework for making sense of it.
Read Wiesel for the literary, unflinching testimony side of this territory, without Frankl's therapeutic framing imposed over it. Night is short and best read in a single sitting.
→ Read more about Elie WieselPrimo Levi
Levi, a chemist by training, brought a scientist's precision to describing life in Auschwitz in If This Is a Man, cataloguing the camp's systems and hierarchies with a clarity that makes the horror more legible rather than less. He shares Frankl's interest in what remains of human dignity and rational thought under conditions engineered to destroy both, though Levi is less interested in extracting a general theory than in getting the specific facts exactly right.
Read Levi if Frankl's analytical clarity is what you valued, applied to observation rather than theory-building. If This Is a Man is the essential starting point.
→ See all books written by Primo LeviEdith Eger
Eger, a survivor of Auschwitz who later became a clinical psychologist, wrote The Choice decades after Frankl's book, working through her own trauma with the clinical tools she developed over a long career treating other trauma survivors, including combat veterans. Where Frankl's book was written shortly after liberation, Eger's is written from the vantage of a lifetime spent applying what she learned, giving a longer view of what recovery and meaning-making actually look like over decades.
Read Eger for a similar survivor-turned-therapist perspective, but seen from further down the road, with more explicit clinical technique woven in. The Choice is the place to start.
Hannah Arendt
Arendt approaches the same historical catastrophe Frankl survived from the opposite direction: not personal testimony but political and philosophical analysis of how such systems become possible in the first place, most famously through her controversial concept of the "banality of evil" developed while covering Eichmann's trial. Reading Arendt alongside Frankl gives you both the lived experience and the structural explanation of the same history.
Read Arendt if you want to understand the machinery that produced what Frankl survived, analyzed with rigorous philosophical distance rather than firsthand testimony.
→ Read more about Hannah ArendtRollo May
May was one of the primary figures who brought European existential psychology, including ideas closely related to Frankl's logotherapy, into the American clinical mainstream. His work covers similar ground — anxiety, meaning, freedom, and the courage required to face an uncertain existence honestly — developed through clinical practice rather than survival of atrocity, offering a gentler entry point into the same existential tradition.
Read May for the same existential psychology tradition Frankl belongs to, applied to ordinary anxiety and meaning-seeking rather than extremity. Man's Search for Himself is the natural companion title.
Irvin Yalom
Yalom is a contemporary psychiatrist who has spent his career developing existential psychotherapy for a modern clinical audience, addressing death, freedom, isolation, and meaning through case studies and, later, philosophical novels. His work is the most direct contemporary extension of the meaning-centered therapeutic tradition Frankl helped found, translated into the language and case-study format of modern clinical writing.
Read Yalom if you want Frankl's meaning-centered therapy tradition carried forward into contemporary clinical practice, illustrated through vivid patient case studies. Love's Executioner is the classic entry point.
More from the shelf
Frequently asked questions about authors like Viktor Frankl
Who should I read if I like Viktor Frankl?
Readers who enjoy Viktor Frankl often turn to Elie Wiesel for a more literary Holocaust testimony, Primo Levi for the most precisely observed camp memoir in the canon, Edith Eger for a psychotherapist's later working-through of her own survival, Hannah Arendt for the political and philosophical analysis of the system that made the camps possible, Rollo May for existential psychology developed outside the camps, and Irvin Yalom for a contemporary therapist extending Frankl's meaning-centered approach into clinical practice.
Is Elie Wiesel's Night similar to Man's Search for Meaning?
Both are foundational Holocaust memoirs but differ in register: Night stays inside the raw, unresolved experience of watching faith and family collapse under systematic violence, offering testimony rather than analysis, while Man's Search for Meaning builds toward a psychological theory about how meaning remains available even in extremity. Many readers encounter both books together as complementary rather than interchangeable.
What should I read after Man's Search for Meaning?
Primo Levi's If This Is a Man offers a similarly precise, clear-eyed account of camp life from a chemist's analytical perspective. Edith Eger's The Choice gives a longer-view perspective from a survivor who became a psychologist decades later. For the political and philosophical analysis of how such systems become possible, Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism is the standard reference.
Is Rollo May's work related to Viktor Frankl's logotherapy?
Yes, May was one of the primary figures who brought European existential psychology, including ideas closely related to Frankl's logotherapy, into the American clinical mainstream. Both address anxiety, meaning, and the courage required to face an uncertain existence, though May developed his work through clinical practice with patients rather than survival of atrocity.
