Viktor Emili Frankl was a renowned neurologist and psychiatrist, survivor of the atrocities of the concentration camps in the Holocaust. The cruelties to which the author was subjected in the concentration camps led him to found Logotherapy, the Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy, which decades later would help reinforce the principles of Humanistic Psychotherapy.
Today, Viktor Frankl is recognized as a hero, for having survived with courage and hope all the atrocities that human beings can witness, as a martyr for having lived through the horror of the Holocaust and as a great thinker for being the writer of 39 books worldwide. well-known and being the founder of Logotherapy. If you want to learn more about the famous author, continue reading this article from : Viktor Frankl: biography and books.
Biography of Viktor Frankl
Viktor Emil Frankl born on March 26, 1905 in Vienna, Austria, in a family of Jewish origin. V. Frankl’s father was able to dedicate himself to various businesses, reaching a position in the Ministry of Social Affairs, which caught the attention of his son, who was always linked to socialist youth organizations.
Although he always showed a great interest in psychology, studied medicine at the University of Viennasubsequently obtaining a specialization in psychiatry and neurology. When he finished his studies, he was able to work at the Vienna General Hospital for four years (1933-1937) and then continued in private psychiatric practice (1937-1940). Finally, he was directed to the neurology department of Rothschild Hospital, which at the time was the only hospital in the city where Jewish people could be admitted.
As the brutalities and humiliations towards the Jews intensified, Frankl tried to emigrate to the United States, however, although he obtained the visa and was aware that in America it would be possible for him to have a happy and peaceful life, practicing his profession, He decided to stay in Vienna, observing the conflicts that his country was experiencing and rejected the opportunity so as not to abandon his parents.
A year after marrying Tilly Grosser, in 1942 He was sent with his wife and parents to Theresienstadt concentration camp, to be deported in 1944 to Auschwitz and then to Kaufering and Türkheim. This is probably the episode in Viktor Frankl’s biography that would most mark his history. It was not until the year 1945 that he was released by the American army, surviving the Holocaust, but his loved ones were not as lucky.
The course of the worst years of his life and the experience he gained during them led him in 1945 to write his most successful book “Man’s Search for Meaning”, in which he narrates the experience of a prisoner in the concentration camps from a psychiatric perspective. The reflection elaborated in his story led him to found logotherapy, being considered the Third Vianese School of Psychology, after the psychoanalysis and individual psychology of Alfred Adler. From a very young age, Viktor Frankl showed great interest in psychoanalysis, although he later turned to Alfred Adler’s Individual Psychology. However, he quickly distanced himself from school in order to focus his study on logotherapy.
After his release he moved to Munich, where he tried to find his relatives who had also been prisoners, without having any luck. When he finally returned to Vienna, he was assigned an apartment in which he lived out the rest of his days. He remarried in 1947 to Eleonore Schwindt and they conceived a daughter, Gabriela.
At a professional level, he was appointed Head of the Department of Neurology at the Vienna Polyclinic, where he worked until 1971 and in turn, he worked as professor of neurology and psychiatry at the University of Vienna, until his jubilee at age 85. During these years, he was also able to work as a professor at prestigious universities in the United States, such as Harvard University and Stanford University, among others.
Throughout his life he published more than 30 books, translated into many languages, whose content was based on existential analysis and logotherapy, obtaining 29 Honoris Causa Doctorates from various universities around the world and an Oskar Pfister award from the American Psychiatric Society.
Viktor Frankl He died of cardiac arrest on September 2, 1997 in Vienna..
Viktor Frankl: books
Viktor Frankl’s published books total 39 books, translated into 45 languages throughout his life. Among the most representative books by Viktor Frankl we can find:
- The roots of psychotherapy. Youth writings (1923-1942).
- Psychotherapy and humanism (1987)
- Theory and therapy of neurosis (1992)
- In the beginning was the meaning (2000)
- Faced with the existential void: towards a humanization of psychotherapy (2003)
- Psychotherapy available to everyone (2003)
- The psychological idea of mane (2003)
- Search for God and meaning of life: Dialogue between a theologian and a psychologist (2005)
- Fundamentals and applications of logotherapy (2012)
Man’s Search for Meaning
Man’s Search for Meaning was written in 1946 by Viktor Frankl after being released by the Americans in the concentration camp, where he had witnessed countless acts of cruelty and human frivolity, which led him to question which was the true meaning of one’s own existence and the meaning itself.
The work reveals an autobiographical story, where Viktor Frankl expresses the experiences and feelings awakened in the concentration camps, as well as the first concepts of logotherapy, taking us to feelings of absolute hopelessness, to the most hopeful vision, of being able to move forward, see beyond and be glad to be alive. These feelings are recounted throughout three stages described in the book.
Man’s Search for Meaning: Summary
- Phase 1: internment in the field. A state of mind called the “pardon illusion” is described, an internal buffering mechanism where the person feels hope, as if what is happening is not true. The author relates the feeling he experienced when he was approaching a fatal destiny, making the reader imagine the situation in detail. We understand the first phase as a period of adaptation in which the person is in state of shock”.
- Phase 2: life in the country. According to the author “a phase of generalized apathy that led to a kind of emotional death” (p. 49). The feelings are described and the desperation is increasingly visible (longing for home and family, malnutrition, lack of privacy,…). This emotional anesthesia It often caused the prisoners to surrender and fight for their lives. We can clearly observe the inner strength that the author expresses, he was very clear that His goal was to preserve his life..
- Phase 3: after release. It expresses the depersonalization that the prisoners suffered. The feeling found was not happiness, since many of them had suffered many losses of loved ones and their homes. “And now that?” That was the question. After having been subjected for so long, experiencing freedom so suddenly caused them psychological damage.
The subdivision of the book into three phases facilitates the understanding of the psychological process that the prisoners go through and the expressiveness of the details expressed in it transport us to experience the atrocities that all these people experienced. It was as a result of all this that Viktor Frankl created “Man’s Search for Meaning” and was able to develop the first principles of what would become his theory in the world of psychology.
The meaning of life according to Viktor Frankl
Viktor Frankl defined the meaning of life as need to find a purpose vital, thereby assuming a responsibility as an individual person and as a human being. He argued that if the person knew what his “why” was, acted freely and followed the motivation towards his goal, he could be able to generate great changes in his life.
It is a reality that many people, when trying to find an answer to this question, found themselves faced with a deep void. Faced with this, the author expressed that human beings should not define in universal terms what their meaning was, since they should do it in their own way, based on their own potential and experiences, fighting for a discovery of oneself day by day. The meaning of life had to be established on each stage of the person’s life, with the aim that each objective we set for ourselves fills us with satisfaction and motivation to fight for what we believe in and desire. In this article you can find the.
Logotherapy
It is built by the Third Vianese School of Psychotherapy, framed in existential analysis. This psychotherapy focuses its attention on find the meaning of existence human in the face of existential emptiness, since the author defended that the emptiness itself was the cause of the appearance of psychological, physical and emotional disorders. To fight against this void, the objective is concentrated on that of man, since it is the meaning that man finds in his life that builds his motivation for his own life.
This psychotherapy seeks awaken consciousness of man, with the aim that he does not go through his life without being present, that is, without knowing who he is or what reason he has for being in this world. The final objective of logotherapy is that man can achieve an authentic way of living.
Viktor Frankl: phrases
Some phrases from Viktor Frankl endure. The best-known phrases of Viktor Frankl are the following:
- Happiness cannot be pursued, it must be followed.
- Our greatest freedom is the freedom to choose our attitude.
- If it is not in your hands to change a situation that causes you pain, you can always choose the attitude with which you face that suffering.
- Happiness is like a butterfly. The more you chase her, the more she runs away. But if you turn your attention to other things, she comes and gently rests on your shoulder. Happiness is not an inn on the road, but a way of walking through life.
- Ruins are often what open the windows to see the sky.
- The experiences of life in a concentration camp show that man has the capacity to choose.
- Love is the only way to apprehend another human being in the depths of their personality.
- Everything can be stolen from a man, except one thing, the last of the freedoms of the human being, the choice of his own attitude in any type of circumstances, the choice of his own path.
- We always ask something of life, but we never stop to ask life what it asks of us.
- Love is the ultimate and highest goal that man can aspire to.
- Man does not really need to live without tension, but rather to strive and fight for a goal or a mission that is worthwhile.
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