Friday, October 11, 2024

A00109 - Viktor Frankl, Austrian Neurologist, Psychologist, Philosopher and Holocaust Survivor Who Founded Logotherapy and Who Wrote "Man's Search for Meaning"

  Frankl, Victor - A00045

"When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves."

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Frankl in 1965
Born
Viktor Emil Frankl

26 March 1905
Vienna, Austria-Hungary
Died2 September 1997 (aged 92)
Vienna, Austria
Resting placeVienna Central Cemetery
Alma materUniversity of Vienna (MD, 1930; PhD, 1948)
Occupation(s)neurologist, psychiatrist, philosopher, and author
Known forLogotherapy
Existential analysis
Spouse(s)Tilly Grosser, m. 1941 – c. 1944–1945 (her death)
Eleonore Katharina Schwindt, m. 1947
Children1 daughter

Viktor Emil Frankl (26 March 1905 – 2 September 1997)[1]














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Viktor Frankl (born March 26, 1905, Vienna, Austria—died September 2, 1997, Vienna) was an Austrian psychiatrist and psychotherapist who developed the psychological approach known as logotherapy, widely recognized as the “third school” of Viennese psychotherapy, after the “first school” of Sigmund Freud and the “second school” of Alfred Adler. The basis of Frankl’s theory was that the primary motivation of an individual is the search for meaning in life and that the primary purpose of psychotherapy should be to help the individual find that meaning.

Frankl’s father was a civil servant in Vienna. The younger Frankl showed an early interest in psychology, and in secondary school he studied psychology and philosophy. As a teenager, he entered into a correspondence with Freud, who asked permission to publish one of his papers. While he was a student at the University of Vienna Medical School, Frankl studied Adler’s theories and delivered lectures on individual psychology. He took a particular interest in studying depression and suicide, and he set up youth counseling centres in Vienna in a successful effort to decrease teen suicide in the city.


After earning a doctorate in medicine in 1930, Frankl joined the staff of the Am Steinhof psychiatric hospital in Vienna, where he headed the female suicide prevention program from 1933 to 1937. He subsequently established a private practice but, he being Jewish, was forced to close it after Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938. He then became chief of neurology at Vienna’s Rothschild Hospital, which served the Jewish population. Anti-Semitism was on the rise, however, and in 1942 Frankl and his family were sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, where his father perished. In 1944 the surviving Frankls were taken to Auschwitz, where his mother was exterminated; his wife died later in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. As Frankl observed the brutality and degradation around him, he theorized that those inmates who had some meaning in their lives were more likely to survive; he himself tried to recreate the manuscript of a book he had been writing before his capture.

Following liberation, Frankl returned to Vienna, where he became head of the neurological department at the General Polyclinic hospital. He produced the classic book Ein Psycholog erlebt das Konzentrationslager (1946; “A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp”; published in English as Man’s Search for Meaning), which he dictated to a team of assistants in nine days and which went on to sell millions of copies in dozens of languages. Frankl also taught at the University of Vienna until 1990 and at a number of American universities. A few months before his death, he published Man’s Search for Ultimate Meaning and Recollections: An Autobiography. The Viktor Frankl Institute in Vienna was founded in 1992 to further his work.

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Viktor Emil Frankl (26 March 1905 – 2 September 1997)[1] was an Austrian neurologist, psychologist, philosopher, and Holocaust survivor,[2] who founded logotherapy, a school of psychotherapy that describes a search for a life's meaning as the central human motivational force.[3] Logotherapy is part of existential and humanistic psychology theories.[4]

Logotherapy was promoted as the third school of Viennese Psychotherapy, after those established by Sigmund Freud, and Alfred Adler.[5]

Frankl published 39 books.[6] The autobiographical Man's Search for Meaning, a best-selling book, is based on his experiences in various Nazi concentration camps.[7]

Early life

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Frankl was born the middle of three children to Gabriel Frankl, a civil servant in the Ministry of Social Service, and Elsa (née Lion), a Jewish family, in Vienna, in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire.[1] His interest in psychology and the role of meaning developed when he began taking night classes on applied psychology while in junior high school.[1] As a teenager, he began a correspondence with Sigmund Freud upon asking for permission to publish one of his papers.[8][9] After graduation from high school in 1923, he studied medicine at the University of Vienna.

In 1924, Frankl's first scientific paper was published in the Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse.[10] In the same year, he was president of the Sozialistische Mittelschüler Österreich, the Social Democratic Party of Austria's youth movement for high school students. Frankl's father was a socialist who named him after Viktor Adler, the founder of the party.[1][11] During this time, Frankl began questioning the Freudian approach to psychoanalysis. He joined Alfred Adler's circle of students and published his second academic paper, "Psychotherapy and Worldview" ("Psychotherapie und Weltanschauung"), in Adler's International Journal of Individual Psychology in 1925.[1] Frankl was expelled from Adler's circle[2] when he insisted that meaning was the central motivational force in human beings. From 1926, he began refining his theory, which he termed logotherapy.[12]

Career

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Psychiatry

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Between 1928 and 1930, while still a medical student, he organized youth counselling centers[13] to address the high number of teen suicides occurring around the time of end-of-the-year report cards. The program was sponsored by the city of Vienna and free of charge to the students. Frankl recruited other psychologists for the center, including Charlotte Bühler, Erwin Wexberg, and Rudolf Dreikurs. In 1931, not a single Viennese student died by suicide.[14][unreliable source?]

After earning his M.D. in 1930, Frankl gained extensive experience at Steinhof Psychiatric Hospital, where he was responsible for the treatment of suicidal women. In 1937, he began a private practice, but the Nazi annexation of Austria in 1938 limited his opportunity to treat patients.[1] In 1940, he joined Rothschild Hospital, the only hospital in Vienna still admitting Jews, as head of the neurology department. Prior to his deportation to the concentration camps, he helped numerous patients avoid the Nazi euthanasia program that targeted the mentally disabled.[2][15]

In 1942, just nine months after his marriage, Frankl and his family were sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. His father died there of starvation and pneumonia. In 1944, Frankl and his surviving relatives were transported to Auschwitz, where his mother and brother were murdered in the gas chambers. His wife Tilly died later of typhus in Bergen-Belsen. Frankl spent three years in four concentration camps.[7]

Following the war, he became head of the neurology department of the General Polyclinic Vienna hospital, and established a private practice in his home. He worked with patients until his retirement in 1970.[2]

In 1948, Frankl earned a PhD in philosophy from the University of Vienna. His dissertation, The Unconscious God, examines the relationship between psychology and religion,[16] and advocates for the use of the Socratic dialogue (self-discovery discourse) for clients to get in touch with their spiritual unconscious.[17]

Grave of Viktor Frankl in Vienna

In 1955, Frankl was awarded a professorship of neurology and psychiatry at the University of Vienna, and, as visiting professor, lectured at Harvard University (1961), Southern Methodist University, Dallas (1966), and Duquesne University, Pittsburgh (1972).[12]

Throughout his career, Frankl argued that the reductionist tendencies of early psychotherapeutic approaches dehumanised the patient, and advocated for a rehumanisation of psychotherapy.[18]

The American Psychiatric Association awarded Frankl the 1985 Oskar Pfister Award for his contributions to religion and psychiatry.[18]

Man's Search for Meaning

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While head of the Neurological Department at the general Polyclinic Hospital, Frankl wrote Man's Search for Meaning over a nine-day period.[19] The book, originally titled A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp, was released in German in 1946. The English translation of Man's Search for Meaning was published in 1959, and became an international bestseller.[2] Frankl saw this success as a symptom of the "mass neurosis of modern times," since the title promised to deal with the question of life's meaningfulness.[20] Millions of copies were sold in dozens of languages. In a 1991 survey conducted for the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club, Man's Search for Meaning was named one of the ten most influential books in the US.[21]

Logotherapy and existential analysis

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Frankl developed logotherapy and existential analysis, which are based on philosophical and psychological concepts, particularly the desire to find a meaning in life and free will.[22][23] Frankl identified three main ways of realizing meaning in life: by making a difference in the world, by having particular experiences, or by adopting particular attitudes.

The primary techniques offered by logotherapy and existential analysis are:[24][22][23]

  • Paradoxical intention: clients learn to overcome obsessions or anxieties by self-distancing and humorous exaggeration.
  • Dereflection: drawing the client's attention away from their symptoms, as hyper-reflection can lead to inaction.[25]
  • Socratic dialogue and attitude modification: asking questions designed to help a client find and pursue self-defined meaning in life.[26]

His acknowledgement of meaning as a central motivational force and factor in mental health is his lasting contribution to the field of psychology. It provided the foundational principles for the emerging field of positive psychology.[27] Frankl's work has also been endorsed in the Chabad philosophy of Hasidic Judaism.[28]

Statue of Responsibility

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In Man's Search for Meaning, Frankl states:

Freedom, however, is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness. In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.[18]

Frankl's concept for the statue grew in popularity, and drew the affection of Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Covey teamed up with Kevin Hall to push the idea of the statue forward in the 1990s, and eventually commissioned the sculptor Gary Lee Price who came up with the concept of two hands clasped together. The design was approved by Frankl's widow, and they began looking for a location to construct it. Their first choice was California, to have it in a Pacific Ocean harbour to complement the Statue of Liberty's position in the Atlantic harbour of New York. However, the state regulations proved difficult to navigate, and the governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, suggested a location in his state for the project, which was approved in 2023. Construction has not yet started.[29][30]

Controversy

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"Auschwitz survivor" testimony

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In The Missing Pieces of the Puzzle: A Reflection on the Odd Career of Viktor Frankl, Professor of history Timothy Pytell of California State University, San Bernardino,[31] conveys the numerous discrepancies and omissions in Frankl's "Auschwitz survivor" account and later autobiography, which many of his contemporaries, such as Thomas Szasz, similarly have raised.[32] In Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, the book devotes approximately half of its contents to describing Auschwitz and the psychology of its prisoners, suggesting a long stay at the death camp. However his wording is contradictory and, according to Pytell, "profoundly deceptive", as contrary to the impression Frankl gives of staying at Auschwitz for months, he was held close to the train, in the "depot prisoner" area of Auschwitz, and for no more than a few days. Frankl was neither registered at Auschwitz nor assigned a number there before being sent on to a subsidiary work camp of Dachau, known as Kaufering III, that (together with Terezín) is the true setting of much of what is described in his book.[33][34][35]

Origins and implications of logotherapy

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Frankl's doctrine was that one must instill meaning in the events in one's life, and that work and suffering can lead to finding meaning, with this ultimately what would lead to fulfillment and happiness. In 1982 the scholar and Holocaust analyst Lawrence L. Langer, critical of what he called Frankl's distortions of the true experience of those at Auschwitz,[36] and of Frankl's amoral focus on "meaning", that in Langer's assessment could just as equally be applied to Nazis "finding meaning in making the world free from Jews",[37] went on to write that "if this [logotherapy] doctrine had been more succinctly worded, the Nazis might have substituted it for the cruel mockery of Arbeit Macht Frei" ["work sets free", read by those entering Auschwitz].[38] In Pytell's view, Langer also penetrated through Frankl's disturbing subtext that Holocaust "survival [was] a matter of mental health." Langer criticized Frankl's tone as self-congratulatory and promotional throughout, so that "it comes as no surprise to the reader, as he closes the volume, that the real hero of Man's Search for Meaning is not man, but Viktor Frankl" by the continuation of the same fantasy of world-view meaning-making, which is precisely what had perturbed civilization into the holocaust-genocide of this era and others.[39]

Pytell later would remark on the particularly sharp insight of Langer's reading of Frankl's Holocaust testimony, stating that with Langer's criticism published in 1982 before Pytell's biography, the former had thus drawn the controversial parallels, or accommodations in ideology without the knowledge that Victor Frankl was an advocate/"embraced"[40] the key ideas of the Nazi psychotherapy movement ("will and responsibility"[41]) as a form of therapy in the late 1930s. When at that time Frankl would submit a paper and contributed to the Göring institute in Vienna 1937 and again in early 1938 connecting the logotherapy focus on "world-view" to the "work of some of the leading Nazi psychotherapists",[42] both at a time before Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938.[43][44] Frankl's founding logotherapy paper, was submitted to and published in the Zentrallblatt fuer Psychotherapie [sic] the journal of the Goering Institute, a psychotherapy movement, with the "proclaimed agenda of building psychotherapy that affirmed a Nazi-oriented worldview".[45]

The origins of logotherapy, as described by Frankl, were therefore a major issue of continuity that Pytell argues were potentially problematic for Frankl because he had laid out the main elements of logotherapy while working for/contributing to the Nazi-affiliated Göring Institute. Principally Frankl's 1937 paper, that was published by the institute.[44] This association, as a source of controversy, that logotherapy was palatable to Nazism is the reason Pytell suggests, Frankl took two different stances on how the concentration-camp experience affected the course of his psychotherapy theory. Namely, that within the original English edition of Frankl's most well known book, Man's Search for Meaning, the suggestion is made and still largely held that logotherapy was itself derived from his camp experience, with the claim as it appears in the original edition, that this form of psychotherapy was "not concocted in the philosopher's armchair nor at the analyst's couch; it took shape in the hard school of air-raid shelters and bomb craters; in concentration camps and prisoner of war camps." Frankl's statements however to this effect would be deleted from later editions, though in the 1963 edition, a similar statement again appeared on the back of the book jacket of Man's Search for Meaning.

Frankl over the years would with these widely read statements and others, switch between the idea that logotherapy took shape in the camps to the claim that the camps merely were a testing ground of his already preconceived theories. An uncovering of the matter would occur in 1977 with Frankl revealing on this controversy, though compounding another, stating "People think I came out of Auschwitz with a brand-new psychotherapy. This is not the case."[46]

Jewish relations and experiments on the resistance

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In the post war years, Frankl's attitude towards not pursuing justice nor assigning collective guilt to the Austrian people for collaborating with or acquiescing in the face of Nazism, led to "frayed" relationships between Frankl, many Viennese and the larger American Jewish community, such that in 1978 when attempting to give a lecture at the institute of Adult Jewish Studies in New York, Frankl was confronted with an outburst of boos from the audience and was called a "nazi pig". Frankl supported forgiveness and held that many in Germany and Austria were powerless to do anything about the atrocities which occurred and could not be collectively blamed.[47][48][49]

In 1988 Frankl would further "stir up sentiment against him" by being photographed next to and in accepting the Great Silver Medal with Star for Services to the Republic of Austria as a Holocaust survivor, from President Waldheim, a controversial president of Austria who concurrent with the medal ceremony, was gripped by revelations that he had lied about his WWII military record and was under investigation for complicity in Nazi War crimes. It was later concluded that he was not involved in war crimes but had knowledge of them. Frankl's acceptance of the medal was viewed by many in the international Jewish community as a betrayal.[49]

In his "Gutachten" Gestapo profile, Frankl is described as "politically perfect" by the Nazi secret police, with Frankl's membership in the Austro-fascist "Fatherland Front" in 1934, similarly stated in isolation. It has been suggested that as a state employee in a hospital he was likely automatically signed up to the party regardless of whether he wanted to or not. Frankl was interviewed twice by the secret police during the war, yet nothing of the expected contents, the subject of discussion or any further information on these interviews, is contained in Frankl's file, suggesting to biographers that Frankl's file was "cleansed" sometime after the war.[50][51]

None of Frankl's obituaries mention the unqualified and unskilled brain lobotomy and trepanation medical experiments approved by the Nazis that Frankl performed on Jews who had committed suicide with an overdose of sedatives, in resistance to their impending arrest, imprisonment and enforced labour in the concentration camp system. The goal of these experiments were to try and revive those who had killed themselves, Frankl justified this by saying that he was trying to find ways to save the lives of Jews. Operating without any training as a surgeon, Frankl would voluntarily request of the Nazis to perform the experiments on those who had killed themselves, and once approved – published some of the details on his experiments, the methods of insertion of his chosen amphetamine drugs into the brains of these individuals, resulting in, at times, an alleged partial resuscitation, mainly in 1942 (prior to his own internment at Theresienstadt ghetto in September, later in that year). Historian Günter Bischof of Harvard University, suggests Frankl's approaching and requesting to perform lobotomy experiments could be seen as a way to "ingratiate" himself amongst the Nazis, as the latter were not, at that time, appreciative of the international scrutiny that these suicides were beginning to create, nor "suicide" being listed on arrest records.[52][53][54][11]

Response to Timothy Pytell

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Timothy Pytell's critique towards Viktor Frankl was used by Holocaust denier Theodore O'Keefe, according to Alexander Batthyány.[55] Batthyány was a researcher and member of staff of the Viktor Frankl Archive in Vienna. Throughout the first chapter of his book Viktor Frankl and the Shoah, he reflects on Pytell's work about Frankl, and the flaws in it. Batthyány points out that Pytell never visited the archive to consult primary sources from the person about whom he was writing. Batthyány also critiques Pytell for not interviewing Viktor Frankl while Frankl was still alive. Pytell wrote in his book on Frankl that he had the opportunity to meet him – as a friend offered it – yet he decided that he could not meet Frankl.

Decorations and awards

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Personal life

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In 1941, Frankl married Tilly Grosser, who was a station nurse at Rothschild Hospital. Soon after they were married she became pregnant, but they were forced to abort the child.[56] Tilly died in the Bergen Belsen concentration camp.[2][1]

Frankl's father, Gabriel, originally from Pohořelice, Moravia, died in the Theresienstadt Ghetto concentration camp on 13 February 1943, aged 81, from starvation and pneumonia. His mother and brother, Walter, were both killed in Auschwitz. His sister, Stella, escaped to Australia.[2][1]

In 1947, Frankl married Eleonore "Elly" Katharina Schwindt. She was a practicing Catholic. The couple respected each other's religious backgrounds, both attending church and synagogue, and celebrating Christmas and Hanukkah. They had one daughter, Gabriele, who went on to become a child psychologist.[2][4][57] Although it was not known for 50 years, his wife and son-in-law reported after his death that he prayed every day and had memorized the words of daily Jewish prayers and psalms.[2][28]

Frankl died of heart failure in Vienna on 2 September 1997. He is buried in the Jewish section of the Vienna Central Cemetery.[58]

Bibliography

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His books in English are:

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g h Frankl, Viktor Emil (2000). Viktor Frankl Recollections: An Autobiography. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0738203553. Archived from the original on 22 March 2015. Retrieved 24 May 2016.
  2. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g h i Haddon Klingberg (2001). When life calls out to us: the love and lifework of Viktor and Elly Frankl. Doubleday. p. 155. ISBN 978-0385500364. Archived from the original on 23 March 2017. Retrieved 24 May 2016.
  3. ^ Längle, Alfried (2015). From Viktor Frankl's Logotherapy to Existential Analytic psychotherapy; in: European Psychotherapy 2014/2015. Austria: Home of the World's Psychotherapy. Serge Sulz, Stefan Hagspiel (Eds.). p. 67.
  4. ^ Jump up to:a b Redsand, Anna (2006). Viktor Frankl: A Life Worth Living. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 978-0618723430. Archived from the original on 22 March 2017. Retrieved 24 May 2016.
  5. ^ Corey, G. (2021). Theory and practice of counseling and psychotherapy (10th ed.). Cengage.
  6. ^ "Viktor Frankl – Life and Work". www.viktorfrankl.org. Viktor Frankl Institute Vienna. 2011. Archived from the original on 14 May 2020. Retrieved 2 August 2016.
  7. ^ Jump up to:a b Schatzmann, Morton (5 September 1997). "Obituary: Viktor Frankl". The Independent (UK). Archived from the original on 1 September 2020. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  8. ^ "Viktor Frankl | Biography, Books, Theory, & Facts". Encyclopedia Britannica. Archived from the original on 16 June 2021. Retrieved 6 July 2021.
  9. ^ Hatala, Andrew (2010). "Frankl and Freud: Friend or Foe? Towards Cultural & Developmental Perspectives of Theoretical Ideologies" (PDF). Psychology and Society. 3: 1–25. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 July 2021. Retrieved 6 July 2021.
  10. ^ "List of books and articles about Viktor Frankl". Archived from the original on 18 July 2019.
  11. ^ Jump up to:a b Pytell, T. (2000). The Missing Pieces of the Puzzle: A Reflection on the Odd Career of Viktor Frankl. Journal of Contemporary History, 35(2), 281–306. doi:10.1177/002200940003500208
  12. ^ Jump up to:a b "Viktor Frankl Biography". Viktor Frankl Institute Vienna. Archived from the original on 13 May 2020. Retrieved 24 April 2020.
  13. ^ Batthyány, Alexander, ed. (2016). Logotherapy and Existential Analysis. Proceedings of the Viktor Frankl Institute Vienna, Volume 1. Springer International. pp. 3–6. ISBN 978-3319805689.
  14. ^ Frankl, Viktor E. (Viktor Emil), 1905–1997 (2005). Frühe Schriften, 1923–1942. Vesely-Frankl, Gabriele. Wien: W. Maudrich. ISBN 3851758129. OCLC 61029472.
  15. ^ Neugebauer, Wolfgang (2002). Von der Zwangssterilisierung zur Ermordung. Zur Geschichte der NS-Euthanasie in Wien Teil II. Wien/Köln/Weimar: Böhlau. pp. 99–111. ISBN 978-3205993254.
  16. ^ Boeree, George. "Personality Theories: Viktor Frankl." Archived 3 November 2019 at the Wayback Machine Shippensburg University. Accessed 18 April 2014.
  17. ^ Lantz, James E. "Family logotherapy." Contemporary Family Therapy 8, no. 2 (1986): 124–135.
  18. ^ Jump up to:a b c Frankl, Viktor (2000). Man's search for ultimate meaning. Perseus Pub. ISBN 978-0738203546. Archived from the original on 22 March 2017. Retrieved 24 May 2016.
  19. ^ "The Life of Viktor Frankl". Viktor Frankl Institute of America. Archived from the original on 6 August 2020. Retrieved 24 April 2020.
  20. ^ Frankl, Viktor (2010). The Feeling of Meaninglessness. Marquette University Press. ISBN 978-0874627589.
  21. ^ Fein, Esther B. (20 November 1991). "New York Times, 11-20-1991". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 28 April 2020. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  22. ^ Jump up to:a b Frankl, Viktor (2014). The Will to Meaning: Foundations and Applications of Logotherapy. New York: Penguin/Plume. ISBN 978-0142181263.
  23. ^ Jump up to:a b "What is Logotherapy/Existential Analysis". Archived from the original on 13 May 2020. Retrieved 24 April 2020.
  24. ^ Frankl, Viktor (2019). The Doctor and the Soul. From Psychotherapy to Logotherapy. New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 978-0525567042.
  25. ^ Frankl, Viktor E. (1975). "Paradoxical intention and dereflection". Psychotherapy: Theory, Research & Practice. 12 (3): 226–237. doi:10.1037/h0086434.
  26. ^ Ameli, M., & Dattilio, F. M. (2013). "Enhancing cognitive behavior therapy with logotherapy: Techniques for clinical practice". Psychotherapy. 50 (3): 387–391. doi:10.1037/a0033394. PMID 24000857.
  27. ^ Viktor Frankl’s Meaning-Seeking Model and Positive Psychology Archived 19 July 2021 at the Wayback Machine Chapter from book 'Meaning in Positive and Existential Psychology' (pp. 149–184)
  28. ^ Jump up to:a b Biderman, Jacob. "The Rebbe and Viktor Frankl".
  29. ^ "About Us – Statue of Responsibility". Retrieved 9 June 2024.
  30. ^ "Viktor Frankl and the Statue of Responsibility | Psychology Today Canada". www.psychologytoday.com. Retrieved 9 June 2024.
  31. ^ Pytell, Timothy (2003). "Redeedming the Unredeemable: Auschwitz and Man's Search for Meaning". Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 17 (1): 89–113. doi:10.1093/hgs/17.1.89.
  32. ^ Szasz, T.S. (2003). The secular cure of souls: "Analysis" or dialogue? Existential Analysis, 14: 203-212 (July).
  33. ^ [Viktor Frankl's Search for Meaning: An Emblematic 20th-Century Life By Timothy Pytell pg 104]
  34. ^ List of inmates who were transferred to Kaufering III camp, 11/07/1944-16/04/1945
  35. ^ See Martin Weinmann, ed., Das nationalsozialistische Lagersystem (Frankfurt: Zweitausendeins, 1990), pp.195, 558.
  36. ^ [Suicide Prohibition: The Shame of Medicine By Thomas Szasz. pg 60-62]
  37. ^ [Suicide Prohibition: The Shame of Medicine By Thomas Szasz pg 62]
  38. ^ [Lawrence Langer, Versions of Survival: The Holocaust and the Human Spirit (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982), p.24. [End Page 107]]
  39. ^ Lawrence Langer, Versions of Survival: The Holocaust and the Human Spirit (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982) As "So nonsensically unspecific is this universal principle of being that one can imagine Heinrich Himmler announcing it to his SS men, or Joseph Goebbels sardonically applying it to the genocide of the Jews!"
  40. ^ Austrian Lives By Günter Bischof pg 241-242
  41. ^ Viktor Frankl's Search for Meaning: An Emblematic 20th-Century Life By Timothy Pytell pg 70-72, 111
  42. ^ Austrian Lives By Günter Bischof pg 242
  43. ^ Austrian Lives By Günter Bischof p.255
  44. ^ Jump up to:a b "What is perhaps most impressive about Langer's reading is that he was unaware of Frankl's 1937 article promoting a form of psychotherapy palatable to the Nazis".
  45. ^ "Is There a Fascist Impulse in All of Us? | Psychology Today".
  46. ^ Pytell, Timothy (3 June 2003). "Redeedming the Unredeemable: Auschwitz and Man's Search for Meaning". Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 17 (1): 89–113. doi:10.1093/hgs/17.1.89. ISSN 1476-7937.
  47. ^ Austrian Lives By Günter Bischof p.255
  48. ^ "Psychotherapie: Wille zum Sinn - Viktor Frankl wäre am 26. März 100 geworden". 5 March 2005.
  49. ^ Jump up to:a b [Freud's World: An Encyclopedia of His Life and Times, By Luis A. Cordón. pg 147]
  50. ^ "Austrian Jews Respond to Nazism, Part 2 | Psychology Today".
  51. ^ Pytell, Timothy (2015). Viktor Frankl's Search for Meaning: An Emblematic 20th-Century Life. Berghahn Books. p. 62.
  52. ^ Pytell, Timothy (3 June 2003). "Redeedming the Unredeemable: Auschwitz and Man's Search for Meaning". Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 17 (1): 89–113. doi:10.1093/hgs/17.1.89. ISSN 1476-7937.
  53. ^ Austrian Lives By Günter Bischof 241 to 255
  54. ^ [Suicide Prohibition: The Shame of Medicine By Thomas Szasz. pg 60-62]
  55. ^ Batthyány, Alexander (15 October 2021). Viktor Frankl and the Shoah. SpringerBriefs in Psychology. Springer Cham. pp. 3–12. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-83063-2. ISBN 978-3-030-83062-5. ISSN 2192-8363. S2CID 244573650.
  56. ^ Bushkin, Hanan; van Niekerk, Roelf; Stroud, Louise (31 August 2021). "Searching for meaning in chaos: Viktor Frankl's story". Europe's Journal of Psychology. 17 (3): 233–242. doi:10.5964/ejop.5439. ISSN 1841-0413. PMC 8763215. PMID 35136443.
  57. ^ Scully, Mathew (1995). "Viktor Frankl at Ninety: An Interview". First Things. Archived from the original on 1 May 2012.
  58. ^ Noble, Holcomb B. (4 September 1997). "Dr. Viktor E. Frankl of Vienna, Psychiatrist of the Search for Meaning, Dies at 92". The New York Times. p. B-7. Archived from the original on 12 October 2009. Retrieved 6 September 2009.


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Dr. Viktor E. Frankl of Vienna, Psychiatrist of the Search for Meaning, Dies at 92

By Holcomb B. Noble

See the article in its original context from September 4, 1997, Section B, Page 7Buy Reprints
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Viktor E. Frankl, who used his experiences as a prisoner in German concentration camps in World War II to write ''Man's Search for Meaning,'' an enduring work of survival literature, and to open new avenues for modern psychotherapy, died on Tuesday in Vienna. He was 92 and was considered to be one of the last of the great Viennese psychiatrists.

He died of heart failure, the International Viktor Frankl Institute of Logotherapy said yesterday.

Viktor Frankl's mother, father, brother and pregnant wife were all killed in the camps. He lost everything, he said, that could be taken from a prisoner, except one thing: ''the last of the human freedoms, to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.''

Every day in the camps, he said, prisoners had moral choices to make about whether to submit internally to those in power who threatened to rob them of their inner self and their freedom. It was the way a prisoner resolved those choices, he said, that made the difference.

In ''Man's Search for Meaning,'' Dr. Frankl related that even at Auschwitz some prisoners were able to discover meaning in their lives -- if only in helping one another through the day -- and that those discoveries were what gave them the will and strength to endure.

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Dr. Herbert E. Sacks, president of the American Psychiatric Association, said Dr. Frankl's contributions shifted the direction of the field, especially in existential psychiatry, adding: ''His interest in theory galvanized a generation of young psychiarists.''

Dr. Frankl completed the book in 1946, and it eventually reached an enormous general readership around the world. At the time of his death, more than a half-century later, it had been reprinted 73 times, translated into 24 languages, sold more than 10 million copies and was still being used as a text in high schools and universities.

Dr. Frankl said he had no idea the book would reach such a wide audience: ''I simply thought it might be helpful for people prone to despair.''

But among those whose attention it caught was Gordon W. Allport, the influential psychologist at Harvard, who invited him to teach at Harvard as a visiting professor. Professor Allport said the work helped broaden postwar thinking and exploration in psychology.

Decades later, psychiatrists across various schools of therapy were still recommending it to their patients, especially those who complained about emptiness or the meaninglessness of their lives. It also is used by teachers of ethics and philosophy.

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And in a 1991 survey by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club, people who regarded themselves as lifetime general-interest readers called ''Man's Search for Meaning'' one of the 10 most influential books they had ever read.

Dr. Frankl's writings, lectures and teaching, along with the work of Rollo May, Carl Rogers and others, were an important force in forming the modern concept that many factors may be implicated in mental illness and in opening the door to the wide variety of psychotherapies that now exist.

This was a major change from the strictures of Freud and Adler, who attributed what they called neurosis to single causes: sexual repression and conflicts in the subconscious in Freud's case, or unfilled desires for power and feelings of inferiority in Adler's. To Dr. Frankl, behavior was driven more by a subconscious and a conscious need to find meaning and purpose.

After graduating from the University of Vienna Medical School in 1930, Dr. Frankl evolved the theory, while he was serving as chief of the university's neurology and psychiatric clinic, that the search for value and meaning in the circumstances of one's life was the key to psychological well-being. He devoted much of his life in the years before the war to developing this theory and writing a book about it.

But the three years he spent in Auschwitz and Dachau, from 1942 to 1945, reinforced his thinking, he said, more dramatically than he could have imagined.

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Viktor Emil Frankl was born in Vienna on March 26, 1905. His father held a government job administering children's aid. As a teen-ager he did brilliantly in his studies, which included a course in Freudian theory that prompted him to write the master himself.

A correspondence ensued, and in one letter he included a two-page paper he had written. Freud loved it, sent it promptly to the editor of his International Journal of Psychoanalysis and wrote the boy, ''I hope you don't object.''

''Can you imagine?'' Dr. Frankl recalled in an interview before his death. ''Would a 16-year-old mind if Sigmund Freud asked to have a paper he wrote published?''

The paper appeared in the journal three years later. But shortly before its publication, Dr. Frankl said, he was walking in a Viennese park when he saw a man with an old hat, a torn coat, a silver-handled walking stick and a face he recognized from photographs.

''Have I the honor of meeting Sigmund Freud?'' he asked and began to introduce himself, whereupon the man interrupted: ''You mean the Victor Frankl at Czernin Gasse, No. 6, Door Number 25, Second District of Vienna?'' The founder of psychoanalysis had remembered the name and address from their correspondence.

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At the University of Vienna Medical School, the young Frankl began attending seminars with Alfred Adler, who had broken with Freud earlier. Together with two other students, he began to feel that Adler erred in denying that people had the freedom of choice and willpower to overcome their problems.

Adler demanded to know whether he had the courage to stand and defend his position.

Dr. Frankl recalled that he rose and spoke for 20 minutes, after which Adler sat slouched in his chair ''terrifyingly still'' and then exploded. ''What sort of heroes are you?'' he shouted at the three dissenters and never invited them back to his meetings.

After receiving his medical degree in 1930, Dr. Frankl headed a neurology and psychiatry clinic in Vienna. But anti-Semitism continued to rise in Austria.

In December 1941 he and Tilly Grosser were among the last couples allowed to be wed at the National Office for Jewish Marriages, a bureau set up for a time by the Nazis. The next month his entire family, except for a sister who had left the country, was arrested in a general roundup of Jews.

The family had expected the roundup, and Dr. Frankl's wife sewed the manuscript of the book he was writing on his developing theories of psychotherapy into the lining of his coat.

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After their arrival at Auschwitz, they and 1,500 others were put into a shed built for 200 and made to squat on bare ground, each given one four-ounce piece of bread to last them four days. On his first day, Dr. Frankl was separated from his family; later he and a friend marched in line, and he was directed to the right and his friend was directed to he left -- to a crematory.

He took an older prisoner into his confidence and told him about the hidden manuscript: ''Look, this is a scientific book. I must keep it at all costs.''

He said the prisoner cursed him for his naivete. They were stripped and sent to showers, and then a work detail. Their own clothes were replaced with prison clothes, and the manuscript was never returned.

But late at night in his barracks, he began recreating it in on bits of paper stolen for him by a companion. These notes were later used for ''Man's Search for Meaning.'' In it, he wrote that once the prisoners were entrenched in camp routine, they would descend from a denial of their situation into a stage of apathy and the beginning of a kind of emotional death.

As their illusions dropped away and their hopes were crushed, they would watch others die without experiencing any emotion. At first the lack of feeling served as a protective shield. But then, he said, many prisoners plunged with surprising suddenness into depressions so deep that the sufferers could not move, or wash, or leave the barracks to join a forced march; no entreaties, no blows, no threats would have any effect. There was a link, he found, between their loss of faith in the future and this dangerous giving up.

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Dr. Frankl said he began to see the implications of his earlier writing as it became apparent that the only meaning in his prison life for him was to try to help his fellow prisoners restore their psychological health.

''We had to learn ourselves, and furthermore we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us,'' he wrote. ''We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life but instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life, daily and hourly.

''Our answer must consist not in talk and medication, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.''

One specific action, in which he found ''the tender beginnings of a psychotherapy,'' were attempts, by himself and those who were able to fight off depression, to help prevent suicides among others.

The Germans did not allow prisoners to prevent a suicide attempt. No one could cut down a man attempting to hang himself, for example. So the goal was to try to prevent the act before the attempt. The healthy prisoners would remind the despondent that life expected something from them: a child waiting outside prison, work that remained to be completed.

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Prisoners taught one another not to talk about food where starvation was a daily threat, to hide a crust of bread in a pocket to stretch out the nourishment. They were urged to joke, sing, take mental photographs of sunsets and, most important, to replay valued thoughts and memories.

Dr. Frankl said it was ''essential to keep practicing the art of living, even in a concentration camp.''

During his later years as a psychotherapist with severely depressed patients, Dr. Frankl said he pointedly asked, ''Why do you not commit suicide?'' The answers he received -- love of one's children, a talent to be used or perhaps only fond memories -- often were the threads he tried to weave back, through psychotherapy, into the pattern of meaning in a troubled life.

After the war, he earned his doctorate in psychiatry, in 1948, and remarried after the Red Cross was able to verify that his first wife was dead. He and his second wife, Eleanore, had a daughter. In addition to his wife and daughter, Dr. Gabriele Vesely of Vienna, he is survived by two grandchildren.

In the postwar years he wrote 33 other books on his theories of theoretical and clinical psychology, which he called logotherapy after the Greek ''logos'' -- meaning -- and contributed to the development of humanistic psychotherapy and existential philosophy in Europe and the United States.

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He was invited to serve as a visiting professor at Harvard, Stanford, Southern Methodist and other American universities and lectured in the United States and around the globe.

But the application of his theories in a distinct school of psychotherapy was slow in coming. This was so, colleagues in Vienna and America said, partly because of the wartime interruption and the lingering effects of anti-Semitism in Vienna at a critical point in his career and partly because he concentrated more on writing and lecturing than in developing followers among his therapist contemporaries.

Interest among other therapists increased after a fellow concentration camp prisoner, Joseph B. Fabry, who moved to America and became a successful lawyer, founded the Viktor Frankl Institute of Logography in Berkeley, Calif., in 1977. In 1985 Dr. Frankl became the first non-American to be awarded the prestigious Oskar Pfister Prize by the American Association of Psychiatrists.



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