Viktor Frankl

Viktor Emil Frankl
Born	(1905-03-26)26 March 1905 Leopoldstadt, Vienna
Died	2 September 1997(1997-09-02) (aged 92) Vienna
Nationality	Austrian
Known for	Logotherapy, Existential Analysis

Viktor Emil Frankl, MD, PhD (26 March 1905 – 2 September 1997) was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist as well as a Holocaust survivor. Frankl was the founder of logotherapy, which is a form of existential analysis, the "Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy". His best-selling book, Man's Search for Meaning (published under a different title in 1959: From Death-Camp to Existentialism, and originally published in 1946 as Trotzdem Ja Zum Leben Sagen: Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager), chronicles his experiences as a concentration camp inmate which led him to discover the importance of finding meaning in all forms of existence, even the most sordid ones, and thus a reason to continue living. Frankl became one of the key figures in existential therapy and a prominent source of inspiration for humanistic psychologists.

Life before 1945

Frankl was born in Vienna into a Jewish family of civil servants (Beamtenfamilie). His interest in psychology surfaced early. For the final exam (Matura) in Gymnasium, he wrote a paper on the psychology of philosophical thinking. After graduating from Gymnasium in 1923, he studied medicine at the University of Vienna and later specialized in neurology and psychiatry, concentrating on the topics of depression and suicide. His early development was influenced by his contacts with Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler, although he would later diverge from their teachings.

Doctor, therapist

During part of 1924 he became the president of the Sozialistische Mittelschüler Österreich, Social Democratic youth movement for high school students throughout Austria.

From 1928 to 1930 while still a medical student, he organized and offered a special program to counsel high school students free of charge, with the participation of psychologists such as Charlotte Buhler, and paying special attention at the time when the students received their report cards. In 1931, not a single Viennese student committed suicide. The success of this program grabbed the attention of the likes of Wilhelm Reich who invited him to Berlin.

From 1933 to 1937 Viktor Frankl completed his residency in Neurology and Psychiatry at the Steinhof Psychiatric Hospital in Vienna. He was responsible for the so-called Selbstmörderpavillon, or "suicide pavilion". Here, he treated over 30,000 women prone to suicide.

In 1937, he established an independent private practice in Neurology and Psychiatry at Alser Strasse 32/12 (Vienna)

Starting from the Nazi takeover of Austria in 1938, he was prohibited from treating "Aryan" patients due to his Jewish identity. In 1940 he started working at the Rothschild Hospital, where he headed its neurological department. This hospital, at the time, was the only one in Vienna to which Jews were still admitted. Several times, his medical opinions saved patients from being euthanised via the Nazi euthanasia program. In December 1941 he married Tilly Grosser.

Prisoner, therapist

On 25 September 1942 he, along with his wife and his parents, were deported to the Nazi Theresienstadt Ghetto. There Frankl worked as a general practitioner in a clinic until his skills in psychiatry were noticed, being then assigned to in the psychiatric care ward, heading the Neurology and Psychiatry clinic in block B IV, establishing a camp service of "psychohygiene" or mental health care. He organized a unit to help newcomers to the camp overcome shock and grief. Later on, assisted by Regina Jonas among others, he set up a "suicide watch" unit. On 29 July 1943, he organized a closed event for the Scientific Society at Theresienstadt, and with the help of Leo Baeck he offered a series of open lectures on topics like "Sleep and Sleep Disturbances", "Body and Soul", "Medical Care of the Soul", "Psychology of Mountaineering", "How to keep my nerves healthy?", "Medical ministry", "Existential Problems in Psychotherapy", and "Social Psychotherapy".. Frankl's father, Gabriel, died of pulmonary edema and pneumonia at Theresienstadt.

On 19 October 1944, Frankl, with his wife, Tilly, was transported to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he was processed and then he was moved to Kaufering, a Nazi concentration camp affiliated with Dachau concentration camp, where he arrived on 25 October 1944. There he was to spend 5 months working as a "slave-laborer". In March 1945, he was offered to be moved to the so called rest-camp Türkheim, also affiliated with Dachau. He decided to go to Türkheim, where he worked as a doctor until 27 April 1945, when Frankl was liberated by the Americans.

Meanwhile, his wife, Tilly, was transferred from Auschwitz to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where she perished. His mother, Elsa, was killed by the Nazis in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, and his brother, Walter, died working in a mine part of Auschwitz. Apart from him, among Frankl's immediate relatives, the only survivor of the Holocaust was his sister, Stella, who had escaped from Austria by emigrating to Australia.

Life after 1945

Liberated after three years in concentration camps, Frankl returned to Vienna. During 1945 he wrote his world-famous book titled Trotzdem Ja Zum Leben Sagen: Ein Psychologe Erlebt das Konzentrationslager (translated: "...Saying Yes to Life in Spite of Everything: A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp", known in English by the title Man's Search for Meaning (1959). In this book, he described the life of an ordinary concentration camp inmate from the objective perspective of a psychiatrist.

It was due to his and others' suffering in these camps that he validated his hallmark conclusion that even in the most absurd, painful and dehumanized situation, life has potential meaning and that therefore even suffering is meaningful. This conclusion served as a strong basis for his Logotherapy and Existential Analysis, which Frankl had described before WWII.

An example of Frankl's idea of finding meaning in the midst of extreme suffering is found in his account of an experience he had while working in the harsh conditions of the Nazi's concentration camps:

We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles, along the one road leading from the camp. The accompanying guards kept shouting at us and driving us with the butts of their rifles. Anyone with very sore feet supported himself on his neighbor's arm. Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk. Hiding his mouth behind his upturned collar, the man marching next to me whispered suddenly: "If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don't know what is happening to us."

That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another up and onward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.

A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth – that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way—an honorable way—in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory."

Frankl's concentration camp experiences thus shaped both his therapeutic approach and philosophical outlook, as reflected in his seminal publications. He often said that even within the narrow boundaries of the concentration camps he found only two races of men to exist: decent and unprincipled ones. These were to be found in all classes, ethnicities, and groups.

In 1946 he was appointed to run the Vienna Polyclinic of Neurology. He remained there until 1971. In 1947 he married his second wife Eleonore Katharina Schwindt. She was a practicing Catholic and the couple respected each other's religious backgrounds, going to both church and synagogue, and celebrating Christmas and Hanukah. They had one daughter, Gabriele, who went on to become a Child Psychologist.

In 1955 he was awarded a professorship of neurology and psychiatry at the University of Vienna, and as visiting professor, he resided at Harvard University (1961), at Southern Methodist University, Dallas (1966), Duquesne University, Pittsburgh (1972). He lectured and taught seminars all over the world and received 29 honorary doctorate degrees.Frankl published 39 books (translated into as many as 40 languages).

The American Psychiatric Association awarded Frankl the 1985 Oskar Pfister Award (for important contributions to religion and psychiatry)

Frankl died on 2 September 1997, of heart failure and was survived by his wife Eleonore, his daughter Dr. Gabriele Frankl-Vesely, his grandchildren Katharina and Alexander, and his great-granddaughter Anna Viktoria.

Legacy

Frankl's Logotherapy and Existential Analysis is considered the third Viennese School of Psychotherapy, among the broad category that comprises existentialists. For Irvin Yalom, Frankl, "who has devoted his career to a study of an existential approach to therapy, has apparently concluded that the lack of meaning is the paramount existential stress. To him, existential neurosis is synonymous with a crisis of meaninglessness".

He is thought to have coined the term Sunday Neurosis referring to a form of anxiety resulting from an awareness in some people of the emptiness of their lives once the working week is over. Some complain of a void and a vague discontent.This arises from an existential vacuum, or feeling of meaninglessness, which is a common phenomenon and is characterised by the subjective state of boredom, apathy, and emptiness. One feels cynical, lacks direction and questions the point of most of life's activities.

Viktor Frankl once recommended that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast of the United States be complemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast:

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.

There are reportedly plans to construct such a statue.

Bibliography

• Frankl, Viktor Man's Search for Meaning. An Introduction to Logotherapy, Beacon Press, Boston, MA, 2006. ISBN 978-0-8070-1427-1
• Frankl, Viktor On the Theory and Therapy of Mental Disorders. An Introduction to Logotherapy and Existential Analysis, Translated by James M. DuBois. Brunner-Routledge, London-New York, 2004. ISBN 0-415-95029-5
• Frankl, Viktor Psychotherapy and Existentialism. Selected Papers on Logotherapy, Simon & Schuster,New York, 1967. ISBN 0-671-20056-9
• Frankl, Viktor The Will to Meaning. Foundations and Applications of Logotherapy,New American Library, New York, 1988 ISBN 0-452-01034-9
• Frankl, Viktor The Unheard Cry for Meaning. Psychotherapy and Humanism, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2011 ISBN 978-1-4516-6438-6
• Frankl, Viktor Viktor Frankl Recollections: An Autobiography.; Basic Books, Cambridge, MA 2000. ISBN 978-0-7382-0355-3.
• Frankl, Viktor Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning. (A revised and extended edition of The Unconscious God; with a Foreword by Swanee Hunt). Perseus Book Publishing, New York, 1997; ISBN 0-306-45620-6. Paperback edition: Perseus Book Group; New York, July 2000; ISBN 0-7382-0354-8.

See also

• Existential Analysis

External links

• Viktor and I, the Film 2011
• Viktor Frankl Institute Vienna
• Viktor Frankl Institute of Logotherapy