Viktor Frankl
Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist and founder of logotherapy
Viennese neurologist and psychiatrist who founded logotherapy, which treats the search for meaning as a central human motivation, and wrote Man's Search for Meaning after surviving Nazi camps.
Why this person matters
Frankl framed logotherapy around a will to meaning, set against Freud's will to pleasure and Adler's will to power. His camp memoir, published in German in 1946 and in English in 1959, reached a very large readership. His account of Auschwitz has also been challenged.
Main contributions
Logotherapy
Named from the Greek logos, it centres on a will to meaning. Meaning can be found through creative work, through encountering others, and through one's attitude toward unavoidable suffering.
Man's Search for Meaning
He dictated it in nine days after the war. It was first published in German in 1946 as A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp, with an English edition in 1959.
Clinical and academic posts
He headed the neurology department at the Rothschild Hospital from 1940 to 1942, ran the Vienna Poliklinik of Neurology from 1946, and was awarded a professorship of neurology and psychiatry at the University of Vienna in 1955.
Context and limits
Frankl was deported to Theresienstadt in 1942 and to Auschwitz in 1944, then to camps linked to Dachau; his wife and parents died in the camps. Timothy Pytell argues that his account of Auschwitz is misleading, saying Frankl was held in a depot there for about three days before transfer to Dachau. Lawrence Langer said the real hero of the book is 'not man, but Viktor Frankl'. In 1988 Frankl accepted an Austrian state medal from President Kurt Waldheim, which critics in the Jewish community saw as a betrayal. This profile does not assess logotherapy's empirical support.
In your introductory course
Treatment and therapy.He appears in therapy and motivation chapters through existential and humanistic approaches, often as a survivor's account rather than a tested therapy.
Related course reading: Psychology 2e, section 16.1. This is course context rather than a biographical source.
Years of active work
- 1940
He became head of the neurology department at the Rothschild Hospital in Vienna.
- 1946
He published the German edition of his camp memoir.
- 1955
He was awarded a professorship of neurology and psychiatry at the University of Vienna.
- 1959
The English edition of his book appeared.
Sources
- New World Encyclopedia, Viktor FranklReference work. Reference article inspected.
- Berghahn Books blog, Timothy Pytell, Viktor Frankl: 75 years after the liberation of AuschwitzPublisher. Text passages inspected.
- Wikipedia, Viktor FranklReference work. Reference article inspected.