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Viktor Frankl
Viktor Frankl2.jpg
Frankl in 1965
Born
Viktor Emil Frankl

(1905-03-26)26 March 1905
Vienna, Austria-Hungary
Died 2 September 1997(1997-09-02) (aged 92)
Vienna, Austria
Resting place Zentralfriedhof, Vienna, Austria, Old Jewish Section
Nationality Austrian
Alma mater University of Vienna (MD, 1930; PhD, 1948)
Occupation Neurologist, psychiatrist
Known for Logotherapy
Existential analysis
Spouse(s) Tilly Grosser, m. 1941
Eleonore Katharina Schwindt, m. 1947
Children 1 daughter

Viktor Emil Frankl (26 March 1905 – 2 September 1997) was a Jewish-Austrian psychiatrist who founded logotherapy, a school of psychotherapy that describes a search for a life's meaning as the central human motivational force. Logotherapy is part of existential and humanistic psychology theories.

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

Frankl published 39 books. He was a Holocaust survivor.The autobiographical Man's Search for Meaning, a best-selling book, is based on his experiences in various Nazi concentration camps.

Early life

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. His interest in psychology and the role of meaning developed when he began taking night classes on applied psychology while in junior high school. As a teenager, he began corresponding with Sigmund Freud, when he asked for permission to publish one of his papers. 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 International Journal of Psychoanalysis. 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. During this time, Frankl began questioning the Freudian approach to psychoanalysis. He joined Alfred Adler's circle of students and published his second scientific paper, "Psychotherapy and Worldview" ("Psychotherapie und Weltanschauung"), in Adler's International Journal of Individual Psychology in 1925. Frankl was expelled from Adler's circle when he insisted that meaning was the central motivational force in human beings. From 1926, he began refining his theory, which he termed logotherapy.

Career

Psychiatry

..... 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 1937, he began a private practice, but the Nazi annexation of Austria in 1938 limited his opportunity to treat patients. 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.

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 the surviving members of his family were transported to Auschwitz, where his mother and brother were murdered in the gas chambers. His wife died later of typhus in Bergen-Belsen. Frankl spent three years in four concentration camps.

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

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, and advocates for the use of the Socratic dialogue (self-discovery discourse) for clients to get in touch with their spiritual unconscious.

Grave of Viktor Frankl 02
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).

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

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

Man's Search for Meaning

While head of the Neurological Department at the general Polyclinic Hospital, Frankl wrote Man’s Search for Meaning over a nine-day period. 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. 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. 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.

Decorations and awards

Personal life

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. Tilly died in the Bergen Belsen concentration camp.

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.

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. 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.

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

See also

Kids robot.svg In Spanish: Viktor Frankl para niños

  • List of logotherapy institutes, many named after Frankl
  • Meaning-making
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