He has been highly influential in humanistic psychology, as well as being at the heart of existential therapy. Frankl was born on March 26, , in Vienna. The city was the base of both Alfred Adler and Sigmund Freud, a fact which was later to influence Frankl himself.
He excelled in his studies and became intensely interested in human society, later moving on to a specific interest in psychiatry. Frankl had socialist sympathies, and he joined more than one youth organization devoted to that cause. When he was 16, he wrote to Freud and the two began a long-running correspondence. In , he sent Freud an essay of his on psychoanalysis, and three years later this was published.
He graduated from high school in and began to study medicine for his degree. Also in that year, he met Freud for the first time, as well as publishing a further article, this time in the journal edited by Adler.
He set up counseling centers in several cities, aimed at teenagers, and toward the end of the s he accepted a post at the Psychiatric University Clinic. Frankl set up his own psychiatric practice, which also operated in the neurological sphere, in A year later, Hitler ordered the annexation of Austria in the Anschluss.
Frankl would have been able to leave for the United States, as he had sought and received the necessary visa: however, he was unwilling to leave his patients, many of whom were elderly. By , he had been appointed to the Rothschild Hospital in Vienna, the only hospital that was available to Jews in Nazi-ruled Vienna. My situation seemed bleak, even hopeless. Then I imagined that I stood at a lectern in a large, beautiful, warm and bright hall.
I was about to give a lecture to an interested audience on "Psychotherapeutic Experiences in a Concentration Camp" the actual title I later used.
In the imaginary lecture I reported the things I am now living through. Believe me, ladies and gentlemen, at that moment I could not dare to hope that some day it was to be my good fortune to actually give such a lecture.
As well as losing his parents and wife in the camps, he also lost a brother in Auschwitz. A sister, who had gone to Australia, survived. After the war he served for 25 years as head of a neurology department at the Viennese Polyclinic Hospital. He dictated his best-known book, Man's Search for Meaning , in nine days, and published it at first anonymously. Translated into 24 languages, it distils Frankl's approach to psychotherapy. He wrote that he had wanted to "convey to the reader by way of concrete example that life holds a potential meaning under any conditions, even the most miserable ones".
He wished to demonstrate the point in a situation "as extreme as that in a concentration camp". If he wrote down what he had gone through "it might be helpful to people who are prone to despair". He believed that life holds a potential meaning under any conditions. One of his logotherapeutic maxims is "Live as if you were already living for the second time, and as if you had made the mistakes you are about to make now".
This "fictive autobiographical view of one's life" is meant to heighten one's sense of responsibility. Don't aim at success - the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it.
For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued. It must ensue, and it does so only as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of surrender to a person other than oneself. While being forced to march in a concentration camp, a thought "transfixed" him. He "saw the truth as it is set into song by many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers.
The truth - that love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Viktor Emil Frankl, psychiatrist and psychotherapist: born Vienna 26 March ; married Tilly Grosser deceased , Eleonore Schwindt one daughter ; died Vienna 2 September Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies.
Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today. More about Healthcare Prison Psychology Psychotherapy. Already subscribed? Viktor Frankl was an Austrian doctor who founded and introduced the term logotherapy for the first time as a form of Existential Analysis.
Being born and brought up in the birthplace of modern psychiatry, Vienna, Frankl developed an early interest in the field. His fascination with people and behaviors led him to be involved in Socialist youth organizations. At the age of 16, Frankl sent an essay he had written to renowned psychiatrist Sigmund Freud. The article was published three years later when Frankl was only After graduating from high school in , Frankl went on to study medicine at the University of Vienna.
He later gained specialization in neurology and psychiatry and focused his studies on the factors of depression and suicide.
During a public lecture in , Frankl introduced the term logotherapy and began to establish his own interpretation of Viennese psychology.
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