Viktor Frankl (1905 - 1997)
Viktor Frankl was born in Vienna on March 26, 1905. In high school, Viktor was actively involved in the local Young Socialist
Workers organization. His interest in people turned him towards the
study of psychology. He finished his high school years with a psychoanalytic
essay on the philosopher Schopenhauer, a publication in the International
Journal of Psychoanalysis, and the beginning of a rather intense correspondence
with the great Sigmund Freud.
In 1925, a year after graduating and on his way towards his medical
degree, he met Freud in person. Alfred Adler�s theory was more to
Frankl�s liking, though, and that year he published an article -- �Psychotherapy
and Weltanschauung� -- in Adler�s International Journal of Individual Psychology.
The next year, Frankl used the term logotherapy in a public lecture for
the first time, and began to refine his particular brand of Viennese psychology.
In 1928 and 1929, Frankl organized cost-free counseling centers for
teenagers in Vienna and six other cities, and began working at the Psychiatric
University Clinic. In 1930, he earned his doctorate in medicine,
and was promoted to assistant. In the next few years, Frankl continued
his training in neurology.
Frankl married in 1942, but in September of that year, he, his wife,
his father, mother, and brother, were all arrested and brought to the concentration
camp at Theresienstadt in Bohemia. His father died there of starvation.
His mother and brother were killed at Auschwitz in 1944. His wife
died at Bergen-Belsen in 1945. Only his sister Stella would survive,
having managed to emigrate to Australia a short while earlier.
When he was moved to Auschwitz, his manuscript for The Doctor and the
Soul was discovered and destroyed. His desire to complete his work,
and his hopes that he would be reunited with his wife and family
someday, kept him from losing hope in what seemed otherwise a hopeless
situation.
In April of 1945, Frankl�s camp was liberated,
and he returned to Vienna, only to discover the deaths of his loved ones.
Although nearly broken and very much alone in the world, he was given the
position of director of the Vienna Neurological Policlinic, which was a position
he would hold for the next 25 years.
During this time, he met and fell in love with a young operating room assistant named Eleonore
Schwindt (Elly). Though Elly was only half his age, they married in 1947, and had a daughter, Gabriele,
in December of that year.
In
1948, Frankl received his Ph.D. in philosophy. His dissertation --
The
Unconscious God -- was an examination of the relation of psychology
and religion. That same year, he was made associate professor of
neurology and psychiatry at the University of Vienna. In 1950, he
founded and became president of the Austrian Medical Society for Psychotherapy.
In 1992, friends and family members established the Viktor Frankl Institute
in his honor. In 1995, he finished his autobiography, and in 1997,
he published his final work, Man�s Search for Ultimate Meaning.
Theory: The Will to Meaning
Frankl�s theory and therapy grew out of his experiences in Nazi
death camps. Watching who did and did not survive, he saw that people
who had hopes of being reunited with loved ones, or who had projects they
felt a need to complete, or who had great faith, had a better
of surviving than those who had lost hope. He called his new therapy, which focused on the client's sense of "meaning", logotherapy.
Simplifying his opponents positions somewhat, Frankl suggested that while Freud essentially postulated a will to pleasure, and Adler a will to power, as man's fundamental drive, he instead postulated a will to meaning.
He set it as his goal to balance the physiological views of Freud and Adler with a spiritual
perspective, and saw this as a significant step towards developing more
effective treatments. As he said, "...the de-neuroticization of humanity
requires a re-humanization of psychotherapy."
For Frankl, meaning is something to be found, and not something to be given. Meaning is like laughter, he says: You cannot force someone
to laugh, you must tell him a joke! The same applies to faith, hope,
and love -- they cannot be be brought forth by an act of will, our own
or someone else's.
"...(M)eaning is something to discover rather than to invent."
According to Frankl, Neurosis often results from attempts to fill our existential vacuums with material things or hedonistic pleasures. Instead, we should seek ways to find more meaning in our lives.
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