Frankl, Viktor Emil (1905-1997)

FRANKL, VIKTOR EMIL (1905-1997)

Viktor Emil Frankl, Austrian physician, psychoanalyst, philosopher, and professor of neurology and psychiatry at the University of Vienna Medical School, was born on March 26, 1905, in Vienna, where he died of heart disease on September 2, 1997.

Frankl was a twelfth-generation descendant of Rabbi Judah Loew, the Maharal of Prague who created the Golem, Yossele, to save Jews from the blood libel. At sixteen, while still a student at the lycée, Viktor sent Freud a text concerning "the origin of the mimic movements of affirmation and negation" (Frankl, 1997, p. 48), which in 1924 was published in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. But Frankl would turn away from psychoanalytic formulations in favor of the work of Igor Caruso, humanistic psychology, and existential analysis, of which he was a founder.

During the Second World War, Frankl was arrested in September 1942 and spent nearly three years in several concentration camps, including a brief stay at Auschwitz, at Dachau (where he encountered Bruno Bettelheim), and at Thereisienstadt. Frankl's parents, brother, and wife died in the camps. While a prisoner, Frankl drafted a manuscript that was later published as The Doctor and the Soul. After being liberated in 1945, he wrote Ein Psycholog erlebt das Konzentrationslager, which sold over a million copies when it was published in 1947. Translated in English as Man's Search for Meaning, Frankl drew on his concentration camp experience to develop the theory of "logotherapy," where logos signifies the will to discover meaning in one's existence.

After the war Frankly was appointed professor of psychiatry at the Vienna Neurological Policlinic. A psychotherapist, he lectured throughout the world and held numerous visiting professorships. In 1970 the first Institute of Logotherapy was founded at the United States International University at San Diego, California. Subsequently, a number of independent institutes were founded and as of 2005 operate in more than 25 countries, including the Viktor Frankl Institute in Vienna. Frankl wrote over thirty books, which have been translated into more than twenty-five languages. "The meaning of your life," Frankl once explained, "is to help others find the meaning of theirs."

Jacques SÉdat

See also: Austria; Caruso, Igor.

Bibliography

Frankl, Viktor. (1972). Man's search for meaning: An introduction to logotherapy. Boston: Beacon Press.

——. (1997). Recollections: An autobiography. New York: Plenum Press.