Viktor Emili Frankl was a renowned neurologist and psychiatrist, a survivor of the concentration camp atrocities of the Holocaust. The cruelties to which the author was subjected in the concentration camps, led him to found Logotherapy, the Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy, which decades later would help reinforce the principles of Psychotherapy Humanist.
Today, Viktor Frankl is recognized as a hero, for having bravely and hopefully survived all the atrocities that human beings can witness, as a martyr for having lived through the horror of the Holocaust and as a great thinker for being the writer of 39 world-famous books and being the founder of the Logotherapy. If you want to know in greater depth the famous author, keep reading this Psychology-Online article: Viktor Frankl: biography and books.
Viktor Emil Frankl was born on March 26, 1905 in Vienna, Austria, in a family of Jewish origin. The father of V. Frankl was able to dedicate himself to various businesses, reaching a position in the Ministry of Social Affairs, which caught the attention of his son, who was always linked to youth organizations socialists.
Although he always showed a great interest in psychology, he studied medicine at the University of Vienna, subsequently obtaining a specialization in psychiatry and neurology. When he finished his studies, he was able to work at the Vienna General Hospital for four years (1933-1937) and then continued in private psychiatric practice (1937-1940). Finally, he was directed to the neurology department at Rothschild Hospital, which at the time was the only hospital in the city where Jewish people could be admitted.
As the brutalities and humiliations towards the Jews intensified, Frankl tried to emigrate to the United States, however, Although he obtained the visa and was aware that in America it would be possible for him to have a happy and peaceful life, exercising his profession, decided to stay in Vienna, observing the conflicts in his country and rejected the opportunity not to abandon his fathers.
Within a year of marrying Tilly Grosser, in 1942 he was sent along with his wife and his parents to Theresienstadt concentration camp, to be deported in 1944 to Auschwitz and then from Kaufering and Türkheim. This is probably the episode in Viktor Frankl's biography that would mark his history the most. It was not until the year 1945 that he was released by the US military, surviving the Holocaust, but his loved ones were not so lucky.
The course of the worst years of his life and the experience he obtained in them, led him in 1945 to write his most successful book "Man's Search for Meaning", in which he narrates the experience of a prisoner in concentration camps from a psychiatric perspective. The reflection elaborated in his story, led him to found logotherapy, being considered the Third Vianesa School of Psychology, after the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud and the individual psychology of Alfred Adler. From a very young age, Viktor Frankl showed a great interest in psychoanalysis, although later he declined by Alfred Adler's Individual Psychology. However, he quickly distanced himself from school in order to focus his study on speech therapy.
After his release he moved to Munich, where he tried to find his relatives who had also been prisoners, with no luck. When he finally returned to Vienna, he was assigned an apartment in which he lived for the rest of his days. He remarried Eleonore Schwindt in 1947 and they conceived a daughter, Gabriela.
At the work level, he was appointed Head of the Department of Neurology at the Vienna Polyclinic, where he worked until 1971 and in turn, worked as professor of neurology and psychiatry at the University of Vienna, until his jubilee at age 85. During these years, he was also able to work as a professor at prestigious universities in the United States, such as Harvard University and Stanford University, among others.
Throughout his life he published more than 30 books, translated into many languages, whose content was based on existential analysis and logotherapy, in turn obtaining 29 Honoris Causa Doctorates from various world universities and an Oskar Pfister award from the American Society of Psychiatry.
Viktor frankl she died of cardiac arrest on September 2, 1997 in Vienna.
The man in search of the meaning was written in 1946 by Viktor Frankl after being released by the Americans in the concentration camp, where he had witnessed countless acts of cruelty and human frivolity, which led him to question which was the true sense of own existence and the sense itself.
The work reveals an autobiographical account, where Viktor Frankl expresses the experiences and feelings awakened in the concentration camps, as well as the first concepts of logotherapy, moving us to feelings of absolute hopelessness, even the most hopeful vision, being able to move on, see beyond and rejoice in to be alive. These feelings are related through three stages described in the book.
Man's Search for Meaning: Summary
- Phase 1: internment in the field. A state of mind called "illusion of reprieve" is described, an internal cushioning mechanism where the person feels hope, as if what is happening is not true. The author recounts the feeling he experienced when he was approaching a fatal destiny, making the reader imagine the situation in detail. We understand the first phase as a period of adaptation in which the person is in state of shock".
- Phase 2: life in the countryside. According to the author "a phase of general apathy that led to a kind of emotional death " (p. 49). The feelings are described and the despair is increasingly visible (longing for their home and relatives, malnutrition, lack of privacy, ...). Is emotional anesthesia many times it came to provoke the surrender of fighting for the lives of the prisoners. We can clearly observe the inner strength expressed by the author, he was very clear that his goal was to preserve his life.
- Phase 3: after liberation. It expresses the depersonalization suffered by the prisoners. The feeling found was not one of happiness, as many of them had suffered many losses of loved ones and their homes. "And now that?" That was the question. After being in subjection for so long, experiencing freedom so suddenly caused them psychic damage.
The subdivision of the book in three phases, facilitates the understanding of the psychological process that the prisoners go through and the expressiveness of details manifested in it transport us to experience the atrocities that all these lived people. It was as a result of all this that Viktor Frankl created "Man's Search for Meaning" and was able to develop the first principles of what his theory would be in the world of psychology.
Viktor Frankl defined the meaning of life as the need to find a purpose vital, thereby assuming a responsibility as an individual person and as a human being. He argued that if the person knew what was the "why" of him, acted freely and followed the motivation towards his goal, he could be able to generate great changes in his life.
It is a reality that many people, when trying to find an answer to this question, encountered a deep void. Faced with this, the author expressed that the human being should not define in universal terms what his meaning was, since He had to do it in his own way, starting from his own potential and experiences, fighting for a discovery of oneself day to day. day. The meaning of life should be established on each stage of the person's life, so that each objective that we set ourselves fills us with satisfaction and motivation to fight for what we believe in and desire. In this article you can find the Viktor Frankl's personality theory.
The logotherapy builds the Third Vianesa School of Psychotherapy, framed in existential analysis. This psychotherapy focuses its attention on find the meaning of existence human in the face of existential emptiness, since the author defended that emptiness itself was the cause of the appearance of psychological, physical and emotional disorders. To fight this void, the objective is focused on the search for the meaning of life of man, since it is the meaning that man finds in his life that builds motivation for his own life.
This psychotherapy seeks awaken consciousness of man, with the objective that he does not pass through his life without being present, that is, without knowing who he is or what reason he has for being in this world. The ultimate goal of logotherapy is that man can achieve an authentic way of living.
This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
