Frankl, Viktor Emil
FRANKL, VIKTOR EMIL
FRANKL, VIKTOR EMIL (1905–1997), Austrian psychiatrist and founder of the school of existential psychotherapy known as logotherapy (or the Third Viennese School). Already as a student, Frankl was in touch with Sigmund Freud. Later on he became an adherent of Alfred Adler's school of psychoanalysis; however, he soon became a dissident here as well. In the following years he worked as a specialist in neurology and psychiatry at the Viennese Am Steinhof Psychiatric Clinic and from 1940 to 1942 he was head of the Rothschild hospital. Then, Frankl was sent to Dachau and Auschwitz for three years. During this period he gained new insights into human nature, which he later developed into his philosophy and theory of logotherapy. In contradistinction to the Freudian theories that analyzed human behavior in terms of determinism, the sex drives, and the repressed experiences of the past, and contrary to the Adlerian school which based explanations on the human desire for power and self-assertion, Frankl's philosophy focused on the human need for purpose, self-fulfillment, and the need to attain a higher meaning in life. By observing the behavior of the Auschwitz inmates he came to the conclusion that, "The prisoner who had lost faith in the future – his future – was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay." Having survived the Holocaust, Frankl returned to Vienna and was in charge of the neurologic Policlinic in Vienna from 1946 to 1970. Frankl's books include Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager (1946, 2005; From Death Camp to Existentialism, 1959; republished as Man's Search for Meaning, 1964), and Aerztliche Seelsorge (1946, 2005; The Doctor and the Soul, 1955, 1965).
bibliography:
Grollman, in: Judaism, 14 (1965), 22–38. add. bibliography: R. Nurmela, in: Nordisk Judaistik, 21:1–2 (2000), 149–55; T.E. Pytell, in: Psychoanalytic Review, 88:2 (2001), 311–34; idem, in: Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 17:1 (2003), 89–113; O. Zsok, Der Arztphilosoph Viktor E. Frankl (2005).
[Marcus Pyka (2nd ed.)]