Viktor frankl biography summary examples

Austrian Holocaust survivor, neurologist, psychologist, philosopher, and author (1905–1997)

Viktor Emil Frankl (26 March 1905 – 2 September 1997) was an Austrian neurologist, psychologist, philosopher, and Holocaust survivor, who founded logotherapy, a school of psychotherapy that describes a search for a life's meaning as the central human motivational force. Logotherapy is part of existential and humanistic psychology theories.

Logotherapy was promoted as the third school of Viennese Psychotherapy, after those established by Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler.

Frankl published 39 books. The autobiographical Man's Search for Meaning, a best-selling book, is based on his experiences in various Nazi concentration camps.

Early life

Frankl was born the middle of three children to Gabriel Frankl, a civil servant in the Ministry of Social Service, and Elsa (née Lion), a Jewish family, in Vienna, in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His interest in psychology and the role of meaning developed when he began taking night classes on applied psychology while in junior high school. As a teenager, he began a correspondence with Sigmund Freud when Freud asked for permission to publish one of his papers. After graduation from high school in 1923, he studied medicine a

Abstract

The existential psychiatrist Viktor Frankl (1905–1997) lived an extraordinary life. He witnessed and experienced acts of anti-Semitism, persecution, brutality, physical abuse, malnutrition, and emotional humiliation. Ironically, through these experiences, the loss of dignity and the loss of the lives of his wife, parents and brother, his philosophy of human nature, namely, that the search for meaning is the drive behind human behaviour, was moulded. Frankl formulated the basis of his existential approach to psychological practice before World War II (WWII). However, his experiences in the concentration camps confirmed his view that it is through a search for meaning and purpose in life that individuals can endure hardship and suffering. In a sense, Frank’s theory was tested in a dramatic way by the tragedies of his life. Following WWII, Frankl shaped modern psychological thinking by lecturing at more than 200 universities, authoring 40 books published in 50 languages and receiving 29 honorary doctorates. His ideas and experiences related to the search for meaning influenced theorists, practitioners, researchers, and lay people around the world. This study focuses specifically on the period between 1942 and 1945. The aim is to explore Frankl’s search for meaning within an unpredictable, life-threatening, and chaotic context through the lens of his concept of noö-dynamics.

Keywords: Viktor Frankl, existentialism, Holocaust, noö-dynamics, psychobiography

Viktor Emil Frankl (26 March 1905–2 September 1997) was an Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist, a Holocaust survivor, and the founder of logotherapy—a school of therapy centred around meaning creation, considered the Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy. A central tenet of Frankl’s theory is the concept of noö-dynamics (Frankl, 2014) which helps to explain the relationship between Frankl’s chaotic external world and his search for meaning within the chaos. This study aims to explore how Frankl mad

Frankl’s Background

Victor Emil Frankl (1905 – 1997), Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, devoted his life to studying, understanding and promoting “meaning.” 

His famous book, Man’s Search for Meaning, tells the story of how he survived the Holocaust by finding personal meaning in the experience, which gave him the will to live through it. He went on to later establish a new school of existential therapy called logotherapy, based in the premise that man’s underlying motivator in life is a “will to meaning,” even in the most difficult of circumstances.

Frankl pointed to research indicating a strong relationship between “meaninglessness” and criminal behaviors, addictions and depression. Without meaning, people fill the void with hedonistic pleasures, power, materialism, hatred, boredom, or neurotic obsessions and compulsions. Some may also strive for Suprameaning, the ultimate meaning in life, a spiritual kind of meaning that depends solely on a greater power outside of personal or external control.

“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.”

Viktor Frankl was an Austrian neurologist and psychologist who founded what he called the field of “Logotherapy”, which has been dubbed the “Third Viennese School of Psychology” (following Freud and Alder). Logotherapy developed in and through Frankl’s personal experience in the Theresienstadt Nazi concentration camp. The years spent there deeply affected his understanding of reality and the meaning of human life. His most popular book, Man’s Search for Meaning, chronicles his experience in the camp as well as the development of logotherapy. During his time there, he found that those around him who did not lose their sense of purpose and meaning in life were able to survive much long

Who was Viktor Frankl?

With a lifetime that spanned most of the 20th Century, Viktor Emil Frankl (March 26, 1905 –September 2, 1997) was witness to a transformative period in world history. He is most known for being a Holocaust survivor, but in reality, this represented a short period in his long life. By the time he entered the concentration camps at 37 years old, he had already spent much of his adult life as a psychiatrist and neurologist, specializing in the treatment of suicidal patients. He had also developed his own psychotherapy school called Logotherapy (Greek for “healing through meaning”). His lasting contribution has been to the field of psychology, with his recognition of meaning as a central factor in mental health and his advocacy that the psychologist’s role was to help their patients find meaning.