Viktor frankl biography logo therapy viktor

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

Viktor Emil Frankl (26 Walk 1905 – 2 September 1997)^[1] was an Austrian neurologist, psychologist, philosopher, significant Holocaust survivor,^[2] who founded logotherapy, natty school of psychotherapy that describes spruce search for a life's meaning owing to the central human motivational force.^[3] Logotherapy is part of existential and beneficent psychology theories.^[4]

Logotherapy was promoted as excellence third school of Viennese Psychotherapy, back end those established by Sigmund Freud enthralled Alfred Adler.^[5]

Frankl published 39 books.^[6] Blue blood the gentry autobiographical Man's Search for Meaning, exceptional best-selling book, is based on circlet experiences in various Nazi concentration camps.^[7]

Early life

Frankl was born the middle holiday three children to Gabriel Frankl, unadorned civil servant in the Ministry freedom Social Service, and Elsa (née Lion), a Jewish family, in Vienna, enjoy what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire.^[1] His interest in psychology and probity role of meaning developed when dirt began taking night classes on utilitarian businesslik psychology while in junior high school.^[1] As a teenager, he began a-ok correspondence with Sigmund Freud when Analyst asked for permission to publish amity of his papers.^[8][9] After graduation stay away from high school in 1923, he pompous medicine at the University of Vienna.

In 1924, Frankl's first scientific arrangement was published in the Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse.^[10] In the same gathering, he was president of the Sozialistische Mittelschüler Österreich, the Social Democratic Aggregation of Austria's youth movement for extreme school students. Frankl's father was orderly socialist who named him after Viktor Adler, the founder of the party.^[1][11] During this time, Frankl began doubtful the Freudian approach to psychoanalysis. Explicit joined Alfred Adler's circle of lesson and published his second academic detect, "Psychotherapy and Worldview" ("Psychotherapie und Weltanschauung"), in Adler's International Journal of Single Psychology in 1925.^[1] Frankl was expelled from Adler's circle^[2] when he insisted that meaning was the central motivational force in human beings. From 1926, he began refining his theory, which he termed logotherapy.^[12]

Career

Psychiatry

Between 1928 and 1930, while still a medical student, settle down organized youth counselling centers^[13] to land of your birth the high number of teen suicides occurring around the time of end-of-the-year report cards. The program was fairyed godmother by the city of Vienna near free of charge to the lecture. Frankl recruited other psychologists for righteousness center, including Charlotte Bühler, Erwin Wexberg, and Rudolf Dreikurs. In 1931, call a single Viennese student died impervious to suicide.^{[14][unreliable source?]}

After earning his M.D. awarding 1930, Frankl gained extensive experience give in Steinhof Psychiatric Hospital, where he was responsible for the treatment of frantic women. In 1937, he began marvellous private practice, but the Nazi confiscation of Austria in 1938 limited wreath opportunity to treat patients.^[1] In 1940, he joined Rothschild Hospital, the solitary hospital in Vienna still admitting Jews, as head of the neurology commission. Prior to his deportation to righteousness concentration camps, he helped numerous patients avoid the Nazi euthanasia program range targeted the mentally disabled.^[2][15]

In 1942, rational nine months after his marriage, Frankl and his family were sent equal the Theresienstadt concentration camp. His daddy died there of starvation and pneumonia. In 1944, Frankl and his present relatives were transported to Auschwitz, spin his mother and brother were murdered in the gas chambers. His helpmate Tilly died later of typhus handset Bergen-Belsen. Frankl spent three years be bounded by four concentration camps.^[7]

Following the war, sharp-tasting became head of the neurology authority of the General Polyclinic Vienna sickbay, and established a private practice beget his home. He worked with patients until his retirement in 1970.^[2]

In 1948, Frankl earned a PhD in idea from the University of Vienna. Sovereign dissertation, The Unconscious God, examines rank relationship between psychology and religion,^[16] person in charge advocates for the use of depiction Socratic dialogue (self-discovery discourse) for clientele to get in touch with their spiritual unconscious.^[17]

In 1955, Frankl was awarded a professorship of neurology and analysis at the University of Vienna, tell off, as visiting professor, lectured at Philanthropist University (1961), Southern Methodist University, City (1966), and Duquesne University, Pittsburgh (1972).^[12]

Throughout his career, Frankl argued that integrity reductionist tendencies of early psychotherapeutic approaches dehumanised the patient, and advocated take over a rehumanisation of psychotherapy.^[18]

The American Psychotic Association awarded Frankl the 1985 Oskar Pfister Award for his contributions turn into religion and psychiatry.^[18]

Man's Search for Meaning

While head of the Neurological Department fatigued the general Polyclinic Hospital, Frankl wrote Man's Search for Meaning over precise nine-day period.^[19] The book, originally called A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp, was released in German in 1946. The English translation of Man's Weigh up for Meaning was published in 1959, and became an international bestseller.^[2] Frankl saw this success as a token director of the "mass neurosis of new times," since the title promised back deal with the question of life's meaningfulness.^[20] Millions of copies were advertise in dozens of languages. In smashing 1991 survey conducted for the Inspect of Congress and the Book beat somebody to it the Month Club, Man's Search fulfill Meaning was named one of loftiness ten most influential books in decency US.^[21]

Logotherapy and existential analysis

Frankl developed logotherapy and existential analysis, which are family unit on philosophical and psychological concepts, chiefly the desire to find a heart in life and free will.^[22][23] Frankl identified three main ways of acme meaning in life: by making tidy difference in the world, by acceptance particular experiences, or by adopting frankly attitudes.

The primary techniques offered moisten logotherapy and existential analysis are:^[24][22][23]

• Paradoxical intention: clients learn to overcome obsessions put on a pedestal anxieties by self-distancing and humorous exaggeration.
• Dereflection: drawing the client's attention away reject their symptoms, as hyper-reflection can draw to inaction.^[25]
• Socratic dialogue and attitude modification: asking questions designed to help spick client find and pursue self-defined message in life.^[26]

His acknowledgement of meaning slightly a central motivational force and border in mental health is his long-term contribution to the field of constitution. It provided the foundational principles stake out the emerging field of positive psychology.^[27] Frankl's work has also been bona fide in the Chabad philosophy of Hassidic Judaism.^[28]

Statue of Responsibility

In Man's Conduct test for Meaning, Frankl states:

Freedom, however, appreciation not the last word. Freedom assay only part of the story current half of the truth. Freedom wreckage but the negative aspect of rank whole phenomenon whose positive aspect stick to responsibleness. In fact, freedom is bay danger of degenerating into mere whimsey unless it is lived in terminology conditions of responsibleness. That is why Uncontrollable recommend that the Statue of Independence on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility provisional the West Coast.^[18]

Frankl's concept for high-mindedness statue grew in popularity, and player the affection of Stephen Covey, essayist of The 7 Habits of Immensely Effective People. Covey teamed up mount Kevin Hall to push the thought of the statue forward in high-mindedness 1990s, and eventually commissioned the constellation Gary Lee Price who came organize with the concept of two manpower clasped together. The design was popular by Frankl's widow, and they began looking for a location to foundation it. Their first choice was Calif., to have it in a Conciliatory Ocean harbour to complement the Appear of Liberty's position in the Ocean harbour of New York. However, dignity state regulations proved difficult to get under way, and the governor of Utah, Sociologist Cox, suggested a location in sovereignty state for the project, which was approved in 2023. Construction has snivel yet started.^[29][30]

Controversy

"Auschwitz survivor" testimony

In The Short Pieces of the Puzzle: A Counterpart on the Odd Career of Viktor Frankl, Professor of history Timothy Pytell of California State University, San Bernardino,^[31] surveys the numerous discrepancies and omissions in Frankl's "Auschwitz survivor" account gleam later autobiography, which many of dominion contemporaries, such as Thomas Szasz, likewise have raised.^[32] In Frankl's Man's Cast around for Meaning, the book devotes close to half of its contents to tale Auschwitz and the psychology of wellfitting prisoners, suggesting a long stay be persistent the death camp. However his 1 is contradictory and, according to Pytell, "profoundly deceptive", as contrary to illustriousness impression Frankl gives of staying wrongness Auschwitz for months, he was kept close to the train, in grandeur "depot prisoner" area of Auschwitz, soar for no more than a erratic days. Frankl was neither registered miniature Auschwitz nor assigned a number about before being sent on to capital subsidiary work camp of Dachau, get out as Kaufering III, that (together let fall Terezín) is the true setting sell like hot cakes much of what is described condensation his book.^[33][34][35]

Origins and implications of logotherapy

Frankl's doctrine was that one must infuse meaning in the events in one's life, and that work and affliction can lead to finding meaning, touch this ultimately what would lead figure out fulfillment and happiness. In 1982 rendering scholar and Holocaust analyst Lawrence Glory. Langer, critical of what he cryed Frankl's distortions of the true stop thinking about of those at Auschwitz,^[36] and authentication Frankl's amoral focus on "meaning", mosey in Langer's assessment could just monkey equally be applied to Nazis "finding meaning in making the world unsoiled from Jews",^[37] went on to compose that "if this [logotherapy] doctrine difficult to understand been more succinctly worded, the Nazis might have substituted it for leadership cruel mockery of Arbeit Macht Frei" ["work sets free", read by those entering Auschwitz].^[38] In Pytell's view, Langer also penetrated through Frankl's disturbing subtext that Holocaust "survival [was] a affair of mental health." Langer criticized Frankl's tone as self-congratulatory and promotional here, so that "it comes as ham-fisted surprise to the reader, as smartness closes the volume, that the happen hero of Man's Search for Meaning is not man, but Viktor Frankl" by the continuation of the assign fantasy of world-view meaning-making, which recapitulate precisely what had perturbed civilization be selected for the holocaust-genocide of this era final others.^[39]

Pytell later would remark on rank particularly sharp insight of Langer's visualize of Frankl's Holocaust testimony, stating wander with Langer's criticism published in 1982 before Pytell's biography, the former challenging thus drawn the controversial parallels, express grief accommodations in ideology without the grasp that Victor Frankl was an advocate/"embraced"^[40] the key ideas of the Fascistic psychotherapy movement ("will and responsibility"^[41]) brand a form of therapy in distinction late 1930s. When at that offend Frankl would submit a paper scold contributed to the Göring institute send out Vienna 1937 and again in initially 1938 connecting the logotherapy focus cause "world-view" to the "work of dehydrated of the leading Nazi psychotherapists",^[42] both at a time before Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938.^[43][44] Frankl's founding logotherapy paper, was submitted to and published in the Zentrallblatt fuer Psychotherapie [sic] the journal of position Goering Institute, a psychotherapy movement, traffic the "proclaimed agenda of building therapy that affirmed a Nazi-oriented worldview".^[45]

The early childhood beginni of logotherapy, as described by Frankl, were therefore a major issue shop continuity that Pytell argues were potentially problematic for Frankl because he difficult to understand laid out the main elements be a witness logotherapy while working for/contributing to grandeur Nazi-affiliated Göring Institute. Principally Frankl's 1937 paper, that was published by integrity institute.^[44] This association, as a basis of controversy, that logotherapy was delectable to Nazism is the reason Pytell suggests, Frankl took two different reason on how the concentration-camp experience picking the course of his psychotherapy knowledge. Namely, that within the original Candidly edition of Frankl's most well avowed book, Man's Search for Meaning, goodness suggestion is made and still as a rule held that logotherapy was itself plagiarised from his camp experience, with grandeur claim as it appears in position original edition, that this form be more or less psychotherapy was "not concocted in nobleness philosopher's armchair nor at the analyst's couch; it took shape in representation hard school of air-raid shelters challenging bomb craters; in concentration camps trip prisoner of war camps." Frankl's statements however to this effect would distrust deleted from later editions, though up-to-date the 1963 edition, a similar acknowledgment again appeared on the back pan the book jacket of Man's Assess for Meaning.

Frankl over the eld would with these widely read statements and others, switch between the entire that logotherapy took shape in decency camps to the claim that greatness camps merely were a testing eminence of his already preconceived theories. Modification uncovering of the matter would arise in 1977 with Frankl revealing feasible this controversy, though compounding another, stating "People think I came out holdup Auschwitz with a brand-new psychotherapy. That is not the case."^[46]

Jewish relations extract experiments on the resistance

In the pale war years, Frankl's attitude towards howl pursuing justice nor assigning collective sulness to the Austrian people for collaborating with or acquiescing in the illustration of Nazism, led to "frayed" storekeeper business between Frankl, many Viennese and righteousness larger American Jewish community, such stray in 1978 when attempting to fair exchange a lecture at the institute make stronger Adult Jewish Studies in New Royalty, Frankl was confronted with an deluge of boos from the audience stake was called a "nazi pig". Frankl supported forgiveness and held that patronize in Germany and Austria were unable to do anything about the atrocities which occurred and could not well collectively blamed.^[47][48][49]

In 1988 Frankl would more "stir up sentiment against him" by way of being photographed next to and expansion accepting the Great Silver Medal touch Star for Services to the Commonwealth of Austria as a Holocaust unfortunate, from President Waldheim, a controversial overseer of Austria who concurrent with depiction medal ceremony, was gripped by revelations that he had lied about authority WWII military record and was mess investigation for complicity in Nazi Bloodshed crimes. It was later concluded drift he was not involved in combat crimes but had knowledge of them. Frankl's acceptance of the medal was viewed by many in the omnipresent Jewish community as a betrayal.^[49]

In jurisdiction "Gutachten" Gestapo profile, Frankl is asserted as "politically perfect" by the Authoritarian secret police, with Frankl's membership tight the Austro-fascist "Fatherland Front" in 1934, similarly stated in isolation. It has been suggested that as a situation employee in a hospital he was likely automatically signed up to say publicly party regardless of whether he desired to or not. Frankl was interviewed twice by the secret police via the war, yet nothing of distinction expected contents, the subject of unconvinced or any further information on these interviews, is contained in Frankl's replica, suggesting to biographers that Frankl's summary was "cleansed" sometime after the war.^[50][51]

None of Frankl's obituaries mention the ineligible and unskilled brain lobotomy and trepanation medical experiments approved by the Nazis that Frankl performed on Jews who had committed suicide with an overindulge of sedatives, in resistance to their impending arrest, imprisonment and enforced strain in the concentration camp system. Magnanimity goal of these experiments were know try and revive those who difficult to understand killed themselves, Frankl justified this prep between saying that he was trying cling on to find ways to save the lives of Jews. Operating without any ritual as a surgeon, Frankl would lief request of the Nazis to execute the experiments on those who locked away killed themselves, and once approved – published some of the details representation his experiments, the methods of addition of his chosen amphetamine drugs chomp through the brains of these individuals, second-hand consequenti in, at times, an alleged decent resuscitation, mainly in 1942 (prior say you will his own internment at Theresienstadt ghetto in September, later in that year). Historian Günter Bischof of Harvard Establishment, suggests Frankl's approaching and requesting communication perform lobotomy experiments could be quirky as a way to "ingratiate" being amongst the Nazis, as the drift were not, at that time, thankful of the international scrutiny that these suicides were beginning to create, dim "suicide" being listed on arrest records.^{[52][53][54][11]}

Response to Timothy Pytell

Timothy Pytell's critique significance Viktor Frankl was used by Fire denier Theodore O'Keefe, according to Conqueror Batthyány.^[55] Batthyány was a researcher innermost member of staff of the Viktor Frankl Archive in Vienna. Throughout high-mindedness first chapter of his book Viktor Frankl and the Shoah, he reflects on Pytell's work about Frankl, person in charge the flaws in it. Batthyány the setup out that Pytell never visited illustriousness archive to consult primary sources take the stones out of the person about whom he was writing. Batthyány also critiques Pytell read not interviewing Viktor Frankl while Frankl was still alive. Pytell wrote terminate his book on Frankl that crystalclear had the opportunity to meet him – as a friend offered station – yet he decided that earth could not meet Frankl.

Decorations viewpoint awards

Personal life

In 1941, Frankl married Tilly Grosser, who was a station cultivate at Rothschild Hospital. Soon after they were married she became pregnant, on the other hand they were forced to abort justness child.^[56] Tilly died in the Port Belsen concentration camp.^[2][1]

Frankl's father, Gabriel, basic from Pohořelice, Moravia, died in greatness Theresienstadt Ghetto concentration camp on 13 February 1943, aged 81, from starving and pneumonia. His mother and fellow, Walter, were both killed in Stockade. His sister, Stella, escaped to Australia.^[2][1]

In 1947, Frankl married Eleonore "Elly" Katharina Schwindt. She was a practicing Ample. The couple respected each other's unworldly backgrounds, both attending church and retreat, and celebrating Christmas and Hanukkah. Even though it was not known for 50 years, his wife and son-in-law widely known after his death that he prayed every day and had memorized say publicly words of daily Jewish prayers enjoin psalms.^[2][28]

Viktor and Elly Frankl had work on daughter, Gabriele, who went on add up become a child psychologist.^[2][4][57] Frankl's grandson, Alexander Vesely, is a licensed healer, producer and documentary film director, who co-founded the Viktor Frankl Institute time off America.^[58] Alexander Vesely produced, filmed, remarkable edited the documentary "Viktor & I".^[59]

Frankl died of heart failure in Vienna on 2 September 1997. He high opinion buried in the Jewish section carp the Vienna Central Cemetery.^[60]

Bibliography

His books atmosphere English are:

• Man's Search for Direct. An Introduction to Logotherapy, Beacon Measure, Boston, 2006. ISBN 978-0807014271 (English translation 1959. Originally published in 1946 as Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager, "A Analyst Experiences the Concentration Camp")
• The Doctor come first the Soul, (originally titled Ärztliche Seelsorge), Random House, 1955.
• On the Theory obscure Therapy of Mental Disorders. An Get underway to Logotherapy and Existential Analysis. Translated by James M. DuBois. Brunner-Routledge, Author & New York, 2004. ISBN 0415950295
• Psychotherapy pointer Existentialism. Selected Papers on Logotherapy, Psychologist & Schuster, New York, 1967. ISBN 0671200569
• The Will to Meaning. Foundations and Applications of Logotherapy, New American Library, Newfound York, 1988 ISBN 0452010349
• The Unheard Cry supply Meaning. Psychotherapy and Humanism Simon & Schuster, New York, 2011 ISBN 978-1451664386
• Viktor Frankl Recollections: An Autobiography; Basic Books, Metropolis, MA 2000. ISBN 978-0738203553.
• Man's Search for Behind Meaning. (A revised and extended defiance of The Unconscious God; with dinky foreword by Swanee Hunt). Perseus Game park Publishing, New York, 1997; ISBN 0306456206. Tome edition: Perseus Book Group; New Royalty, 2000; ISBN 0738203548.
• Yes to Life: In Heartlessness of Everything. Beacon Press, Boston, 2020. ISBN 978-0807005552.

See also

References

External links