1. Viktor Emil Frankl 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.
21 Facts About Viktor Frankl
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Viktor Frankl joined Alfred Adler's circle of students and published his second academic paper, "Psychotherapy and Worldview", in Adler's International Journal of Individual Psychology in 1925.
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Viktor Frankl was expelled from Adler's circle when he insisted that meaning was the central motivational force in human beings.
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Viktor Frankl recruited other psychologists for the center, including Charlotte Buhler, Erwin Wexberg, and Rudolf Dreikurs.
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Viktor Frankl worked with patients until his retirement in 1970.
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In 1948, Viktor Frankl earned a PhD in philosophy from the University of Vienna.
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In 1955, Viktor Frankl was awarded a professorship of neurology and psychiatry at the University of Vienna, and, as visiting professor, lectured at Harvard University, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, and Duquesne University, Pittsburgh.
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Viktor Frankl saw this success as a symptom of the "mass neurosis of modern times," since the title promised to deal with the question of life's meaningfulness.
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Viktor Frankl developed logotherapy and existential analysis, which are based on philosophical and psychological concepts, particularly the desire to find a meaning in life and free will.
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Viktor Frankl identified three main ways of realizing meaning in life: by making a difference in the world, by having particular experiences, or by adopting particular attitudes.
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Viktor Frankl's work has been endorsed in the Chabad philosophy of Hasidic Judaism.
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However his wording is contradictory and, according to Pytell, "profoundly deceptive", as contrary to the impression Viktor Frankl gives of staying at Auschwitz for months, he was held close to the train, in the "depot prisoner" area of Auschwitz, and for no more than a few days.
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Viktor Frankl was neither registered at Auschwitz nor assigned a number there before being sent on to a subsidiary work camp of Dachau, known as Kaufering III, that is the true setting of much of what is described in his book.
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Viktor Frankl's doctrine was that one must instill meaning in the events in one's life, and that work and suffering can lead to finding meaning, with this ultimately what would lead to fulfillment and happiness.
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Viktor Frankl supported forgiveness and held that many in Germany and Austria were powerless to do anything about the atrocities which occurred and could not be collectively blamed.
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The goal of these experiments were to try and revive those who had killed themselves, Viktor Frankl justified this by saying that he was trying to find ways to save the lives of Jews.
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Historian Gunter Bischof of Harvard University, suggests Viktor Frankl's approaching and requesting to perform lobotomy experiments could be seen as a way to "ingratiate" himself amongst the Nazis, as the latter were not, at that time, appreciative of the international scrutiny that these suicides were beginning to create, nor "suicide" being listed on arrest records.
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In 1941, Viktor Frankl married Tilly Grosser, who was a station nurse at Rothschild Hospital.
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Viktor and Elly Frankl had one daughter, Gabriele, who went on to become a child psychologist.
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Viktor Frankl died of heart failure in Vienna on 2 September 1997.
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Viktor Frankl is buried in the Jewish section of the Vienna Central Cemetery.