Frankl, Viktor

▪ 1998

      Austrian psychiatrist and psychotherapist (b. March 26, 1905, Vienna, Austria—d. Sept. 2, 1997, Vienna), developed the psychological approach known as logotherapy, widely recognized as the "third school" of Viennese psychotherapy after the "first school" of Sigmund Freud and the "second school" of Alfred Adler. The basis of Frankl's theory was that the primary motivation of an individual is the search for meaning in life and that the primary purpose of psychotherapy should be to help the individual find that meaning. As a teenager he entered into a correspondence with Freud, who asked permission to publish one of his papers. After graduating from the University of Vienna Medical School in 1930, Frankl joined the staff of the Am Steinhof psychiatric hospital in Vienna. By 1938 he had become chief of neurology at Vienna's Rothschild Hospital. Anti-Semitism was on the rise, however, and in 1942 Frankl and his family were sent to the concentration camps, where his mother, father, and wife perished. As he observed the brutality and degradation around him, Frankl theorized that those inmates who had some meaning in their lives were more likely to survive. Following liberation, Frankl returned to Vienna, where he became head of the neurological department at the Polyclinic Hospital. He also produced the classic book Man's Search for Meaning (1946), which he dictated to a team of assistants in nine days and which went on to sell some nine million copies in 26 languages. Frankl also taught at the University of Vienna until 1990 and held chairs at a number of American universities. A few months before his death, he published Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning and Recollections: An Autobiography.

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