Logotherapy: Victor Frankl

Abstract

Viktor Frankl was born in 1905 in Vienna to Jewish parents. He corresponded with Freud while still at school, and at Freud’s invitation he published his first article in 1924 in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. He was influenced by Freud and Adler, but reacted against some of their ideas. Existential philosophers such as Heidegger, Jaspers and Scheler were a further influence. Franld’s search for meaning in his early years resulted in the genesis of logotherapy. The term logotherapy was coined by him in the 1920s, but in the 1930s he used the word Existenzanalyse (existential analysis) as an alternative. In 1928 he founded the Youth Advisement Centres in Vienna, which he headed until 1938. He received an MD from Vienna University in 1930 and then worked at the Neuropsychiatric University Clinic until 1938. Between 1938 and 1942 he was first a specialist in neurology and psychiatry and then head of the Neurological Department at the Jewish Hospital in Vienna. From 1942–45 he was incarcerated in the Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps, where he was able to observe human nature in extremis. Some prisoners were spiritually deepened by their experiences in the camps and rose to the challenge of finding meaning in their lives. In 1946 Frankl became head of the Department of Neurology at the Poliklinik Hospital in Vienna, and in 1947 he became assistant professor of psychiatry and neurology at Vienna University, becoming full professor in 1955. He has held many other posts and has written over 30 books.