Synonyms
Background
Born in Vienna, Viktor Emil Frankl, a twentieth-century psychoanalyst and Austrian Jew, lived between 1905 to 1997. He received his medical degree in 1930 and became an author-psychiatrist and professor of neurology and psychiatry at the University of Vienna Medical School. During his career he wrote 30 books, lectured at 209 universities on five continents, and was the recipient of 29 honorary doctorates from universities around the world (Cuncic 2019). In his younger years Frankl favored the work of Sigmund Freud who had asserted that human beings are pleasure-driven. But Frankl would later move away from this thinking. He then began to seriously follow the work of Alfred Adler who had presumed that the strongest human motivation is the drive to acquire power. Frankl would eventually move away from this thinking as well (Vincent 2017).
A philosopher at heart Viktor Frankl drew from a variety of other...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Brencio, F. (2015). Sufferance, freedom and meaning: Viktor Frankl and Martin Heidegger. Studia Paedagogica Ignatiana, 1, 217–246. https://doi.org/10.12775/SPI.2015.011.
Comte, A. (1875). System of positive polity (Vol. 3). London: Longmans, Green.
Cuncic, A. (2019). An overview of Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy. Available online. Accessed October 2019. https://www.verywellmind.com/an-overview-of-victor-frankl-s-logotherapy-4159308
Frankl, V. E. (1959/1985). Man’s search for meaning (Rev. ed.). New York: Washington Square Press.
Frankl, V. E. (1963). Man’s search for meaning: An introduction to Logotherapy. Beacon Press.
Gould, C., & Bible, M. (2012). Viktor Frankl’s chaplaincy: How my patients make meaning. New York: ATLA Series – American Theological Library Association.
Langer, L. (1982). Versions of survival: The holocaust and the human Spirit. Albany: State University of New York Press.
McVeigh, R. (2021). Organism and environment in Auguste Comte. In History of the human sciences (pp. 1–22. Advance online publication). Sage. https://doi.org/10.1177/0952695120917908.
Pytell, T. E. (2003). Redeeming the unredeemable: Auschwitz and Man’s search for meaning. Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 17(1), 89–113. Spring. Project MUSE, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/43137.
Rock, P. (2005). Symbolic interactionism. In A. Kuper & J. Kuper (Eds.), The social science encyclopedia (pp. 843–844). Rutledge Press.
Schulenberg, S. E. (2015). Clarifying existential psychotherapy: Introduction to the special issue. Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy, 45, 1–2. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10879-014-9285-9.
Schulenberg, S. E., Hutzell, R. R., Nassif, C., & Rogina, J. M. (2008). Logotherapy for clinical practice. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 45, 447–463. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014331.
Scott, J., & Marshall, G. (2005). Oxford dictionary of sociology. Oxford University Press.
Tuffin, B., & Puddephatt, A. (2021). Symbolic interactionism. In J. Stanlaw (Ed.), The International encyclopedia of linguistic anthropology. Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118786093.iela0377.
Vincent, P. C. (2017). Viktor Frankl’s search for meaning: An emblematic 20th-century life by Timothy Pytell (review). Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 31(2), 327–330. Fall. Oxford University Press. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/669412.
Wagner, H. R. (Ed.). (1970). Alfred Schutz on phenomenology and social relations. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press.
YouTube video: “Finding Meaning in Difficult Times.” An interview with Viktor E. Frankl (1995). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlC2OdnhIiQ
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Willison, K.D. (2021). Frankl, Viktor. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1705-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1705-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences