Viktor Frankl is considered one of the brightest figures in the history of world psychology. He is the creator of Logotherapy. This direction of psychology is based on the position that human life makes sense under any circumstances. Frankl personally verified the correctness of his teachings when, during the war, he lost his entire family and ended up in a concentration camp.
Biography: early years
Viktor Emil Frankl was born on March 26, 1905 in Vienna. He has Jewish roots. Victor's maternal uncle is the famous prose writer and poet Oscar Wiener.
Frankl became interested in psychology at a young age. Parents decided to send him not to a regular school, but to a gymnasium. Victor studied in a class with a humanitarian bias. Even then, he showed interest in the psychology of philosophical thinking, choosing this topic for his graduation work.
As a high school student, Frankl enthusiastically studied the works of Sigmund Freud, who at that time had already gained popularity. Once Victor even wrote him a letter. He answered, and so began their correspondence. Frankl once sent Freud one of his psychoanalytic articles. Tom liked it, and he immediately sent it to a publisher he knew at the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. This inspired Victor, and he began to study the works of Freud with even greater enthusiasm. The article was published three years later, when Frankl turned 19.
After graduating from high school, Victor became a student at the University of Vienna, where he first studied medicine, and later chose psychiatry and neurology as a specialization. During those years, he plunged deeply into the psychology of suicide and depression. Frankl began writing articles on these topics. He took as a basis the works of his fellow countrymen - Alfred Adler and Sigmund Freud. Subsequently, he departed from their teachings and created his own.
Creation of logotherapy
In 1930, Frankl was hired at one of the Vienna clinics, where he headed the department of neurology and psychiatry. It specialized in treating women with suicidal tendencies. Within the walls of the clinic, Victor developed a theory that human behavior is controlled by a subconscious and conscious need to find meaning and purpose. Over 30 thousand women became his patients.
In the late 1930s, anti-Semitism grew in Austria. The Nazis who came to power banned Frankl from treating Aryan patients because of his Jewish roots. He could only accept Jews.
In 1938, Victor managed to obtain an American visa. However, other family members did not have it. Frankl was unable to abandon them in Nazi Austria. He stayed and took up private practice in order to continue to provide psychological assistance to everyone, not just Jews. Victor continued to write articles in which he developed his theory.
In 1940, Frankl became head of the neurology department of the Rothschild Hospital. During the Nazi regime, it was the only hospital in Vienna where Jews were taken for treatment. Then he started writing the work "Doctor and Soul". In it, Frankl finally formed the postulates of his theory of the meaning of life, which he would later call logotherapy (from the Greek "logos", which means "meaning"). The main task of the teaching is to help a person find personal meaning in life.
Key principles of logotherapy:
- life has a meaning under all circumstances, even the most unfortunate;
- the main motivation to live is the desire to find meaning in life;
- a person must find meaning for himself in what he does.
Time in a concentration camp
In 1942, a wave of mass arrests of Jews swept across Austria. The Frankl family was deported to the Theresienstadt camp near Prague. They, along with other prisoners, were placed in a cramped barn and forced to sit on the cold ground. On the first day, Victor was separated from his family, and he never saw them again.
During the war years Frankl changed four concentration camps. Despite the loss of his family, he was able to find a new meaning in life. In the concentration camp, Victor not only survived himself, but as a psychologist watched other prisoners and supported them morally. Then it became the only meaning of life for himself. He managed to prevent several dozen suicides of other prisoners.
Life after the war
After the war, Victor returned to Vienna, where he headed a neurological clinic. He worked there until 1971. Frankl has taught at Harvard, Stanford and other American universities and lectured around the world.
In 1985, he became the first "non-American" to receive the prestigious Oscar Pfister award. Awarded by the American Psychiatric Association for significant contributions to the development of psychiatry, spirituality or religion.
The introduction of logotherapy into psychotherapy was extremely slow. This was due to the long hiatus caused by the war and Frankl's own focus on writing and lecturing rather than developing followers. Interest in logotherapy increased when one of the former concentration camp prisoners moved to the States. He became a successful lawyer and subsequently founded the Victor Frankl Institute for Logotherapy in Berkeley, California.
Frankl has several books on his account, including:
- "A man in search of meaning";
- "The Will to Meaning";
- “Saying Yes to Life: A Psychologist in a Concentration Camp”;
- "Fundamentals of Logotherapy".
Viktor Frankl died in Vienna when he was 92 years old. He is considered one of the last great Austrian psychiatrists.
Personal life
Viktor Frankl has been married twice. Shortly before entering the concentration camp, in 1941, he married a Jewish woman, Tilly Grosser. However, she was killed by the Nazis. Frankl remarried to Eleanor Schwindt. In the second marriage, a daughter, Gabrielle, was born.
