Introduction to Viktor Frankl

 

Viktor Frankl was born March 26, 1905, and died September 2, 1997, in Vienna, Austria. He was influenced during his early life by Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler. Frankl earned a medical degree from the University of Vienna Medical School in 1930.

            He was a visiting professor at Harvard and Stanford, and his therapy, named "logo therapy," was recognized as the third school of Viennese therapy after Freud's psychoanalysis and Alfred Adler's individual psychology. In addition, logo therapy was recognized as one of the scientifically based schools of psychotherapy by the American Medical Society, American Psychiatric Association, and the American Psychological Association (APA).

“Striving to find meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in man” (Frankl 1992, p. 104)

Man's Search for Meaning, the Will to Meaning and the Doctor and the Soul is some of his major contributions. He is the one who gave the concept that “Man is ultimately self-determining.”

Brief History

Professional life  

• Viktor Emil Frankl was born on March 26, 1905, in Vienna, Austria. He received his MD and PhD degrees from the University of Vienna where he studied psychiatry and neurology, focusing on the areas of suicide and depression.

• In September 1942, Viktor Frankl, a prominent Jewish psychiatrist and neurologist in Vienna, was arrested and transported to a Nazi concentration camp with his wife and parents. Frankl spent about three years in various Nazi concentration camps, an experience that greatly influenced his work and the development of logo therapy.

• Frankl began to wonder why some of his fellow prisoners were able not only to survive the horrifying conditions, but to grow in the process. Frankl observed that those who were able to survive the experience typically found some meaning in it, such as a task that they needed to fulfill.

• Frankl argues that finding meaning in everyday moments can enable trauma survivors to avoid the bitterness and apathy that are so often the results of torture, imprisonment, and prolonged trauma. He encourages trauma sufferers to think of people they would not want to disappoint, such as dead or distant family members.

• He concluded, those who found meaning even in the most horrendous circumstances were far more resilient to suffering than those who did not. "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing," Frankl wrote in Man's Search for Meaning, "the last of human freedom is to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

Contributions to Psychology

Frank’s book “Man Search for Meaning” has been widely cited as one of the most important and inspirational books of the 20th century. In the book, he outlines three phases of adapting to life in a concentration camp.

Stages of Existence

Phase 1: Admission to Camp => Shock

When the prisoners entered the camps, most of them went into shock, and reacted in ways that would’ve seemed abnormal under normal circumstances, including

(i) Delusions of reprieve.

(ii) Humor.

(iii) Curiosity.

(iv) A lack of fear.

Phase 2: Routine => Apathy

New prisoners missed their loved ones and felt disgust, horror, and pity at the level of death and suffering. Yet, the initial shock of Phase 1 eventually wore off as the prisoners settled into a routine and transited to their grim new reality. In Phase 2, apathy set in, i.e. they became numb to the physical and psychological pain of the daily beatings and abuse.

Phase 3: Liberation => Depersonalization

After the prisoners were liberated, they entered a 3rd Phase: depersonalization. They felt disconnected from their own bodies, thoughts and feelings, as if they were observing their life from the outside in a dreamlike state. Many liberated prisoners also suffered from a need for vengeance, bitterness and disillusionment.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Emergence and history of Psychology of Men in West and Pakistan

Psychology of Men:       The new psychology of men has emerged over the past 15 years within the larger fields of men's studies and gender studies. Informed by the academic breakthroughs of feminist scholarship, the new psychology of men examines masculinity not as a normative referent, but rather as a problematic construct. In so doing, it provides a framework for a psychological approach to men and masculinity that questions traditional norms of the male role and views some male problems as unfortunate byproducts of the male gender role socialization process. This article introduces this new field, covering the gender role strain paradigm, masculinity ideology, and the 3 varieties of male gender role strain-- discrepancy-strain, dysfunctionstrain, and trauma-strain. Implications for practice are presented.  Masculine Psychology:       Masculine Psychology is a relative term sometimes used to describe and categorize issues concerning the gender related psychology of human male ide
Read more

Introduction to Aaron Beck

  Aaron Temkin Beck is an American psychiatrist who is professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. He is regarded as the father of both cognitive therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy. Early Life Aaron Temkin Beck was born on July 18, 1921, in Providence, Rhode Island. He was the youngest of five children. Both of his parents were Russian Jewish immigrants to the United States. Two of Beck's siblings had died before his birth, an older brother in childhood and an older sister in the influenza pandemic of 1919. As a result of these tragedies, Beck's mother was chronically depressed for several years and became overprotective of her youngest son. Beck came to think that he was a replacement for his sister, and that his mother was disappointed that he was not a girl. Beck developed several phobias in the course of his childhood. One was a blood/injury phobia, which he related to his experience with surgery for his broken arm at age seven. D
Read more

Introduction to Fritz Perls

• Introduction: Fritz Perls was a 20th century psychiatrist who founded Gestalt therapy in collaboration with his wife, Laura Perls.Frederick or Friedrich Salomon Perls (July 8, 1893, Berlin - March 14, 1970, Chicago) entered the history as Fritz Perls, a famous psychiatrist and psychotherapist. He was a Jew born in Germany, who developed absolutely new approach in psychotherapy. He reacted against the structuralist, behaviorists and psychoanalysts. According to this theory, one of the primary objectives of Gestalt therapy is the ability to restore the self-awareness which is lost when a psychological disorder becomes evident. This is accomplished by restoring the individual's ability to differentiate, which helps the individual to identify what is and what is not a true part of the self, what provides the individual with a sense of self-realization and achievement and what leads to frustration. Due to him term of Gestalt therapy came into view. It is based on Gestalt psycholog
Read more