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.

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