Viktor Frankl

Viktor Emil Frankl was born on 26 March 1905 in Vienna. He showed an early interest in psychology and began corresponding with Sigmund Freud while still a secondary school student. He studied medicine at the University of Vienna, specializing in neurology and psychiatry. During the 1920s and 1930s he developed the foundations of what he would call logotherapy, a psychotherapeutic approach centered on the idea that the primary human motivation is the search for meaning rather than pleasure or power.

In September 1942, Frankl, his wife, and his parents were deported by the Nazi authorities. He was held successively in Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, a camp near Dachau, and Turkheim. His father died in Theresienstadt, his mother was killed in Auschwitz, and his wife Tilly died in Bergen-Belsen. Frankl was liberated by American forces in April 1945.

Shortly after returning to Vienna, Frankl dictated a book about his experiences in the camps and the psychological observations he had made during his imprisonment. The book was published in German in 1946 under the title Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager. An English translation appeared in 1959 under the title From Death-Camp to Existentialism and was later reissued as Man's Search for Meaning. The book has sold over sixteen million copies and has been translated into many languages. It describes both his experiences in the camps and the principles of logotherapy.

Frankl completed his medical doctorate at the University of Vienna in 1949 and served as professor of neurology and psychiatry at the university from 1955 until his retirement. He also held visiting professorships at numerous universities in the United States and elsewhere. He lectured widely and wrote more than thirty books during his lifetime.

His theoretical contributions centered on the concept of the will to meaning, and he argued that the capacity to find meaning even in conditions of extreme suffering was a fundamental aspect of human experience. Viktor Frankl died on 2 September 1997 in Vienna at the age of ninety-two.