Victor Frankl

Nationality

Austrian

Description

Viktor Emil Frankl (26 March 1905 – 2 September 1997) was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist as well as a Holocaust survivor. He survived Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, Kaufering and Türkheim. Frankl was the founder of logotherapy, which is a form of existential analysis, the "Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy". His best-selling book Man's Search for Meaning (published under a different title in 1959: From Death-Camp to Existentialism, and originally published in 1946 as Trotzdem Ja Zum Leben Sagen: Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager, meaning Nevertheless, Say "Yes" to Life: A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp) chronicles his experiences as a concentration camp inmate, which led him to discover the importance of finding meaning in all forms of existence, even the most brutal ones, and thus, a reason to continue living. Frankl became one of the key figures in existential therapy and a prominent source of inspiration for humanistic psychologists.Frankl remains a figure of considerable controversy amongst holocaust analysts, the Jewish community and psychiatrists alike, with Thomas Szasz and others questioning the levels of Nazi accommodation that the ideology of logotherapy has and Frankl personally willingly pursued; in the time periods before Frankl's internment, when Frankl voluntarily requested to perform unskilled lobotomy experiments approved by the Nazis on Jews who had attempted suicide to prevent arrest, to the time period of his internment, in what is hinted upon in Frankl's own autobiographical account and later under the investigative light of biographical research. It is for these reasons and a similarly controversial medal ceremony after the war, that none of Frankl's works, have ever been on sale in the bookstore of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C.

Wikipedia

Link

Gender

Male

The best books of all time by Victor Frankl

  1. 146 . Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl

    Viktor Frankl's 1946 book Man's Search for Meaning chronicles his experiences as a concentration camp inmate and describes his psychotherapeutic method of finding a reason to live. According to Fra...