Viktor E. Frankl, the world famous psychiatrist and founder of logotherapy died on Tuesday, September 2nd of a cardiac failure in his home town, Vienna. Frankl, born on March 26th, 1905 in Vienna, used the psychological systems of Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler as a background for the development of his own anthropology which gives the answer to "what can be expected, assumed, and demanded of a human being in particular circumstances" (P. Polak).
Frankl emphasises the uniqueness of each human being and the potential freedom which humans have despite inner and outer difficulties. The spiritual dimension and its orientation towards meaning is for Frankl the key focus in healing processes and in coping with life.
He himself experienced the power of the spirit in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, where he was interned for almost three years. Frankl's credo became Nietzsche's phrase: "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how." Frankl's book on his experiences in the concentration camps, "Man's Search for Meaning" which he wrote in only nine days, became a world-wide best-seller and sold more than 10 million copies.
This book is a gripping narrative revealing the profound depths of human nature. Particularly successful in the United States, it has influenced many famous psychologists such as Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and Gordon W. Allport, who said of Frankl's logotherapy that it was "the most significant movement of our day". Frankl's thoughts go beyond a mere psychological understanding of human nature and enter into a philosophical contemplation on the meaning of life, which manifests itself, according to Frankl, in each individual in a very particular and unique way.
Frankl wrote 32 books which have been translated into 26 languages. He was Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at the University of Vienna and taught also at the Universities of Harvard, Dallas, Pittsburgh and San Diego. He was given 29 honorary doctorates. He made his last speech at a congress in Vienna in 1995.
Today there is a network of logotherapy institutes all around the world. In his recently published autobiography (Recollections, Plenum Publishing Company, London) Frankl recalls how he was asked by Who's Who in America to state in one sentence the meaning of his own life. He asked one of his students what he thought he would have written. The student answered: "The meaning of your life is to help others find the meaning of theirs."
"Those are exactly the words I have written," Frankl said.
M.H.