Viktor Frankl

Viktor Frankl was an Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, and the founder of logotherapy, a form of existential psychotherapy. In 1942 he was deported with his family to Theresienstadt and was later held at Auschwitz and in a Dachau subcamp; his parents, brother and wife died in the camps. Man's Search for Meaning, first published in German in 1946, recounts camp life and argues that finding meaning helps people endure even extreme suffering. He taught at the University of Vienna and became one of the most widely read psychiatrists of his century.

Key ideas

• The primary human motivation is the will to meaning, not pleasure or power.
• Meaning can be found through creative work, through love and experience, and through the attitude we take to unavoidable suffering.
• Even in extreme conditions, a person keeps the freedom to choose their attitude.
• Many modern problems stem from an 'existential vacuum', a sense that life lacks meaning.

Major works

• Man's Search for Meaning (1946)
• The Doctor and the Soul (1946)
• The Will to Meaning (1969)

In the Book corner

• Man’s Search for Meaning 1946; English 1959 · Beginner
  A short book by the Viennese psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, first published in German in 1946, soon after his release from the Nazi…

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