Viktor Frankl Biography

Viktor Emil Frankl was a famous psychiatrist and neurologist from Austria. He was also a Holocaust survivor, having survived Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, Kaufering, and Türkheim. He was the founder of the popular ‘logotherapy’ which is known as the ‘third school’ in the three Viennese schools of psychotherapy. The first two schools were founded by Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler, both of whom influenced Viktor significantly during his early career days. He based his theory on the belief that the main motivation of any individual is the search for “meaning in life.” He felt the primary purpose of psychotherapy should be to assist an individual in finding that meaning. He wrote the bestselling book ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ which has sold millions of copies worldwide. Over the course of his career, he played an instrumental role in counseling high school students prone to suicides and enabled them to find a purpose for living. In more recent years, Frankl’s work has been subjected to criticism by holocaust analysts who state that his ‘logotherapy’ had a lot of Nazi influence in it. Apart from this, they also doubted he performed unskilled lobotomy experiments on Jews with the Nazi’s permission.