Viktor Frankl: biography of an existential psychologist.

Life and work of Viktor Frankl: from holocaust survivor to father of logotherapy.

Viktor Frankl is one of the most shattered figures in the history of psychology. As the creator of logotherapyFrankl approached the treatment of mental disorders from an existentialist perspective that decades later served to strengthen a current known as Humanistic Psychology, to which Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow, among others, belonged.

Very focused on phenomenology and the subjective, Viktor Frankl's logotherapy is hardly comparable to forms of psychotherapeutic intervention whose efficacy has been demonstrated in independent studies, and currently its scientific status is seriously questioned. its scientific status is seriously questioned. But, to understand the origins of Viktor Frankl's work, it is necessary to take into account the historical context in which they occurred.

Viktor Frankl and the existential struggle

Grief and sadness are two of the phenomena most studied by psychology, for good reason. There are many paths in life that seem to lead to them, and when we experience them everything we feel and do tends to revolve around the fact that we feel bad. In some cases, even, uneasiness can have so much power over us that it prevents us from enjoying life and can play an important role in suicide. That is why one strand of psychology has turned to the treatment of these problems, and numerous therapeutic proposals have been developed to alleviate suffering.

But not all of these therapies are based on philosophical assumptions that aim to cover all aspects of how we live our lives: some aim to be useful in very specific contexts and not in others, and use criteria for measuring results that may be too rigid. That is why, among those in favor of using a psychology based more on philosophy than on the natural sciences, there is a great deal of respect for Viktor Frankla Viennese psychiatrist born at the beginning of the 20th century, built a therapeutic approach from his experiences as a survivor in the concentration camps of the Nazi regime.

The beginnings of the young Viktor Frankl

Viktor Frankl was born into a Viennese Jewish family in 1905, when Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis was beginning to gain popularity among European psychiatrists. That is why during his youth, when he became interested in psychology and mental health, his self-taught training on the subject included many texts on psychoanalysis.

However, also at a very young age, he began to develop a notable interest in philosophy, a characteristic that would define his personality and his work.This was to define his personality and his way of asking existential questions about the meaning of life. In fact, as a minor he began to give his first talks in which he shared some of his reflections.

The university and his specialization in psychiatry

When Viktor Frankl entered the University of Vienna to end up specializing in psychiatry in the mid-1920s, Freud's work on mental health and the functioning of the psyche had gained such notoriety that the young student had no trouble moving like a fish in water in a discipline that combined the study of the organic (the nervous system) with the use of a meta-psychology very close to the philosophy that interested Frankl so much.

However, he ended up distancing himself from psychoanalysis, However, he ended up distancing himself from orthodox psychoanalysis as he considered it too reductionist and began to train in the psychodynamic current of Alfred Adler. This perspective was not marked by the pessimistic view that each person is bound to the unconscious forces that emerge from his mental structure, and therefore fit better with Viktor Frankl's understanding of life.

The importance of philosophy in the pursuit of happiness.

For the young Frankl knew that suffering and conflict exist, but he believed that through a combination of philosophy and knowledge in psychology it is possible to achieve an adjustment between what one experiences and the way one thinks about it in order not to fall into unhappiness. During his formative years among the followers of Adler, Viktor Frankl came into contact with Rudolf Allers, which would lead him to develop a type of existential psychology that today we know as logotherapy.

Thus, although Viktor Frankl ended his academic relationship with Adler years later, the idea that well-being and mental health have much to do with the way in which meaning is given to the vital existence was deeply rooted in the philosophy of this psychiatrist. But what would lead him to reaffirm his convictions was a terrible and potentially traumatic experience: his time in the Nazi concentration camps.

Viktor Frankl as a Holocaust survivor

During his years as a student, Viktor Frankl had many opportunities to become familiar with grief. In fact, he wanted to specialize in the study and treatment of depression and the prevention of suicide, which led him to offer support services to people with depression. to offer support services to students suffering from excessive stress and, during the 1930s, he and, during the 1930s, he treated many patients at risk of committing suicide. From 1938, however, he began to be increasingly beset by the rise of Nazism.

In 1942, after being forced to work in the only hospital in the area where Jews could work, Viktor was deported to a ghetto, and from there to a series of concentration camps, including Auschwitz. Auschwitz. Most of his family, including his wife, died in the network of extermination camps, and Viktor Frankl had to work in slave-like conditions until the camp he was in was liberated in 1945.

Man's search for meaning

After the end of the war, Viktor Frankl was discovering that many of the people he loved had died, but he found a way to come to terms with his losses.. According to him, the simple fact of discovering the meaning of suffering makes the experience of suffering much more bearable, making it become part of the narrative of one's own life story as just another element, something that does not prevent one from turning the page and moving forward.

This idea, which in fact coincides largely with the principles of the existentialist philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre and other thinkers, was embodied by Viktor Frankl in his best known work: Man's Search for Meaning, published in 1946, which is also a book that serves as an introduction to logotherapy.

The theories of Viktor Frankl, today

Viktor Frankl's work draws on influences that can be traced back hundreds of years, when Eastern religious leaders talked about how to deal with suffering by changing the way you think about it and when the ascetics of ancient Greece taught to renounce preconceived ideas about what generates desire and what does not. In fact, their contributions to psychology are less important the more we stick to the idea that psychology should be a science based on measurement and experimentation.

However, Viktor Frankl's intellectual filter has not had logotherapy as its only product: his early works on existential analysis can also be considered to have laid the foundations of the humanistic psychology popularized by people such as Carl Rogers or Abraham Maslow and that more recently has given birth to the positive psychologyoriented to investigate topics such as self-fulfillment, the achievement of life goals and happiness.

You can consult the books written by Viktor Frankl through this link.