Viktor Frankl
Viktor Emil Frankl (1905–1997) was an Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor who founded logotherapy, an existential approach to psychotherapy centered on the human search for meaning. Born in Vienna, he studied medicine at the University of Vienna and became interested in psychiatry and psychotherapy, working in psychiatric institutions before establishing his own approach. Frankl argued that the primary motivational force in human beings is not simply pleasure or power but the search for meaning, and he developed logotherapy around the idea that individuals can find meaning through creative activity, relationships and experiences, and the attitude they adopt toward unavoidable suffering. During the Second World War, Frankl and members of his family were deported by the Nazis to concentration camps; he survived imprisonment in Auschwitz and other camps, while his wife, parents, and brother died during the Holocaust. After the war, he reconstructed his account of his experiences and psychological observations in Man’s Search for Meaning, first published in German in 1946 and later translated into numerous languages. Frankl subsequently became professor of neurology and psychiatry at the University of Vienna and lectured internationally. His work combined existential philosophy, clinical psychiatry, and observations drawn from extreme human suffering, making logotherapy an important influence on existential and humanistic approaches to psychotherapy.