Frankl Viktor 1905 - 1997 (92)
“Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.
QUOTES
for Meaning
Frankl from the age of 3 wanted to be a doctor, as a teenager he became fascinated wtih philosophy and psychoanalysis and began to correspond with Freud under whose influence he became a psychiatrist. Initially interested in Freud's psychoanalysis, in 1924 he joined Alfred Adler's "Society for Individual Psychology", in 1927 he was expelled from the Society for having "deviant ideas". He was later influenced by the philosophical anthropology of Max Scheler. During the Second World War he worked as a psychiatrist in a hospital in Vienna. Despite being granted a US visa, he remained in Austria to protect his Jewish parents. On September 25, 1942, he and his family were sent to a concentration camp. On October 19, 1944 he was taken with his wife to Auschwitz and on October 25, 1944 he ended up in Dachau where he stayed until March 1945. He was released on April 27, 1945. He was soon informed that his wife who was pregnant had died in the concentration camp. The same happened to his parents and his brother.
In 1948 he remarried and had a daughter From 1945 to 1970 Frankl was head of the Neurological Clinic in Vienna. He was professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at the University of the city and president of the Austrian Medical Society of Psychotherapy. He became a professor at Harvard and Stanford and 28 times he was awarded an honorary doctorate at various universities. Since 1961 he lectured at universities around the world and received many important awards. He wrote 39 books translated into many languages and his first book, "Man's Search for Meaning" has sold over 12 million copies. Viktor Frankl taught until 1996. He died of a heart attack on September 2, 1997.