The Will to Meaning: Foundations and Applications of Logotherapy

Viktor E. Frankl was the former Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at the University of Vienna Medical School and Distinguished Professor of Logotherapy at the U.S. International University. He was the founder of what has come to be called the Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy (after Freud's psychoanalysis and Adler's individual psychology) -- the school of logotherapy. Born in 1905, Dr. Frankl received the degrees of Doctor of Medicine and Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Vienna. During World War II he spent three years at Auschwitz, Dachau and other concentration camps. Dr. Frankl first published in 1924 in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and has since published twenty-six books, which have been translated into nineteen languages, including Japanese and Chinese. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard, Duquesne and Southern Methodist Universities. Honorary Degrees have been conferred upon him by Loyola University in Chicago, Edgecliff College, Rockford College and Mount Mary College, as well as by universities in Brazil and Venezuela. He has been a guest lecturer at universities throughout the world and has made fifty-one lecture tours throughout the United States alone. He is President of the Austrian Medical Society of Psychotherapy.He died in Vienna at the age of 92. Viktor E. Frankl was a man who persevered in living, writing, and helping people, despite suffering for years at the hands of the Nazis. He was born in Vienna on March 26, 1905, and received his doctorate of medicine in 1930. As a psychiatrist, he supervised a ward of suicidal female patients, and later became chief of the neurological department at Rothschild Hospital in Vienna. Frankl's successful career was halted temporarily in 1942 when he was deported to a Nazi concentration camp. In Auschwitz and other camps, he witnessed and experienced daily horrors until 1945. Although he survived, his parents and many other family members did not. Returning to Vienna in 1945, he resumed his work, becoming head physician of the neurological department at the Vienna Polyclinic Hospital. Frankl wrote more than 30 books, the most famous being Man's Search For Meaning. As a professor, he taught at many American universities, including Harvard and Stanford. He is credited with the development of logotherapy, a new style of psychotherapy. He died in Vienna in 1997.