Viktor Frankl (March 26, 1905 – September 2, 1997) was an Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor, and the founder of the "Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy." He developed logotherapy, a form of existential psychotherapy based on the belief that the search for meaning is the primary motivating force in human life.
From the age of three, Frankl dreamed of becoming a doctor. As a teenager, he became fascinated by philosophy and psychoanalysis and began corresponding with Sigmund Freud, whose ideas initially inspired him to pursue psychiatry. Although he first embraced Freud's psychoanalytic theories, he joined Alfred Adler's Society for Individual Psychology in 1924, only to be expelled three years later because of his independent views. He was later deeply influenced by the philosophical anthropology of Max Scheler. During the Second World War, Frankl worked as a psychiatrist at a hospital in Vienna. Although he had obtained a visa to emigrate to the United States, he chose to remain in Austria to stay with his elderly Jewish parents. In September 1942, he and his family were deported to the The Holocaust. In October 1944, he and his wife were transferred to Auschwitz concentration camp, and shortly afterward he was sent to Dachau concentration camp, where he remained until March 1945. He was liberated on April 27, 1945, only to learn that his pregnant wife, his parents, and his brother had all perished in the camps.
In 1948, Frankl remarried and later had a daughter. From 1945 to 1970, he served as head of the Neurological Polyclinic in Vienna. He was Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at the University of Vienna and president of the Austrian Medical Society of Psychotherapy. He also held visiting professorships at Harvard and Stanford Universities and received 29 honorary doctorates from universities around the world. Beginning in 1961, he lectured internationally and was honored with numerous prestigious awards. Frankl wrote 39 books, translated into dozens of languages, and his best-known work, Man's Search for Meaning, has sold more than 12 million copies worldwide. He continued teaching until 1996 and died of a heart attack on September 2, 1997, at the age of 92.
