Viktor Frankl

Viktor Frankl, M.D., Ph.D. (1905–1997) is a featured contributor to our book, The Power of Love. He is the author of the classic Holocaust memoir Man’s Search for Meaning, listed as one of the “ten most influential books in America” according to a survey conducted by the Book of the Month Club and the Library of Congress. It is a standard text in American colleges and used around the world. Frankl founded a school of psychotherapy called Logotherapy/Existential Analysis. His approach of “healing through meaning” is regarded as the “Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy” (the other two founded by Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler). Frankl published the first book about logotherapy after his liberation from the Nazi concentration camps, first in German in 1946 and later in English in 1955 under the title The Doctor and The Soul. Frankl’s thirty-nine books have appeared in forty-four languages. He served as professor of neurology and psychiatry at the University of Vienna Medical school. For twenty-five years, 1946–1971, he was head of the Vienna Neurological Polyclinic. For four decades, Dr. Frankl made hundreds of lecture tours worldwide. His wife, Elly Frankl, traveled with him. He received honorary degrees from twenty-nine universities in Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia. In addition to professorships at Harvard, Stanford, and other American universities, he served as Distinguished Professor of Logotherapy at the U.S. International University in San Diego, California. He received numerous awards, including the Oskar Pfister Award of the American Psychiatric Association.

For current information on Dr. Frankl’s life and legacy:

See the bio page of his grandson, Alexander Vesely, who co-founded The Viktor E. Frankl Institute of America and heads the Viktor Frankl Media Archives in Vienna.

And the website of the Viktor Frankl Institute in Vienna, Austria.

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