Viktor Frankl

The person and ideas at the foundation of logotherapy and existential analysis.

Viktor Emil Frankl (1905–1997) was a Viennese neurologist, psychiatrist and the founder of logotherapy.

Born in Vienna, he began corresponding with Sigmund Freud as a young man and later worked with Alfred Adler. Gradually, however, he moved away from both, feeling that their theories were too narrow to encompass the full depth of the human spirit. By the 1930s, Frankl was developing the foundations of his approach while heading the ward for women at risk of suicide at Am Steinhof Hospital, and later the neurology department at Rothschild Hospital, the only hospital still admitting Jewish patients.

Frankl did not yet know that life would soon put his own theory to the harshest possible test.

In 1942, he was deported with his family and endured four concentration camps, including Auschwitz, where his first manuscript was destroyed. On his liberation in 1945, he learned that his wife Tilly, his mother, his father and his brother had died. He was left utterly alone.

In 1946, in just nine days, he wrote the book that would transform millions of lives — Man’s Search for Meaning. He initially published it anonymously, seeking to offer support rather than personal fame. Today, it has been translated into more than 50 languages and is among the most influential books of the twentieth century.

After the war, Frankl headed the Vienna neurological clinic for 25 years, taught at Harvard and Stanford, wrote almost 40 books and received 29 honorary doctorates. His zest for life never faded: he obtained a pilot’s licence at 67 and continued climbing mountains into old age.

A favourite thought that Frankl often quoted from Nietzsche was: ‘He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.’

He died at 92, leaving behind logotherapy as a living testament to the power of light and meaning to overcome darkness.