Viktor Frankl: biography of an existential psychologist

Viktor Frankl is one of the most unhinged figures in the history of psychology. As the creator of the logotherapy, Frankl approached the treatment of mental disorders from an existentialist perspective that decades later they served to reinforce a current known as Humanist Psychology, which they belonged Carl rogers Y Abraham Maslow among others.

Very focused on phenomenology and the subjective, Viktor Frankl's logotherapy is hardly comparable to forms of psychotherapeutic intervention that have been shown to be effective in independent studies, and at the moment his scientific status is seriously questioned. But, to fully understand the origins of Viktor Frankl's work, one must take into account the historical context in which they occurred.

Viktor Frankl and the existential struggle

Pain and sadness are two of the most studied phenomena in psychology, for good reason. There are many paths of life that seem to lead towards them, and when we experience them, everything we feel and do tends to revolve around the fact that we feel bad. In some cases, even

Restlessness can have so much power over us that it prevents us from enjoying life and can play an important role in suicide. That is why a branch of psychology has turned to the treatment of these problems, and numerous therapeutic proposals have been developed to alleviate suffering.

But not all these therapies are based on philosophical assumptions that seek to cover all aspects of how we live our lives: some have The objective is to be useful in some very specific contexts and not in others, and they use criteria for measuring results that may be too rigid. That is why among those in favor of using a psychology more based on philosophy than in the natural sciences there is great respect for Viktor frankl, a Viennese psychiatrist born in the early 20th century, built a therapeutic approach from his experiences as a survivor in the concentration camps of the Nazi regime.

The beginnings of young Viktor Frankl

Viktor Frankl was born into a Viennese Jewish family in 1905, when the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud it was beginning to gain popularity among European psychiatrists. That is why during his youth, when he became interested in psychology and mental health, his self-taught training on the subject included many texts on psychoanalysis.

However, also from a very young age he began to develop a remarkable interest in philosophy, a characteristic that would define his personality and his way of asking existential questions about the meaning of life. In fact, as a minor he began to give his first talks in which he shared some of his reflections.

The university and its specialization in psychiatry

When Viktor Frankl entered the University of Vienna to finish specializing in psychiatry in the mid-1920s, Freud's work on the Mental health and the functioning of the psyche had gained such notoriety that the young student had no trouble moving like a fish in water in a discipline that combined the study of the organic (the nervous system) with the use of a meta-psychology very close to the philosophy that so much It interested Frankl.

Nevertheless, he ended up distancing himself from orthodox psychoanalysis by considering it too reductionist and he began to form in the psychodynamic current of Alfred Adler. This perspective was not marked by the pessimistic view that each person is tied to the forces unconscious that emerge from his mental structure, and so it fit better with the way in which Viktor Frankl he understood life.

The importance of philosophy in the pursuit of happiness

Because young Frankl knew that suffering and conflict exist, but he believed that by combining philosophy and knowledge in psychology it is possible to achieve an adjustment between what is experienced and the way in which it is thought so as not to fall into the unhappiness. During his formative years among Adler's followers, Viktor Frankl came into contact with Rudolf Allers, which would lead him to develop a type of existential psychology that we know today What logotherapy.

Thus, although Viktor Frankl ended his academic relationship with Adler years later, the idea that mental health and well-being have a lot to do with the way in which meaning is given to vital existence was deeply rooted in the philosophy of this psychiatrist. But what would lead her to reaffirm his convictions was a terrible and potentially traumatic experience: his passing through the Nazi concentration camps.

Viktor Frankl as Holocaust survivor

During his years as a student, Viktor Frankl had many occasions to become familiar with pain. In fact, he wanted to specialize in the study and treatment of depression and suicide prevention, which he led him to offer support services to overstressed students and, during the 1930s, he treated many patients at risk of suicide. Beginning in 1938, however, he became increasingly cornered by the rise of Nazism.

In 1942, after being forced to work in the only hospital in the area where Jews could work, Viktor was deported to a ghetto, and from there to a series of concentration camps, including Auschwitz. Most of his family, including his wife, died in the death camp network, and Viktor Frankl he had to work in conditions of slavery until the camp he was in was liberated in 1945.

Man's Search for Meaning

After the end of the war, Viktor Frankl he discovered that many of the people he loved had died, but he found a way to accommodate these losses. According to him, the simple fact of discovering the meaning of suffering makes it experience in a much more bearable way, making it becomes incorporated into the narrative of one's own life history as one more element, something that does not prevent the page from turning and can be thrown to go ahead.

This idea, which in fact largely coincides with the principles of the existentialist philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre and other thinkers, was embodied by Viktor Frankl in his best-known work: Man's Search for Meaning, published in 1946, which is also a book that serves as an introduction to logotherapy.

Viktor Frankl's theories, today

Viktor Frankl's work draws on influences that can be traced back to hundreds of years ago, when Eastern religious leaders talked about how to deal with the suffering by changing the way it is thought about and when the ascetics of ancient Greece taught to renounce preconceived ideas about what generates desire and what not. In fact, his contributions to psychology are less important the more we stick to the idea that psychology should be a science based on measurement and experimentation.

However, the intellectual filter that Viktor Frankl assumed has not had logotherapy as its only product: his early works on existential analysis can also be considered to have laid the foundations of the humanistic psychology that popularized people like Carl rogers or Abraham Maslow and that more recently has lit the positive psychology, oriented to investigate topics such as self-realization, the achievement of vital objectives and happiness.

You can consult the books that Viktor Frankl wrote through this link.