When was Viktor Frankl born and where did he grow up?
Viktor Emil Frankl was born on the 26th of March 1905 in Vienna, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He grew up as the middle child of three to Gabriel and Elsa Frankl.
Viktor Emil Frankl was born on the 26th of March 1905 in Vienna, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He grew up as the middle child of three to Gabriel and Elsa Frankl.
In 1942, Frankl and his family were sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp where his father died on the 13th of February 1943 from starvation and pneumonia. His mother and brother Walter were murdered in gas chambers at Auschwitz in 1944, and his wife Tilly later died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen.
Logotherapy emerged as the third school of Viennese Psychotherapy following those established by Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler based on the desire to find meaning in life and free will. Primary techniques included paradoxical intention to help clients overcome obsessions through self-distancing and humorous exaggeration.
The book was originally titled A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp before being released in German in 1946 with an English translation appearing in 1959. Millions of copies were sold in dozens of languages worldwide and it was named one of the ten most influential books in the US in a 1991 survey.
Professor Timothy Pytell surveyed discrepancies in Frankl's Auschwitz survivor account suggesting he was held close to the train in the depot prisoner area for no more than a few days rather than months. Scholar Lawrence Langer criticized distortions of true experiences and argued that such thinking could equally apply to Nazis finding meaning in making the world free from Jews.
Frankl died of heart failure in Vienna on the 2nd of September 1997 and is buried in the Jewish section of the Vienna Central Cemetery. He received numerous awards including the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art in 1981, the Hans Prinzhorn Medal by 1995, and the Great Gold Medal with Star for Services to the Republic of Austria.