Honored Humanist Dies At 92 Viktor E. Frankl Wrote ‘Man’s Search For Meaning’

Psychiatrist Viktor E. Frankl, who transformed years of suffering in Nazi concentration camps into insights for his lifelong study of man’s quest for meaning, has died at 92.

Frankl had been suffering from heart problems, the Austria Press Agency reported, citing the Vienna Viktor Frankl Institute.

He died in Vienna on Tuesday and his funeral was held immediately, the agency said.

Frankl survived Auschwitz and three other Nazi concentration camps from 1942-45, but his parents and other members of his family died in the death camps.

Partly because of his suffering in the camps, Frankl developed a revolutionary approach to psychotherapy known as logotherapy. At the core of his theory is the belief that man’s primary motivational force is his search for meaning.

Frankl’s teachings have been described as the Third Vienna School of Psychotherapy, after that of Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler.

Chancellor Viktor Klima lauded the “great humanist, scientist and world citizen,” but expressed sorrow that Frankl’s pioneering work had been “underestimated” for many years in his homeland.

Klima was referring to the long postwar years when Frankl’s native Austria virtually ignored him, even while his teachings were acclaimed in the United States and elsewhere.

Frankl’s 32 books have been translated into 26 languages. He also held 29 honorary doctorates from universities around the globe.

In his most famous book, “Man’s Search for Meaning,” Frankl wrote that the his task was to help patients find meaning in their lives, no matter how dismal their circumstances.

“There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one’s life,” he wrote.

As a concentration camp survivor, he said, “I also bear witness to the unexpected extent to which man is capable of defying and braving even the worst conditions conceivable.”

Frankl wrote that one can discover the meaning in life in three ways: “by creating a work or doing a deed; by experiencing something or encountering someone; and by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.”

And he insisted: “We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation.”

Born in Vienna on March 26, 1905, he earned a doctorate in medicine in 1930 and was put in charge of a ward treating female suicide candidates. When the Nazis took power in 1938, Frankl became chief of the neurological department of the Rothschild Hospital, the only Jewish hospital in Vienna at the time.

But in 1942, he and his parents were deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp near Prague.

In one of his later speeches, Frankl declared: “There are only two human races - the race of the decent and the race of the indecent people … Every nation is capable (of the) Holocaust.”

In 1945, Frankl returned to Vienna, where he became head physician of the neurological department of the Vienna Polyclinic Hospital, a position he held for 25 years.

Starting in 1961, Frankl took five professorships in the United States - at Harvard and Stanford Universities as well as at universities in Dallas, Pittsburgh and San Diego.

He is survived by his wife Eleonore and his daughter, Dr. Gabriele Frankl-Vesely.