Viktor E. Frankl: Quotes

Viktor Frankl 

Viktor Frankl 

Viktor Frankl 

Viktor Emil Frankl (1905-1997) was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist as well as a Holocaust survivor. Frankl was the founder of logotherapy, which is a form of existential analysis, the "Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy". 

His best-selling book "Man's Search for Meaning" (published under a different title in 1959: "From Death-Camp to Existentialism," and originally published in 1946 as "Trotzdem Ja Zum Leben Sagen: Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager," meaning "Nevertheless, Say 'Yes' to Life: A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp") chronicles his experiences as a concentration camp inmate, which led him to discover the importance of finding meaning in all forms of existence, even the most brutal ones, and thus, a reason to continue living. 

Frankl became one of the key figures in existential therapy and a prominent source of inspiration for humanistic psychologists.

Viktor Frankl 

Viktor Frankl 

In the Blogs: Depression Is My Profession: A Psychiatrist's Perspective

By Karen Mechanic 

I am a psychiatrist in in a cancer center. It is more than simply a job to me. It gives my life meaning and purpose. 

My patients are not always those with the cancer diagnosis themselves, but all have been impacted by the cancer experience, and may include parents, partners, significant others, or children. Many are focused on the future, waiting for something to change, and some are focused on the past -- asking themselves what they could have done differently. Many feel numb, disconnected, anxious and alone. Almost all are sad.

Often the symptoms of depression are obfuscated by medical treatments and their side effects. In this way, my work is often complicated. Time is always of the essence. My job is to bring people back to their senses, reconnecting them to their inner strengths, their family's love, their friends' encouragement and other available resources to support them through the experience. In doing so, my work allows them to feel less anxious and isolated, and to eliminate as many of their symptoms of depression as is possible under the circumstances, especially a diminished pleasure in life or a sense that life is not worth living any more. Further, in our work patients can not only rediscover their former selves but also emerge from the experience with greater compassion and understanding of their strengths.

The challenges my patients face may seem to them impossible to overcome. This may be best illustrated by the life and work of Dr. Viktor Frankl. He was a concentration camp survivor and psychiatrist, wrote one of the most influential books of all time on this subject (according to the U.S. Library of Congress): Man's Search for Meaning.

His book addressed coping in the face of insurmountable odds. He wrote that even in the face of a situation whose cause you cannot change, the best way to cope is to change the attitude you use to cope with the situation. Essentially, even though we may not be able to change the stressor, we always have a choice in how we cope with it.

Despite the situation, it is possible to "turn tragedy into triumph." With a new approach, life will have meaning. Dr. Frankl asserts that transformative thinking can, in turn, be inspiring to others.

Without question, my work is challenging. The time I spend with my patients, however, inspires me daily by giving meaning to my life as we work together to overcome adversity. And I hope I in turn am bringing meaning to the lives of others.

Emily Esfahani Smith: There’s More to Life Than Being Happy

by Emily Esfahani Smith

Viktor Frankl

In my latest piece for the Atlantic, “There’s More to Life Than Happiness,” I write about a new study that examines the difference between a happy life and a meaningful life. People who live happy lives tend to be more selfish and “taking” than people who live meaningful lives, who tend to be selfless and “giving.” Interestingly, having kids is associated with low levels of happiness but high levels of meaning.

So which type of life is better–the happy life or the meaningful life? Using info from the study and the life of Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl as an example, I argue that the meaningful life–even if it leads to low happiness, as it often does–is better than the merely happy life.

Here’s an excerpt:

In September 1942, Viktor Frankl, a prominent Jewish psychiatrist and neurologist in Vienna, was arrested and transported to a Nazi concentration camp with his wife and parents. Three years later, when his camp was liberated, most of his family, including his pregnant wife, had perished — but he, prisoner number 119104, had lived. In his bestselling 1946 book, Man’s Search for Meaning, which he wrote in nine days about his experiences in the camps, Frankl concluded that the difference between those who had lived and those who had died came down to one thing: Meaning, an insight he came to early in life. When he was a high school student, one of his science teachers declared to the class, “Life is nothing more than a combustion process, a process of oxidation.” Frankl jumped out of his chair and responded, “Sir, if this is so, then what can be the meaning of life?”

As he saw in the camps, those who found meaning even in the most horrendous circumstances were far more resilient to suffering than those who did not. “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing,” Frankl wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning, “the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Frankl worked as a therapist in the camps, and in his book, he gives the example of two suicidal inmates he encountered there. Like many others in the camps, these two men were hopeless and thought that there was nothing more to expect from life, nothing to live for. “In both cases,” Frankl writes, “it was a question of getting them to realize that life was still expecting something from them; something in the future was expected of them.” For one man, it was his young child, who was then living in a foreign country. For the other, a scientist, it was a series of books that he needed to finish. . . .
According to Gallup, the happiness levels of Americans are at a four-year high — as is, it seems, the number of best-selling books with the word “happiness” in their titles. At this writing, Gallup also reports that nearly 60 percent all Americans today feel happy without a lot of stress or worry. On the other hand, according to the Center for Disease Control, about 4 out of 10 Americans have not discovered a satisfying life purpose. Forty percent either do not think their lives have a clear sense of purpose or are neutral about whether their lives have purpose. Nearly a quarter of Americans feel neutral or do not have a strong sense of what makes their lives meaningful. Research has shown that having purpose and meaning in life increases overall well-being and life satisfaction, improves mental and physical health, enhances resiliency, enhances self-esteem, and decreases the chances of depression. On top of that, the single-minded pursuit of happiness is ironically leaving people less happy, according to recent research. “It is the very pursuit of happiness,” Frankl knew, “that thwarts happiness.”
This is why some researchers are cautioning against the pursuit of mere happiness. In a new study, which will be published this year in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Positive Psychology, psychological scientists asked nearly 400 Americans aged 18 to 78 whether they thought their lives were meaningful and/or happy. Examining their self-reported attitudes toward meaning, happiness, and many other variables — like stress levels, spending patterns, and having children — over a month-long period, the researchers found that a meaningful life and happy life overlap in certain ways, but are ultimately very different. Leading a happy life, the psychologists found, is associated with being a “taker” while leading a meaningful life corresponds with being a “giver.”

You can read the full article here.

Viktor Frankl and Logotherapy

Viktor Frankl, M.D., Ph.D. (1905-1997) was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist as well as a Holocaust survivor.

Frankl was the founder of logotherapy, which is a form of existential analysis, the "Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy".

His best-selling book, Man's Search for Meaning (published under a different title in 1959: From Death-Camp to Existentialism, and originally published in 1946 as Trotzdem Ja Zum Leben Sagen: Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager), chronicles his experiences as a concentration camp inmate which led him to discover the importance of finding meaning in all forms of existence, even the most sordid ones, and thus a reason to continue living.

Frankl became one of the key figures in existential therapy and a prominent source of inspiration for humanistic psychologists.

 He resided at Harvard University (1961), and at my alma mater  Southern Methodist University, Dallas (1966).

Wikipedia entry on Logotherapy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logotherapy