He devoted his life to the human search for meaning: Who is Viktor Frankl?

Viktor Emil Frankl, one of the pioneers of the existential psychotherapy movement, was born on March 26, 1905, in Vienna to a Jewish family. His mother, Elsa, belonged to one of Prague's respected families; his father, Gabriel, a social services manager, was from a North Marovian (Czech Republic) artisan family.

Frankl takes this unfulfilled desire of his father, who had to end his medical education in Vienna due to financial difficulties, as the greatest goal of his life. The questions he asked his teachers during his primary school years show that he was interested in medicine and philosophy. Frankl, who studied medicine, completed his studies with a psychoanalytic study on Schopenhauer.

Viktor Emil Frankl (26 March 1905 – 2 September 1997) was a Jewish-Austrian psychiatrist who founded logotherapy, a school of psychotherapy that describes a search for a life's meaning as the central human motivational force. Logotherapy is part of existential and humanistic psychology theories.

It can be said that his questioning of the meaning of life dates back to his childhood years. Because some of the events he lived in support this opinion: He mentions that at the age of four, when he was about to go to sleep, he was startled by the idea that he would die one day, just like everyone else. This experience raises the question of whether the meaning of life will disappear with death, rather than the fear of death, and for this reason, he has great anxiety.

Especially two events that he experienced during school affected his future deeply. When his teacher in the Natural Sciences class said that life consists of oxidation, a combustion mechanism, Frankl replied, "If life is nothing but what you are describing, then what is the point of all this life?" He expresses his anxiety about the meaning of life. The second event is the discovery of a book by Nietzsche in the hands of a friend who committed suicide, which leads Frankl to think that there must be an existential link between the worldview and the formation of life. This event represents the beginning of the war between Frankl and Nihilism. As can be seen, it is understood that Frankl laid the foundations of Logotherapy in his childhood years, long before his concentration camp experiences.

Frankl, who started correspondence with Freud at the age of 15, gave his first lecture on The Meaning of Life (Der Sinn des Lebens) at the age of 16 a year later. At the age of 19, he published his first article in the psychoanalysis journal Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse. Even if he corresponded with Freud, whom he saw once, he would not be a student. However, it is to Freud that his first article was published in such a well-known journal. While breaking his ties with Freud after 1924; Begins to work with Alfred Adler. He publishes his works during this period in the journal Internationalen Zeitschrift für Individualpsychologie. However, soon after, in 1926, he also conflicted with Adler, and thus his relationship with the Individual Psychology Association was cut off.

In 1927, Victor Frankl begins to associate with psychiatrists Schwartz and Rudolf Allers, owners of Medizinischen Anthropologie (Medical Anthropology). This friendship leads to radical changes in Frankl's view of man. In the meantime, he gets acquainted with the works of the German philosopher Scheler. Scheler's influence marks his views. This third stage, which started in the year 1927, is the stage in which Frankl's thought was restructured to remain unchanged. The theoretical background of logotherapy becomes clear. He received his doctorate in 1930 and from the same date he started to work in the Neuropsychiatry Clinic of the University of Vienna. His observations here strengthen his conviction that the sense of meaninglessness is one of the most important sources of disease.

It was 1938 that prepared Victor Frankl with a completely different and new approach to the world of science. He put forward the arguments of existential analysis and Logotherapy for the first time in his work Zürgeistigen Problematik der Psychotherapie (On the Spiritual Problems of Psychotherapy), which he published this year. A few months later he published his article Seelenärzliche Selbstbesinnung (Psychiatric Self-Reflection). Along with these two studies, the article titled Philosophie und Pyschotherapie (Philosophy and Psychotherapy), which he published in 1939 with the subtitle Zur Grundlegung einer Existenzanalyse (For the Basis of an Existential Analysis) is considered as the triad of Frankl theory and therapy technique.

Frankl worked at the Steinhof Psychiatric Hospital in Vienna between 1933-37; In the last months of 1937, he opened a private practice as a Neurology and Psychiatry doctor. But only a few months later, it shuts down due to the Nazi annexation of Austria and restrictions on Jewish doctors.

Frankl, who was the Director of the Neurology Center of Rothschild-Spital in Vienna between 1940 and 1942, was trying to complete his very famous work Ärzliche Seelsorge, which was later lost in the concentration camps and rewritten after his liberation. However, when he was arrested with his family in 1943 and sent to a concentration camp, all his projects were turned upside down.

He married Tilly Grosser in 1941. Jews are prohibited from marrying and having children in Nazi Germany, but they were married before the ban; the wife becomes pregnant; Unfortunately, a few months later, the Nazis cause her to lose her baby. In 1943, like many other Viennese Jews, Frankl, along with his wife, father, mother, and brother, were arrested by Nazi SS Officers and transferred to concentration camps known as death camps.

Preparing Frankl's rebirth; The most important event that deeply affected his academic life, as well as his personal life, is this concentration camp experience. Frankl, who lives in fear of being sent to the gas chambers at any moment, can only regain his freedom in 1946. But all his family, except his sister, died in the gas chambers. Frankl, who lived with the hope of being able to reunite with his family for three years, learned this bitter truth when he returned to Vienna in 1946.

Frankl, as a result of his observations in the concentration camp; observes that those who no longer have any expectations from life die before those who have any purpose; He adds that it does not change the situation whether these people are young or old. Realizing the importance of having a life purpose or meaning in the survival of the individual, Frankl accepts this issue as the main theme of his theory. Thus, after the war, he developed Logotherapy, a method of therapy to help individuals find meaning in their lives.

Viktor Frankl, the founder of Logotherapy, named after Freud and Adler as the 3rd Vienna School, argues that the most important psychological problem of human beings in our age is meaninglessness in life and existential emptiness. Logotherapy consists of the combination of the Greek words logos, which means "meaning", and therapy. Logotherapy assumes that life potentially exists in all circumstances, even the worst.

According to Frankl, the main source of existential stress and anxiety in contemporary times is the absence of meaning. According to him, the meaning of life differs from person to person, from day to day, from hour to hour. What matters is not the meaning of life in general, but rather the specific meaning of human life at a given time. According to him, the individual should not seek an abstract meaning. Frankl says that by resisting and struggling, one can endure even the worst conditions imaginable. However, in order for a person to hang on to life, he must have a reason to make life and death meaningful, something to live for. Every individual should have a job, special friends, hobbies, and ideals to fight for. Frankl argues that every situation in life challenges man and presents him with a series of problems to be solved. According to Frankl, the true meaning of life must be discovered in the world, not in oneself or in one's own soul. He calls this essential feature “the self-transcendence of human existence”.

The individual can find the meaning of life in three different ways; by creating an artifact or doing a job, interacting with a person or experiencing something, and developing an attitude towards the inevitable state of suffering. Frankl sees the individual taking responsibility as the basis of finding meaning in life and shows love as the other way of finding meaning. Love is the only way to grasp another person's personality from the deepest, core. Kindness, truthfulness, loving nature, and loving people are important values that add meaning to life. Unless one loves, one cannot realize the essence of other people. Through love, the individual can see the potential of the person they love and help them realize their potential. Another way to find meaning in life is to develop an attitude toward inevitable pain. An individual can find meaning in life even when faced with a hopeless situation or faced with an unchangeable fate. According to him, only in such a situation can the individual turn a personal tragedy into a personal victory, which is uniquely human. When the individual reaches a point where he cannot change the situation, he can change himself and face the pain.

Frankl's view is fundamentally religious, based on the assumption that God has ordained a meaning for each of us to discover and realize. Although we cannot grasp the meaning in itself, Frankl insists that we accept the belief that there is a harmonious pattern in life and that human suffering has meaning. Just as an experimental animal cannot grasp the meaning of its suffering, human beings cannot discover meaning because they are in a dimension beyond their comprehension. As a result, human is a being who seeks meaning and lives with meaning. Meaning is a need for him. The search for meaning is also an expression of this need.

Frankl has frequently touched upon the meaning of pain in his writings. According to him, no pain is in vain, every pain has a function; Therefore, meaning can be found in suffering. Finding meaning in pain means having a reason to live; It is easier for the person who has this reason to endure almost everything and survive. As Nietzsche said: “He who has a why to live can endure almost any how.”

Individuals whose sense of meaninglessness predominates in their lives, deprived of a sense of meaning worth living for, are caught in the sense of emptiness that occurs in their inner world, that is, existential emptiness. At this point, the Logotherapist's role is to help the client find meaning and purpose in life or to make the existing spectrum of meanings conscious and visible.

After he escaped from the concentration camps and returned to 1946, Frankl's life and works were the most productive years in which he gained worldwide recognition and fame. Especially the 1946-1970 period, when he served as responsible for the Vienna Neurology Polyclinic, is extremely remarkable in this sense. The first edition of his first book, Ärzliche Seelsorge, which he published at the beginning of 1946, sold out in three days, and the second edition after two months. Having written 31 books, hundreds of conferences and seminars, and dozens of articles translated into 24 foreign languages in his life, Frankl is invited as a visiting scholar by more than 200 universities on 5 continents.

Frankl has to deal with heart problems in 1997 when he finishes his last book, Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning. Treatment attempts did not yield any results, and he died on October 2, 1997. It is Frankl's greatest desire as a sincere devotee to be buried in silence and tranquility, with only prayers. He was buried in a simple ceremony attended by a few clergymen and their families, in keeping with the phrase he always reminded his wife of, "Whatever, let me go as I came into this world, without causing a sensation".