Victor Frankl

Viktor Frankl grew up in Vienna at a time when great advances in the field of psychology were being made there. His interest in the subject developed early, and as a medical student, he organized suicide watch programs that maintained a 100% success rate. Upon completing his residency, Frankl set up a private practice. In 1938, during the German occupation of Austria, Nazi leaders forbid Frankl, a Jew, from seeing non-Jewish patients. Two years later, Frankl became the head of the neurological department at the Jewish Rothschild Hospital. In 1942, Frankl, his wife Tilly, and Frankl’s parents were arrested and sent to Nazi death camps. Frankl’s wife and parents died in the camps, but Frankl survived three years in four camps, after which he wrote many books and served as a professor at a number of universities. He is best known for his book Man’s Search for Meaning, and for developing the fields of logotherapy and existential therapy. Frankl remarried several years after his liberation and had one daughter. He died of heart failure at the age of 92.