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Frankl’s story is one of strength, of hope, and of a man who made an impact on the world. Let’s dive into it…
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Transcript Provided by YouTube:
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Viktor Frankl was put through some of the most horrific struggles a human being could
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imagine.
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But he never lost hope, and used his experiences to continue his work helping other people
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find meaning in their lives.
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Frankl’s story is one of strength, of hope, and of a man who made an impact on the world.
00:18
Let’s dive into it…
00:27
Early Life
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In 1905, Viktor Frankl was born the middle child of a Jewish family in Vienna.
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His parents were government employees, and the family was comfortable.
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Then World War I hit.
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Like so many other families of that time, the Frankls had to contend with bitter poverty.
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He and his siblings even had to go from farm to farm begging for food as the war progressed.
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As a young child, Frankl showed interest and aptitude in the medical profession.At only
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three years old he wanted to be a doctor.
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Then, at four years old he had the realization every human has to go through – that one day,
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he would die.
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Still a toddler, Frankl’s life work had already started to take shape.
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By the time he was in high school, Frankl was already studying psychology and philosophy.
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He even gave a speech called “On the Meaning of Life” in 1921, two years before his graduation.
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And when he had to write a final paper for graduation, what else would he write it on
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but the psychology of philosophical thought?
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By the time he turned twenty, he had already been in touch with Dr. Sigmund Freud.
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Frankl wrote Freud a letter and included a copy of one of his own papers in it.
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More impressively, the famous doctor then requested that Frankl allow him to publish
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one of the papers Frankl had written.
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Later, recalling the incident, Frankl still sounded like he still couldn’t believe the
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incident even after decades of building up his own career.
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“Can you imagine?
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Would a 16-year-old mind if Sigmund Freud asked to have a paper he wrote published?”
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Nearly three years after that correspondence, Frankl was walking in a park in Vienna and
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encountered a man who looked familiar.
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Frankl went up to him, and asked if he was Sigmund Freud…he was.
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And when Frankl began to introduce himself…Freud recited Frankl’s address to him.
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Freud had been so impressed by Frankl that even as the years passed, he never forgot
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the letter he received from the young man.
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Apart from psychology, Frankl also spent his high school years immersed in politics.
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He began his involvement with the Young Socialist Workers as a teen, and even rose to become
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President of the organization in 1924.
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With a string of accomplishments in the field of psychology already achieved during his
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teen years, Frankl headed to the University of Vienna to formally study his chosen fields
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of neurology and psychiatry.
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Initially, he based his studies in the theories and ideas that Sigmund Freud had advanced,
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but over time he began moving more towards Alfred Adler’s ideas.
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Even after moving from Freud’s ideas, Frankl kept a bust of the preeminent Viennese psychoanalyst
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in his office.
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Freud developed psychoanalysis, Adler added to that with the development of the inferiority
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complex, and Frankl become the third of these giants of psychology in Vienna as he developed
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a search for meaning called logotherapy as a key part of the study of the human psyche.
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But before he became a world-renowned psychiatrist, Frankl was making a difference much closer
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to home.
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As a student he began actively putting into practice what he was learning and the theories
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he was developing.
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Moving beyond just academic interest in the human psyche, Frankl was able to literally
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save lives.
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During his time as a medical student, Frankl noticed a disturbing trend among students
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in Austrian high schools.
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When grades were reported at the end of the school term, there was a spike in suicides.
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Frankl spearheaded an initiative to provide free counseling to students, with an emphasis
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on helping them at the end of the school term.
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Incredibly, the first year that Frankl’s program was implemented was also the first
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time in recent memory that there were no student suicides in Vienna.
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With proven success in suicide prevention, Frankl moved on to become head of the Vienna
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Psychiatric Hospital’s female suicide prevention program.
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From 1933 to 1937, he worked with thousands of women who were in danger of committing
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suicide.
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Then, in 1937 he opened his own private practice.
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But a year later, Frankl’s world was uprooted.
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World War II
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In 1938, Germany invaded Austria.
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Frankl was Jewish, and under the Nazi regime he was not permitted to treat Aryan patients.
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The Rothschild Hospital in Vienna was the only place where Jewish patients could be
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treated, and so Frankl was called upon to use his talents there as head of the neurological
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department.
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While working at Rothschild, Frankl was also waiting to hear news that could lift him out
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of the terrifying situation that so many European Jews were in.
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He had applied for a visa to the United States, and just needed his lottery number to be called.
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He was one of the lucky ones…his lottery number came up before Pearl Harbor and the
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United States’ entrance into the war.
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But Frankl’s decision to leave Austria wasn’t easy.
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The visa, it applied only to Frankl, and not to any other members of his family.
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His parents and siblings would be left behind in an ever-scarier environment, and Frankl
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knew their fate was likely to end in a concentration camp.
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Frankl knew he had a choice to make, and he opted to depend on a higher power than himself
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to guide him in the right direction.
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When he came across a fragment of a stone in his parents house, he knew he had found
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the answer he was looking for.
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The stone wasn’t just any old stone – it was a piece of the Ten Commandments that had
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once stood in a local synagogue.
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Burned down by the Nazis, the Synagogue was reduced to rubble and Frankl’s father had
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picked up a piece of the stone for the family to have.
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And the piece he just happened to pick up?
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It depicted a portion of the commandment “Honor Thy Father and Mother.”
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To Frankl, this meant his decision was clear.
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He would stay in Austria with his family and be right alongside them as they dealt with
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the horrors the Nazis brought upon them.
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And Frankl well knew the horrors the Nazis were capable of.
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He and his wife Tilly were married in 1941, and the two of them wanted to have children.
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But Jewish couples were not allowed to have children.
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Frankl’s wife conceived, but she was not allowed to give birth.
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She was forced to have an abortion.
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Then, in 1942, what Frankl had feared would happen came true.
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He, his wife, and his parents were arrested.
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They were initially sent to Theresienstadt, a camp in Czechoslovakia.
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There, Frankl did what he could to help others, running a clinic, helping new prisoners cope
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with the drastic shock of entry into the camp, and establishing a suicide watch.
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Frankl, his wife, and his mother survived Theresienstadt, but his father did not.
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He died after only six months in the camp.
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In 1944, Frankl was ordered to Auschwitz.
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His mother was also ordered to go, but his wife was not.
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But Tilly wasn’t going to be without her husband.
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She volunteered to be moved to Auschwitz.
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The two ended up separated in the end, however.
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After arriving at Auschwitz, Tilly was pushed onward to Bergen-Belsen, while Frankl and
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his mother were both kept at Auschwitz.
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At first, they and fifteen hundred others were kept in a shed meant to hold only 1/6th
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that many people.
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The ground was bare, and the prisoners were forced to squat for days while they subsisted
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on only a small piece of bread.
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From here, the prisoners were directed into two lines…one to the gas chamber and one
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to years of labor and misery, but survival…at least initially.
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Frankl’s mother was executed in the gas chambers, and Frankl himself barely escaped
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that fate.
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Frankl was ordered to get into the left line, but defied the order and stepped into the
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other group.
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As he only discovered later, the left line was the line towards the gas chamber and certain
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death.
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He was one of the few to survive Auschwitz.
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1.3 million people were sent through the gates of Auschwitz…and 1.1 million of them died.
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Those who didn’t die right away in the gas chamber suffered through deaths caused by
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starvation and disease, exhaustion from forced labor, and even medical experiments.
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Though Auschwitz was the site of a huge number of atrocities, many others suffered in other
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camps throughout Europe.
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Frankl’s wife was one of those who met their fate in a different camp from her husband.
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Tilly perished at the hands of the Nazis at the camp known as Bergen-Belsen, and Frankl
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did not learn she had died until the war ended and he was liberated in 1945.
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Throughout his time suffering in the camps, not knowing Tilly’s fate, he was able to
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find meaning and a level of comfort in the knowledge of love.
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He thought of her throughout his ordeal in the concentration camps, and recognizing how
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that helped him he started to theorize about what love meant for human life.
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He later set out his thinking this way, in his famous work “Man’s Search for Meaning,”
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“For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets,
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proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers.
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The truth – that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire.
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Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought
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and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.”
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When he was in the concentration camps, Frankl had to distract himself from the reality of
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what he was going through.
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He saw death and suffering up close, he was forced into cattle cars, forced to march,
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contracted typhoid fever, and was separated from his most beloved family members.
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So what was one way he pushed himself forward to survive?
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As he explains,
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“I repeatedly tried to distance myself from the misery that surrounded me by externalising
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it.
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I remember marching one morning from the camp to the work site, hardly able to bear the
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hunger, the cold, and pain of my frozen and festering feet, so swollen . . . My situation
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seemed bleak, even hopeless.
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Then I imagined that I stood at a lectern in a large, beautiful, warm and bright hall.
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I was about to give a lecture to an interested audience on “Psychotherapeutic Experiences
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in a Concentration Camp” (the actual title I later used . . .). In the imaginary lecture
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I reported the things I am now living through.
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Believe me, ladies and gentlemen, at that moment I could not dare to hope that some
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day it was to be my good fortune to actually give such a lecture.”
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Frankl also made a point of finding a lesson in goodness and survival in the suffering
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he endured and the suffering he witnessed.
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These themes informed his life’s work.
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““We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the
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huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread.
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They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can
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be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude
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in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
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Post WWII
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In April of 1945, Frankl had a welcome sight – American soldiers.
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They had come to liberate the concentration camps, meaning Frankl was once again a free
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man.
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He did not have family left, save for a sister who had escaped to Australia.
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He was essentially starting new in the world – but he had his ideas, his education, and
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his professional experience.
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So he put his ideas into writing.
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In only nine days during the summer of 1945 Frankl dictated a full manuscript.
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The result was “Man’s Search for Meaning,” a description of what life was like in the
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concentration camps and the coinciding realizations Frankl had during his time as a prisoner about
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the need for meaning in human life and the role of suffering in the world.
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The book served as the basic outline for ‘logotherapy,’ the idea posited by Frankl that men are most
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driven by a search for meaning.
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By 1946, he was fully back into his professional world, running the Vienna Polyclinic of Neurology.
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By 1948, he had earned a pHD in Philosophy.
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He began teaching at the University of Vienna, where he would remain as a professor until
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1990.
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After he was released from the concentration camp, Frankl also remarried.
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In 1947, he married Eleonore Schwint, and the two had a daughter together.
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As an adult, Frankl’s daughter followed in her famous father’s footsteps and became
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a child psychiatrist.
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Though he was teaching at the University of Vienna, Frankl’s teachings soon began to
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make a worldwide impact.
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With Freud and Adler as his predecessors, Vienna had already established itself as a
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center of psychological and psychiatric study.
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Freud and Adler were the first and second schools of Viennese Psychotherapy, and Frankl’s
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ideas about man needing meaning in his life became the third.
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By the mid 1950s Frankl was being invited to speak at universities around the world.
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He had also created the Austrian Medical Society for Psychotherapy, and headed up the organization.
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In 1955, the University of Vienna made him a full professor, and by 1961 he was serving
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as a visiting professor at Harvard and his ideas were being cemented in the minds of
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those studying psychotherapy in the United States.
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His academic career continued to grow, as he lectured at over 200 universities and was
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awarded an astonishing 29 honorary degrees.
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Though Man’s Search For Meaning was by far his best known work, Frankl also wrote and
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published 39 other books during his lifetime.
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In 1970, he was honored by his peers when they created the “Viktor Frankl Insitute.”
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Among his academic work, Frankl still worked with patients.
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One of his methods was to ask the most depressed patients he encountered a seemingly simple
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six word question…
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”Why do you not commit suicide?”
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From here, Frankl would discover what it was that the patient actually found joy in, what
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made their life worth living … in other words, what the meaning was in their life.
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Once that discovery was made, he could start helping them to improve their mental health
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and to move away from thoughts of suicide.
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As the 20th century progressed, Frankl shared his ideas in media beyond print.
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He appeared on television to discuss his ideas, bringing them to an entirely new audience.
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In one of his most famous television appearances he expounded on his idea that in the search
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for life’s meaning one must have a balance of freedom and responsibility.
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During the discussion, he advocated for the United States to have a partner monument for
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the Statue of Liberty.
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The country should be bookended with a statue of responsibility on the West Coast, he argued.
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“Freedom, however, is not the last word.
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Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth.
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Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is
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responsibleness.
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In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived
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in terms of responsibleness.
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That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented
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by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast”
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Answering letters and doing interviews, Frankl continued to share his message and teach the
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world about his theories of psychoanalysis right up until his death in 1992.
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In one of his last interviews, Frankl made the poignant observation that even looking
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back decades later, he could still find value in his suffering at the concentration camps.
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As he saw it, the suffering gave him a valuable perspective on what real trouble is, making
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him more appreciative of the life he could live freely from 1946 onward.
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“What I would have given then if I could have had no greater problem than I face today,”
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he said in 1995.
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Legacy
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When he was in the concentration camps, Viktor Frankl lived out the idea that he later imparted
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to the world in Man’s Search For Meaning:
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“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to
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choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
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While he was in the concentration camps, Viktor Frankl opted to think of his wife, to think
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of his profession, to theorize about how he could use his experience with suffering to
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impact others’ lives.
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He stole paper from the camp offices to jot down his ideas, and knew that he had two reasons
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to make it out alive – love, and a responsibility to help people find meaning and avoid what
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he called the “existential stress” of living without meaning.
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From the time he was a student, Frankl was helping to save lives.
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Though he couldn’t save the lives of his closest family, he was able to persevere through
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unimaginable horrors and spend the next five decades making a positive impact on the world.
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Viktor Frankl could have given up, he could have died, or he could have lived the rest
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of his life bitter from what he had gone through.
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No one would have blamed him.
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But instead, his life has touched millions, his book has been translated into 74 languages,
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and he’s impacted generations of new psychotherapists who will spend their lives helping people.
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Viktor Frankl…a life lived with meaning, indeed.
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This post was previously published on YouTube.