Viktor E. Frankl
Viktor E. Frankl
Viktor Emil Frankl 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 Meaningchronicles 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...
NationalityAustrian
ProfessionPsychologist
Date of Birth26 March 1905
CountryAustria
Viktor E. Frankl quotes about
Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life . . . Therein he cannotbe replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone's task is as unique as ishis specific opportunity to implement it.
I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers.
For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one’s predicament into a human achievement.
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.
Human kindness can be found in all groups, even those which as a whole it would be easy to condemn.
I do the unpleasant tasks before I do the pleasant ones.
Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue.
The meaning of my life is to help others find meaning in theirs.
It is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand toward the conditions.
No one can take away my freedom to choose how I will react.
Consider a movie: it consists of thousands upon thousands of individual pictures, and each of them makes sense and carries a meaning, yet the meaning of the whole film cannot be seen before its last sequence is shown. However, we cannot understand the whole film without having first understood each of its components, each of the individual pictures. Isn't it the same with life? Doesn't the final meaning of life, too, reveal itself, it at all, only at its end, on the verge of death?
Happiness must ensue. It cannot be pursued
Suffering presents us with a challenge: to find our goals and purpose in our lives that make even the worst situation worth living through.
And I quoted from Nietzsche: That which does not kill me, makes me stronger.