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Viktor Frankl (1905–1997) grew up in Vienna, Austria. A trained medical doctor and psychotherapist, he corresponded with Freud while still a teenager and was later a student in Alfred Adler’s circle before being ejected from it over disagreements with Adler. Frankl could have left Vienna for the United States in 1942 (his sister had already left for Australia), but her chose to remain with his parents. That fall, the entire family, including Frankl’s brother, as well as Frankl’s wife of less than a year, were arrested and deported to Theresienstadt, a ghetto established in what is now northern Czechia, to house deported Jews. Frankl’s father died there. In 1944 the rest of the family was sent to Auschwitz, where Frankl’s mother and brother were immediately gassed to death. His wife was sent on to Bergen-Belsen in northern Germany, where she died of typhus. At some point (the timeline is unclear), Frankl was sent westward, to the Dachau camp system.

After Frankl’s liberation, he married again and established himself as a leading memoirist and theorist of psychotherapy. Besides Man’s Search for Meaning, his major works include:

The Doctor and the Soul (1955) – A reconstruction of the manuscript taken from Frankl when he arrived in Auschwitz, this work is a book-length exposition of the logotherapeutic method.

The Will to Meaning (1969) – A more systematic presentation of logotherapy, this work grew out of a series of lectures in the United States.

Recollections (1995) – A collection of many short bits of personal history, originally published in German under the title Was nicht in meinen Büchern steht (“What my books leave out”).

In the 1960s, Frankl spent time in the United States, teaching courses at several American universities and also going on lecture tours. However, he made his home in Vienna, as before the war, and died there at the age of 92.

Next section Context: Nazi Concentration Camps and Extermination Camps

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