Viktor Frankl (1905-1997)
“Being human is being responsible…”
The existential psychology of Victor Frankl
While in the work of the most outstanding and distinguished psychologists the connection between personal convictions and professional work, remains a conscious secret, kept hidden from patients and the wider public, this is quite different in the case of Victor Frankl. Frankl was deeply influenced by his personal experiences and fate in Europe in the middle of the 20th century. He was not a mere survivor of European history. He based all his work on his experiences ; he developed the so-called logo-therapy, and he worked accordingly throughout all his active years.
Frankl was living and working in Vienna during the thirties, where he treated desperate patients, who often committed suicide because of increasing Nazism. Later, after he decided not to emigrate to a safer part of the world and to stay in Austria, he was imprisoned for several years in Auschwitz. He survived, but there he lost his father, his mother, his wife and other family members.
The very base of logo-therapy is the purpose of life, “which admits of but one possibility of high moral behaviour: namely, in man’s attitude to his existence, and existence restricted by external forces.... Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.” (1963, p. 106) The very idea, that individual suffering is helpful on the path of human development, is also one of the basic teachings of Buddha, and is found in most – Eastern and Western - mystical traditions as well.
The integrated thinking of Frankl:
Although Frankl was a practicing psychologist all his life, at the same time he was also a philosopher. In 1948 he wrote his dissertation on philosophy. In this work, titled “The Unconscious God”, he examined the relationship between religion and psychology.
For all of his life he maintained the conviction that these should not be split disciplines.
The need of meaning:
Frankl was convinced, that in modern societies, where (social) traditions are not guiding us sufficiently enough everyone has the freedom and responsibility to make their own choices in life and to find their own meaning,
While animals are guided by their instincts, and traditional societies use their traditions for the same purpose, in modern societies this is no longer the case. This fact was not seen by Frankl merely as a sign of disintegration and of being manipulated, but also as a chance for the individual.
He stated that the search for the meaning of life is the most definitive human strife.
If we fail to find that meaning we find ourselves in an existential vacuum. Being in an existential vacuum, (at a social and at an individual level as well) has fatal, and disease-making consequences. The very nature of the vacuum is that it has to be filled up.
In the modern society (and nowadays even much more than in the time of Frankl) there are many organized ways of filling the existential vacuum, which, according to Frankl manifests itself in various forms of boredom. Boredom causes several neuroses and psychopathology.
By finding meaning it is possible to counteract psychological diseases (caused by the existential vacuum, and by boredom). Finding meaning is only possible by incorporating experiential, creative and attitudinal values.
“...Once the angel in us is repressed, he turns into a demon.”
Attitudinal values can only be developed by personal suffering. At the bottom of the existential values is transcendence. Only our acknowledgment of God’s transcendence can bring us to suprameaning (and personal well-being). And turning away from God is the ultimate source of pathological human conditions. Frankl states that when “the angel in us is repressed, he turns into a demon”. (1975, p. 70)
“Human existence --at least as long as it has not been neurotically distorted --is always directed to something, or someone, other than itself -- be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter lovingly.” (1975, p. 78) Albert Schweitzer: “The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.” (Quoted in 1975, p. 85)
“… perhaps the most radical thing that I said in that book that deviated from traditional psychiatry is that I located the source of psychiatric ills in the conscious mind, rather than the unconscious.”
This sentence was not written by Frankl, but by an American psychiatrist, M.Scott Peck (1936-2005). Some are strongly convinced, that Peck was strongly influenced by Frankl, but Peck never acknowledged this possible influence.
Anyway he was another psychiatrist of the 20th century, who emphasized the need of suffering for human health. He stated that only suffering helps to resolve the conflicts and puzzles of human life. At the very moment when people decide and begin to avoid the necessary suffering, they create more, and unnecessary suffering. Unnecessary suffering is neurotic of kind. To get healed, is (nothing more, and nothing less than) to eliminate neurotic suffering, to work through the necessary suffering.
His most well-known book, “The Road Less Travelled” was turned down by the first publisher, as being not scientific enough. Nevertheless, after a second publication it began to find its way, finally selling more than six million copies and was translated into many languages.
Personal acknowledgment of faith:
Like other outstanding psychologists of the 20th century, at a certain level even Frankl maintained the current distinction of personal and professional life. Faith belong to the realm of personal life and the activity of the psychologist belonged to the professional life. Although even the psychologist was (also) driven by faith, according to the mainstream scientific norms and public opinion, the motivation and the work, resulted from a certain motivation could, and should be viewed separately.
Nonetheless, Frankl also cleared up that apparent distinction at the end of his life.
The following are a few sentences from an interview, given by him in 1995, two years before his death.
“I do not allow myself to confess personally whether I’m religious or not. I’m writing as a psychologist, I’m writing as a psychiatrist, I’m writing as a man of the medical faculty. . . . And that made the message more powerful because if you were identifiably religious, immediately people would say, ’Oh well, he’s that religious psychologist. Take the book away!’”
“You see,” he added, “I don’t shy away, I don’t feel debased or humiliated if someone suspects that I’m a religious person for myself. . . . If you call ’religious’ a man who believes in what I call a Supermeaning, a meaning so comprehensive that you can no longer grasp it, get hold of it in rational intellectual terminology, then one should feel free to call me religious, really. And actually, I have come to define religion as an expression, a manifestation, of not only man’s will to meaning, but of man’s longing for an ultimate meaning, that is to say a meaning that is so comprehensive that it is no longer comprehensible. . . But it becomes a matter of believing rather than thinking, of faith rather than intellect. The positing of a supermeaning that evades mere rational grasp is one of the main tenets of logotherapy, after all. And a religious person may identify Supermeaning as something paralleling a Superbeing, and this Superbeing we would call God.” (Matthew Scully: Victor Frankl, an interview. Published in First Things, 1995)
Fulfilling needs – 23 letters a day:
The main work of Frankl the book “Man Search for meaning” has been translated into more than 22 languages, and has sold more than 9 million copies. “What more empirical evidence do you need?” – asked Frankl in the same interview. And also, till the very end of his life Frankl received daily letters from people, who expressed their gratitude. “Yes, you see, twenty-three letters every day- still. And most of them are from Americans. And do you know what they say? Most just write to say, ’Thank you, Dr. Frankl, for changing my life.’