Viktor Frankl

Viktor Emil Frankl (1905 to 1997) was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist who also worked as a philosopher, and he survived the Nazi concentration camps. He founded logotherapy, a school of psychotherapy that treats the search for meaning in life as the central human motivational force, and it is counted among the existential and humanistic approaches to psychology. Logotherapy was promoted as the third school of Viennese psychotherapy, after the schools established by Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler. Frankl wrote 39 books, and his best-selling autobiographical work Man's Search for Meaning draws on his experiences in several Nazi camps. In medicine his importance lies in arguing that psychotherapy should keep the whole person and the question of meaning in view.