From Death-Camp to Existentialism: A Psychiatrist’s Path to a New Therapy

Viktor E. Frankl

1946

In attempting this psychological presentation and a psychopathological explanation of the typical characteristics of a concentration camp inmate, I may give the impression that the human being is completely and unavoidably influenced by his surroundings. (In this case the surroundings being the unique structure of camp life, which forced the…

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Creator Bio

Viktor E. Frankl

1905–1997

A highly influential writer on the Holocaust, Viktor Emil Frankl was born in Vienna. Already a noted psychiatrist prior to the war, he believed that psychological disorders could be treated by helping patients find meaning in their lives, postulating that human beings are driven not by pleasure but by a will to find meaning. He and his young wife were deported along with his parents to Terezín and then to Auschwitz. Only Frankl survived, in a succession of camps where his theories regarding the power of finding meaning even in the worst suffering were, in his view, demonstrated decisively.

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