Viktor emil frankl: the physician and the thinker of a life with sense

Abstract

Viktor Emil Frankl was born in Vienne at the beginning of the XX century, the son of a Jewish family. He ended up being one of the most charismatic men of that century, not only as physician, psychiatrist, neurologist and philosopher, but also as a human being because of his qualities, his scientific production, and the testimony of his life. He was the creator of Logotherapy, which is considered one of the most important models of Existential Psychotherapy. He was deeply interested in the problem of the Sense of Life and of how it can be affected by traumatic and painful experiences, such as the ones he faced during World War II being a prisoner at several Nazi concentration camps. Having survived such devastating experiences, he devoted many years to diffuse Logotherapy using this psychotherapeutic model both in his clinical practice and in his activities as a professor. This way he helped many people to discover and to reorient the sense of their lives. He wrote many books and left for humankind a valuable legacy, a light of hope, and an invitation for those that, as physicians or psychologists, have accepted his theory: to value the human aspects of diseased people, and not only their sickness.