The foundation of logotherapy and existential analysis is a concept of human beings that takes them seriously in their sense of freedom and responsibility. Individuals want to find a meaning in life; they search for and want to achieve meaningful goals and a values-based lifestyle in the manifold situations of their lives. That is the conviction of logotherapy’s founder, the Viennese doctor and philosopher Viktor Frankl.
Prof. Dr. Viktor Emil Frankl was an Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist, and philosopher. He was born in Vienna in 1905 and died there in 1997. After becoming acquainted with the works of Sigmund Freud when he was a teenager, as a medical student he was more drawn to psychotherapist Alfred Adler. Based on the findings of his teachers, in 1926 he started to refine his own theories, which he named logotherapy and existential analysis.
As the sole member of his family to survive the Holocaust, he gained worldwide fame through his book Man’s Search for Meaning (1946), and his teachings of a meaning-centered and value-based psychotherapy spread across the globe.
Thanks to his existential analysis, Frankl gives us the tools to be able to look beyond our conditionalities and to discover the possibilities, value contents, and meaning in our lives. Frankl's logotherapy helps us to use and apply the meanings we identify in our private and professional everyday lives. We can find new perspectives and solutions that can be helpful in very many situations. Supposed dead ends and challenging phases of life become easier to deal with when we are aware of our own space of freedom to choose our responses, and our own possibilities and value contents. We can then use this responsibly, and plan our lives with joy.