Viktor E. Frankl was born in Vienna, in a Jewish family on March 26, 1905. At the age of 16, he wrote a literary piece and sent it to Sigmund Freud who published it some years later. Dr. Viktor E Frankl studied medicine with emphasis on depression and suicide. He explored issues such as suicide and depression: what makes people end their lives and the driving forces behind depression.
Shortly after Hitler came into power, Frankl and his whole family including his wife, mother and father were sent to the concentration camps. He was the only survivor, and none from his family made it to survive the holocaust. He survived the atrocities of the Holocaust, and to understand how one can survive such kind of atrocities, he wrote a book detailing all the experiences he went through the four years as a prisoner in the concentration camp.
Frankl was widely recognised as the founder of the psychological approach known as logotheraphy. The latter is known as the third school of Viennese psychotheraphy after Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler. For a man who lost everything, and who survived all the dreadful atrocities, one can learn a lot from Frankl. His powerful words about life, fear and survival can help us all in gathering courage.
Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.
Viktor E. Frankl
Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.
Viktor E. Frankl
For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment.
Viktor E. Frankl
What is to give light must endure burning.
Viktor E. Frankl
Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.
Viktor E. Frankl
The last of human freedoms – the ability to chose one’s attitude in a given set of circumstances.
Viktor E. Frankl
Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time.
Viktor E. Frankl
Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives.
Viktor E. Frankl
I recommend that the Statue of Liberty be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the west coast.
Viktor E. Frankl
Fear may come true that which one is afraid of.
Viktor E. Frankl
Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
Viktor E. Frankl
Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated, thus, everyone’s task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it.
Viktor E. Frankl
Each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.
Viktor E. Frankl
When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves.
Viktor E. Frankl
Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
Viktor E. Frankl
A human being is a deciding being.
Viktor E. Frankl
Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.
Viktor E. Frankl
We can not avoid suffering but we can choose to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward.
Viktor E. Frankl