„Ma tutte le cose eccellenti sono tanto difficili quanto rare.“
— Viktor Emil Frankl
Man's Search For Meaning: The classic tribute to hope from the Holocaust
Data di nascita: 26. Marzo 1905
Data di morte: 2. Settembre 1997
Viktor Emil Frankl è stato un neurologo, psichiatra e filosofo austriaco, uno fra i fondatori dell'analisi esistenziale e della logoterapia, metodo che tende a evidenziare il nucleo profondamente umano e spirituale dell'individuo..
Dal 1942 al 1945 fu prigioniero in quattro campi di concentramento nazisti, tra cui Auschwitz e Dachau. Il metodo di Frankl è considerato come il terzo metodo della scuola viennese .
A partire dall'esperienza della deportazione scrisse i volumi Alla ricerca di un significato della vita e I fondamenti spirituali della logoterapia. A lui si deve la definizione di nevrosi noogena, concezione secondo la quale l'equilibrio psichico dipende dalla percezione significativa del sé e del proprio vissuto.
Secondo Frankl, quando l'individuo non si sente "significativo", cerca compensazione o in gratificazioni artificiali o in atteggiamenti di potenza . Da qui la differenza tra l'uomo d'oggi che non è più frustrato sessualmente , ma si sente frustrato nell'universo valoriale .
— Viktor Emil Frankl
Man's Search For Meaning: The classic tribute to hope from the Holocaust
— Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
— Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
— Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
— Viktor E. Frankl
Context: It is true, Logotherapy, deals with the Logos; it deals with Meaning. Specifically I see Logotherapy in helping others to see meaning in life. But we cannot “give” meaning to the life of others. And if this is true of meaning per se, how much does it hold for Ultimate Meaning?
Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning (1997)
— Viktor E. Frankl
Context: The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity — even under the most difficult circumstances — to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.
— Viktor E. Frankl
Context: You may of course ask whether we really need to refer to "saints." Wouldn't it suffice just to refer to decent people? It is true that they form a minority. More than that, they always will remain a minority. And yet I see therein the very challenge to join the minority. For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.
So, let us be alert — alert in a twofold sense:
Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of.
And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.
Postscript 1984 : The Case for a Tragic Optimism, based on a lecture at the Third World Congress of Logotherapy, Regensburg University (19 June 1983)
— Viktor E. Frankl
Context: It is true, Logotherapy, deals with the Logos; it deals with Meaning. Specifically I see Logotherapy in helping others to see meaning in life. But we cannot “give” meaning to the life of others. And if this is true of meaning per se, how much does it hold for Ultimate Meaning?
Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning (1997)
— Viktor E. Frankl
Context: A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth — that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. … For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory."