The missing pieces of the puzzle: A reflection on the odd career of Viktor Frankl

Journal of Contemporary History

Volumn 35, Issue 2, 2000, Pages

  Pytell, Timothy ^a  

^a The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 17444375455     PISSN: 00220094     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/002200940003500208     Document Type: Article

References (97)

1. See 'Obituaries', New York Post, 4 September 1997, 54
2. The best introduction to the literature is Lawrence Langer, Holocaust Testimonies (New Haven, CT 1991). For a critical view of Frankl's Holocaust testimony see Lawrence Langer, Versions of Survival (Albany, NY 1982)
3. Günther Nenning, 'Anders gesehen', Neue Kronen Zeitung, 4 September 1997, 10
4. Hans Werner Scheidl, 'Viktor E. Frankl: Er gab nicht nur seinem eigenen Leben Sinn', Die Presse, 4 September 1997, 3
5. Geoffrey Cocks, Psychotherapy in the Third Reich: The Goering Institute (2nd edn, rev., New Brunswick, NJ 1997), 164
6. Frankl, 'Opening Address to the First World Congress: Logotherapy on its Way to Degurufication' in Sandra A. Wawrytko (ed.), Analecta Frank liana: The Proceedings of the First World Congress of Logotherapy (1980) (Berkeley, CA 1982), 7
7. Frankl, 'Collective Neuroses of the Present Day', Internationale Journal für prophylaktische Medizin und Sozialhygiene, II, 3 (June 1958), 5
8. Frankl, Was nicht in meinen Büchern steht (Munich 1995), 12
9. See Frankl, 'Zur Mimischen Bejahung und Verneinung', Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse, 10 (1924), 437-8
10. See Ernst Glaser, Im Umfeld des Austromarxismus: Ein Beitrag zur Geistesgeschichte des osterreichischen Sozialismus (Vienna 1981).
11. For a critical view of the connection between Adlerianism and socialism see Helmut Gruber, Red Vienna: Experiment in Working-Class Culture 1919-1934 (New York 1991)
12. Frankl, 'Viktor Frankl' in Ludwig J. Pongratz (ed.), Psychotherapie in Selbstdarstellung (Vienna 1973), 183
13. Viktor Frankl interviewed by Franz Ferdinand Wolf 11/1/1994 (videotape) from Politische Akademie der Freiheitlichen Partei Österreichs, Vienna. Hereafter, Wolf Interview (FPÖ)
14. Helmut Gruber, 'Red Vienna and the Jewish Question', Leo Baeck Yearbook (1992), 106
15. Frankl, 'Psychotherapie und Weltanschauung', Internationale Zeitschrift für Individualpsychologie, 3 (1925), 250-2
16. Since the lecture was published in this prestigious journal, it is not clear why Frankl and his followers never cite it when discussing his intellectual development. For example, Frankl often referenced his 'Psychotherapy and World-View' and with pride, but only mentioned the second article obliquely as 'another one which followed' in 1926. Frankl, Was nicht in meinen Büchern steht, op. cit., 40. Also, Eugenio Fizzotti seemed unaware of the publication in his otherwise very thorough article on the writings of the young Frankl. See Eugenio Fizzotti, 'Prolegomena zu einer Psychotherapie mit menschlichen Antlitz in den Schriften des jungen Viktor E. Frankl 1923-1942', Journal des Viktor-Frankl-Instituts, 3, 1 (Spring 1995), 29-39
17. Frankl, 'Zur Psychologie des Intellektualismus', Internationale Zeitschrift für Individualpsychologic (1 926), 326-33
18. Frankl, Was nicht in meinen Büchern steht, op. cit., 42
19. Viktor Frankl interviewed by Tom Corrigan in 1981 (audiotape), Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA. Hereafter Corrigan Interview, GTU
20. See Frank], 'Selbstmordprophylaxe und Jugendberatung', Münchner Medizinische Wochenschrift, 4 October 1929, 1675
21. Frankl, 'Wirtschaftskrise und Seelenleben vom Standpunkte des Jungendberaters', Sozial-ärztliche Rundschau, 3 (1933), 45
22. S. Freud, quoted in Karl Fallend, Sonderlinge Träumer Sensitive: Psychoanalyse auf dem W eg zur Institution und Profession, Verö ffentlichungen des Ludwig-Boltman-Institutes für Geschichte und Gesellschaft (Vienna 1 995), vol. 26, footnote 6, 364
23. For unknown reasons, Pötzl had his application reconsidered and redated to January 1941. See Pötzl's Nazi Party file available at the Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes
24. See Michael Hubenstorf, 'Medizinische Fakultät 1938-1945', Willfärige Wissenschaft: Die Universität Wien 1938-1945 (Vienna 1989), footnote 92, 275
25. See Index of Psychiatrisches Krankenhaus Baumgartnerhöhe 1934-1938, Wien Landes Stadt Archiv
26. See Zentralblatt für Psychotherapie, vol. 10 (1937), 7-8
27. Jews were allowed as members until 1938 but could not assume leadership positions. See Cocks, Psychotherapy in the Third Reich: The Goering Institute (New York 1985), 108-16
28. Matthias Goering, Zentralbiatt für Psychothempie (1933),
29. quoted in Geoffrey Cocks, Psychotherapy in the Third Reich (1985), op. cit., 117
30. For the details see Cocks, Psychotherapy in the Third Reich (1985), op. cit. Also for how Frankl's activities reflect the larger theme of German professionalization and how this process was exploited by, and an accommodation of, the National Socialists
31. see, Geoffrey Cocks and Konrad Jarusch (eds), German Professions, 1800-1950 (New York 1990), especially 308-38
32. Frankl, 'Zur geistigen Problematik der Psychotherapie', Zentralbiatt für Psychotherapie, vol. 10(1937), 33-45
33. See Cocks, Psychotherapy in the Third Reich (1985), op. cit., 159
34. Frankl, 'Zur geistigen Problematik', op. cit., 34
35. For an excellent discussion of these issues see Detlev Peukert, Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity, Opposition and Racism, in Everyday Life (New Haven, CT 1987)
36. Frankl, 'Zur geistigen Problematik', op. cit., 36. Also, instead of 'existential analysis' Frankl will later use the term logotherapy to avoid confusing his work with Binswanger's
37. Cocks, Psychotherapy in the Third Reich (2nd edn, rev. 1997), op. cit., 86
38. Frankl's curriculum vitae from the university archive in Vienna listed his employment at Rothschild from 1939 to 1942. Other sources listed his employment as 1940-42. See V. Frankl, in Kürschners, Deabohe G elehrtenkalender
39. The sole work, Erich Stern, Die letzten 12 Jahre Rothschild-Spital Wien: 1931-1943 (Vienna 1974). Stern, who was a doctor at Rothschild, covered the entire period in a mere 20 pages. There was no mention of Frankl, nor the hospital's director, Emil Tuchman, who at his postwar trial was disparagingly labelled the 'Jewish Hitler' by his colleagues
40. See Stern, Die letzten 12 Jahre, op. cit., 14
41. See Norman Bentwich, 'The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Austria 1938-1942'in Josef Fraenkel (ed.), The Jews of Austria (London 1970), 475-6. Bentwich's article is based on personal remembrance so this date may not be exact
42. Frankl's decision was surprising because so many Jews were desperate to leave and did not have the opportunity. See Walter Langer, 'An American Analyst in Vienna during the Anschluss', Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, no. 14 (1978), 37-54
43. Corrigan Interview (GTU)
44. See Frankl, 'Pervitin Intrazisternal', Ars Medici, no.1 (1942), 58-60
45. See George Berkley, Vienna and Its Jews: The Tragedy of Success (Boston 1988), 265
46. Both Frankl's and Pötzl's medical work in the latter 1930s and early 1940s exhibited this experimental character. For example, Pötzl is credited with co-inventing and testing on a large scale insulin shock therapy. See Manfred Sakel, 'Über die Einführung der sogenannten Schocktherapie und Pötzl's Verdienst um ihre Einführung' in Hurbert Urban (ed.), Festschrift: Zum 70. Gerburtstag von Prof. Dr. Otto Pötzl (Innsbruck 1949), 404-9. Both Frankl and Pötzl performed lobotomies and shock therapy, and Frankl claimed to have initiated drug therapy for psychosis on the Continent.
47. For how pervasive these attitudes were amongst German and Austrian doctors see Robert Lifton, The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (New York 1986)
48. Dandy was a famous American brain surgeon noted for his work on ventriculography and brain tumours. Ventriculography is 'a diagnostic procedure utilizing the injection of air or some other gas as a contrast medium into the ventricles of the brain, in order to make the brain tissue visible in contrast to the less opaque gas. In the absence of air or gas, the chambers cannot be seen on an x-ray plate because they are filled with cerebrospinal fluid having the same x-ray capacity as the surrounding brain tissue.' W.L. Fox, Dandy of Johns Hopkins (Baltimore, MD 1984), 44
49. Frankl, 'Pervitin Intrazisternal', op. cit., 58. Also, the medication that Frankl was administering was the amphetamine Pervitin, which, although relatively novel, was in wide use in German military and civilian hospitals at the time
50. Walter Dandy, Neurosurgery (Hagerstown, MD 1945), 73. This is an outake from Dandy's 1936 Brain Surgery, which was translated and published in German. Also, for injecting air, Dandy rejected the use of lumbar puncture 'as superfluous . . . because a ventricular puncture gives the same and much additional information and entails much less risk'
51. Frankl would not have been surprised that his patients never came out of a coma if he had read Dandy's original article on the discovery of ventriculography. In 1918 Dandy wrote: 'The various solutions . . . thorium, potassium, iodide, collargol, argyrol, bismuth subnitrate and subcarbonate . . . were injected into the ventricles of dogs, but always with fatal results owing to the injurious effects on the brain .... The severe reactions that are sometimes encountered after the intraspinous injection of the most therapeutic remedies indicate the dangers even from carefully prepared solutions. A slight acidity or alkalinity may result even in death. It seems unlikely that any solution . . . will be found which is sufficiently harmless to justify its injection into the central nervous system.' Walter Dandy, 'Ventriculography Following the Injection of Air into the Cerebral Ventricles', The Annals of Surgery (July 1918), 39
52. Konrad Kwiet, 'Suicide in the Jewish Community', Leo Baeck Yearbook, vol, 38 (1993), 160
53. See Lifton, The Nazi Doctors, op. cit., 150
54. Totenbuch Theresienstadt (Wien 1971), 32. This was the so-called eleventh transport
55. On these issues see George Berkley, The Story of Theresienstadt (Boston 1993), 41-60
56. Also Zdenek Lederer, Ghetto Theresienstadt (New York 1993), 35-57.
57. Finally, the 900-page tome, H.G. Adler, Theresienstadt 1941-1945 (Tubingen 1960)
58. I have Ernest Seinfeld to thank for providing these monthly 'Tatigkeitsberichte'
59. Berkley, The Story of Theresienstadt, op. cit., 92
60. Kwiet, 'Suicide in the Jewish Community', op. cit., 163. Kwiet based his claims on a 'personal communication with Dr Edith Kramer', and he made no mention of Frankl's suicide prevention squad
61. For a list, and a description of the outcome of transports from Theresienstadt, see Lederer, Ghetto Theresienstadt, op. cit., 192-242
62. See Totenhuch Theresienstadt, op. cit., 32. According to Lederer (241), only 250 men of the 1500 prisoners on this transport survived selection by Dr Mengele. Frankl's wife also survived selection, but later died at Bergen-Belsen
63. Frankl, TJr Robert Schuller Interviews Viktor Frankl: How to Find Meaning in Life', Possibilities: The Magazine of Hope (March/April 1991), 10
64. The camps of the Kaufering group had numbers from I to XI and were established around Landesberg. Kaufering III was a work camp established in June 1944, and held up to 2000 prisoners. See Martin Weinmann (ed,), Das nationalsozialistische Lagersystem (Frankfurt 1990), 195, 558
65. Frankl, trans. Use Lasch, From Death Camp to Existentialism: A Psychiatrist's Path to a New Therapy (Boston 1959), 6
66. See Marianne Gruber, 'Der Wille zum Sinn', Die Pestsaule (December 1974), 224
67. Frankl, There is no Collective Guilt', Austrian Information, 41, 6 (1988), 5. Frankl's c.v. from the Archiv Universität Wien reveals he worked at the DP hospital
68. Gordon Allport, preface to Viktor Frankl, From Death Camp to Existentialism, ix-xii
69. Frankl, From Death Camp to Existentialism, op. cit., 4
70. Laager, Versions of Survival, op. cit., 24
71. See Primo Levi, trans. Stuart Woolf, Survival in Auschwitz (New York 1961) and Richard Rubenstein, After Auschwitz: History, Theology, and Contemporary Judaism (Baltimore, MD 1992)
72. Frankl, The Doctor and the Soul, op. cit., 104
73. Langer, Versions of Survival, op. cit., 24
74. Frankl, quoted in Mary Hall, 'Conversation with V.E. Frankl', Psychology Today, no. 9 (February 1968), 63
75. Frankl, quoted in David Cohen, 'The Frankl Meaning', Human Behavior, VI, 7 (July 1977), 60
76. Frankl, quoted in Hall, 'Conversation with V.E. Frankl', op. cit., 58
77. Paul Polak, 'Frankl's Existential Analysis', American Journal of Psychotherapy, III (1949), 518
78. See also Aron Ungersma, The Search for Meaning: A New Approach in Psychotherapy and Pastoral Psychology (Philadelphia 1961) and Donald Tweedie, Logotherapy and the Christian Faith: An Evaluation of Frankl's Existential Approach to Psychotherapy (Michigan 1963)
79. See Frankl, 'Self-transcendence as a Human Phenomenon', Journal of Humanistic Psychology, VI (1966), 97-106,
80. and Abraham Maslow, 'Comments on Dr Frankl's Paper', Journal of Humanistic Psychology, VI (1 966), 1 07-1 2
81. Rollo May, Existential Psychology (New York 1961), 42
82. Frankl, The Unconscious God: Psychotherapy and Theology (New York 1975), 121
83. The declaration also mentioned that Austria had to take responsibility for fighting the war on the side of nazi Germany. But in the political climate of the Cold War, both Austria and the Allies had reasons to ignore the latter point. For an excellent discussion of these issues see Fritz Fellner, 'The Problem of the Austrian Nation after 1945', Journal of Modern History, 60 (June 1988), 264-89
84. On why Stalin failed to gain control of Austria, and the political motivations behind America's accepting the 'myth' of Austria's victimization, and the subsequent abandoning of the denazification of Austria, see Harry Piotrowski, 'The Soviet Union and the Renner Government of Austria, April-November 1945', Central European History (1988), 246-77
85. The longstanding political conservatism in Austria is exemplified by Dolfuss's subduing of the workers in February 1934, and the defeat of the nazi coup by the Austrian state after Dolfuss's assassination in July 1934. In both events the forces for an 'Austrian order' defeated the political aspirations of both the left and the right. In sum, the absence of a positive democratic tradition makes the political foundations of the second republic very shaky. For a useful overview see Melanie Sully, A Contemporary History of Austria (New York 1990), 110-15
86. For an excellent discussion of these issues see Richard Mitten, The Politics of Antisemitic Prejudice (Boulder, CO 1992), especially 'When "the Past" Catches Up', 246-61
87. The FPÖ was originally the League of Independents formed in 1949. The League was made up of ex-nazis, monarchists, and other right-leaning figures. Most commentators considered Haider a political opportunist and not a neo-nazi. But there is a political philosophy that is antidemocratic, anti-capitalist and authoritarian behind his opportunism. See Jörg Haider, Die Freiheit die ich meine (Vienna 1993). For a discussion of these issues and a history of the party see Max Riedlsperger, 'FPO: Liberal or Nazi?' in F. Parkinson (ed.), Conquering the Past: Austrian Nazism, Yesterday and Today (Indiana 1989), 257-75
88. On these issues see Robert Wistrich, Austrians and Jews in the Twentieth Century: From Franz Joseph to Waldheim (New York 1992),
89. especially Robert Knight, '"Neutrality", not Sympathy: Jews in Post-War Austria', 220-33,
90. and Robert Wistrich, 'The Kreisky Phenomenon: A Reassessment', 234-51
91. The Neue Kronen Zeitung is the largest-selling daily paper, and has a rightist orientation
92. Fritz Wolfram, 'Die Problematik einer weiteren Arbeitszeitverkürzung und Freizeitvermehrung', Freie Argumente, no. 2 (January 1981), 29
93. Frankl made this last claim first in his 1963 edition of Man's Search for Meaning, p. 136 (ftn.), repeated it in Was nicht in meinen Büchern steht, p. 80, and once again in a nationallybroadcast television interview in 1994, Wolf Interview (FPÖ). Dr Rüdiger Stix, FPÖ member and in the Defence Ministry, claimed that they nominated Frankl based on the 1993 interview. Significantly, in 1993 the more liberal 'leftist' members of the FPÖ left the party to form the Liberal Forum, Thus Frankl seemed to be useful in the attempt to legitimize and rehabilitate a rightist group
94. See Simon Wiesenthal Center News Release, 29 June 1995 (Internet)
95. See 'Viktor Frankl distanziert sich von F-Chef Haider', Der Standard, 1 3 January 1996, and 'Frankl an Haider: Verärgerung über den "Freund" ', News, March 1996
96. Frankl's world-wide renown was demonstrated by the fact that he gave the keynote address to the first World Congress of Psychotherapy held in Vienna in July 1996
97. On this last point see Frankl's interview with Dan Quayle's speech-writer, Matthew Scully, 'Viktor Frankl at Ninety: An Interview', First Things, 52 (April 1995)