
Dr Viktor Emil Frankl, (O3/26/1905 --- 09/2/1997, Austria Vienna)
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Austrian psychiatrist and psychotherapist developed the psychological approach known as Logotherapy.
Widely recognized as the “Third School” of Viennese Psychotherapy
after the “First School” of Sigmund Freud and the “Second School” of Alfred Adler.
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The basis of Frankl’s theory was that the primary motivation of an individual is the search for meaning in life
and that the primary purpose of psychotherapy should be to help the individual find that meaning.
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He went on to later establish a new school of existential therapy called Logotherapy, based on the premise that man’s underlying motivator in life is a “will to meaning,” even in the most difficult of circumstances.
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Frankl pointed to research indicating a strong relationship between “meaninglessness” and
criminal behaviours, addictions and depression. Without meaning, people fill the void with hedonistic pleasures, power, materialism, hatred, boredom, or neurotic obsessions and compulsions.

