The Will to Meaning: Foundations and Applications of Logotherapy (Paperback)

Viktor Emil Frankl (26 March 1905 – 2 September 1997) was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist as well as a Holocaust survivor. Surviving Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, Kaufering and Türkheim. Frankl was the founder of logotherapy, the will to meaning and is most notable for the best-selling book Man's Search for Meaning (published under a different title in 1959: From Death-Camp to Existentialism, and originally published in 1946 as Trotzdem Ja Zum Leben Sagen: Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager, meaning Nevertheless, Say "Yes" to Life: A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp) an account within the concentration camp hierarchy, where in various camps he practiced, 'concluded' and several times quotes, the validity of means, for Nietzchean survival. Man's Search for Meaning has sold over 12 million copies. After which, Frankl was for a time, a minor figure in existential therapy and influenced humanistic psychology. Frankl has been the subject of criticism from several holocaust analysts. They question the levels of Nazi accommodation inherent in the ideology of logotherapy. They also raise doubts in regard to acts which Frankl willingly pursued in the time periods before his internment. According to critics, Frankl voluntarily requested to perform unskilled lobotomy experiments on Jews, which were approved by the Nazis, until his internment. Critics claim this is hinted at in Frankl's own autobiographical account, and then further illuminated later under the scrutiny of biographical research.