Viktor E. Frankl: El hombre en busca de sentido

Uno de los mejores libros de los leidos, cada página es un pozo del que se puede sacar un sin fin de lecciones para la vida. Su autor, un ser capaz de concluir tras su cruel experiencia en los campos de concentración que:

“La Historia nos brindó la oportunidad de conocer al hombre quizá mejor que ninguna otra generación. ¿Quién es, en realidad, el hombre? Es el ser que siempre decide lo que es. Es el ser que inventó las cámaras de gas pero también es el ser que entró en ellas con paso firme y musitando una oración.”

…

“Lo que de verdad necesitamos es un cambio radical en nuestra actitud frente a la vida. Debemos aprender de nosotros mismos, y también enseñar a los hombres desesperados que en realidad no importa que no esperemos nada de la vida, sino que la vida espere algo de nosotros. Dejemos de interrogarnos sobre el sentido de la vida y, en cambio, pensemos en lo que la existencia nos reclama continua e incesantemente. Y respondamos no con palabras, ni con meditaciones, sino con el valor y la conducta recta y adecuada. En última instancia, vivir significa asumir la responsabilidad de encontrar la respuesta correcta a las cuestiones que la existencia nos plantea, cumplir con las obligaciones que la vida nos asigna a cada uno en cada instante en particular.”

¿Tiene sentido el sufrimiento? ¿Podemos aprender de él, hacernos, a través de él, mejores? Dostoievski definió al hombre como «el ser que se acostumbra a todo». Incluso a los campos de exterminio. Víctor Frankl, psicólogo y neurofisiólogo, estuvo recluido en Auschwitz, y pudo salir con vida. En este libro no nos ofrece su experiencia personal de la vida en el campo de concentración, sino un análisis de la vida humana en sus condiciones más inhumanas, a la luz de la psicología; en suma, una psicopatología de la vida en cautiverio. Pero no se trata sólo, ni acaso principalmente, de eso, sino de encontrar el sentido de la vida incluso allí donde parece imposible encontrarlo, en el más atroz sufrimiento.

FICHA TÉCNICA
Autor: Viktor E. Frankl
Título original: Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager
Editorial: Herder
Traducción: Christine Kopplhuber y Gabriel Insausti Herrero
Prólogo de: José Benigno Freire
Idioma original: alemán
Fecha de aparición: 15/08/2004
160 Pág. – 14,1 x 21,6 cm.
2ª ed.
ISBN 84-254- 2331-7

VIKTOR E. FRANKL (1905-1997) (por Herder Editorial)

Es considerado el más famoso psicoterapeuta de este siglo y el último de la gran generación de la Escuela de Viena. Es el fundador de la logoterapia, denominada la tercera escuela vienesa de psicoterapia. Hasta 1942, en pleno apogeo de los nazis, estuvo trabajando en una clínica judía de Viena, pero finalmente él y su familia fueron internados en el campo de concentración de Theresienstadt. Fue precisamente en los campos de concentración donde perfiló su teoría basada en la búsqueda de un sentido para la vida del hombre. Frankl fue profesor de neurología y psiquiatría en la Universidad de Viena y ejerció la cátedra de logoterapia en la Universidad Internacional de San Diego, en California. Ofreció conferencias en un total de 208 Universidades y veinte de ellas le otorgaron el título de doctor honoris causa. Sus libros han sido traducidos a 21 idiomas, incluido el chino, el coreano y el japonés.

SINOPSIS

El doctor Frankl, psiquiatra y escritor, suele preguntar a sus pacientes aquejados de múltiples padecimientos: «¿Por qué no se suicida usted?» Y muchas veces, de las respuestas extrae una orientación para la psicoterapia a aplicar: a éste, lo que le ata a la vida son los hijos; al otro, un talento, una habilidad sin explotar; a un tercero, quizás, sólo unos cuantos recuerdos que merece la pena rescatar del olvido. Tejer estas tenues hebras de vidas rotas en una urdimbre firme, coherente, significativa y responsable es el objeto con que se enfrenta la logoterapia.

En esta obra, Viktor E. Frankl explica la experiencia que le llevó al descubrimiento de la logoterapia. Prisionero, durante mucho tiempo, en los desalmados campos de concentración, él mismo sintió en su propio ser lo que significaba una existencia desnuda. ¿Cómo pudo él que todo lo había perdido, que había visto destruir todo lo que valía la pena, que padeció hambre, frío, brutalidades sin fin, que tantas veces estuvo a punto del exterminio, cómo pudo aceptar que la vida fuera digna de vivirla? El psiquiatra que personalmente ha tenido que enfrentarse a tales rigores merece que se le escuche, pues nadie como él para juzgar nuestra condición humana sabia y compasivamente. Las palabras del doctor Frankl alcanzan un temple sorprendentemente esperanzador sobre la capacidad humana de trascender sus dificultades y descubrir la verdad conveniente y orientadora.

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VIKTOR E. FRANKL (1905-1997) (by Herder Editorial)

Is considered the most famous psychotherapist of the twentieth century, creator of Logotherapy, or The Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy and known the world over for his book Man in Search of Meaning.

Frankl was one of the most exceptional characters of the twentieth century, witness to “that strength of spirit that allows man to face the uncertain and often traumatic realities of existence with courage and dignity”, realities that he himself experienced in his long years of imprisonment in four different concentration camps.

Extract from a 1995 interview with Frankl.

“I believe that if the will is present to find meaning, not only in what we do (work, sport), but also in what we experience (love, art) and what we suffer (serious illness, internal conflicts), humanity will be able to reach a peace based on the respect and acceptance of the dignity of every person. This peace will only be lasting if nations and peoples agree on common goals that go beyond the interests of commerce and the economy.”

In the life history of Viktor E. Frankl the relationship between his life and work is especially illuminating in understanding what he represented as a man. Indeed, it was particularly as a man and personality that Frankl gained significance, popularity and, possibly, even world fame. He, who narrowly escaped death in a concentration camp and must have mourned the loss of friends and relatives there, is especially fit to be the true pioneer of a new way for psychotherapy. He tried to create psychotherapy “with a human face”, which would deal with humanity’s fight to find meaning in life, comfort in pain and desperation.

Frankl’s history is the history of psychotherapy, of which he was both witness and participant. Author of an important and large body of theoretical work, Frankl will always be the man who tried to build bridges between philosophy, psychology and religion, even if Frankl’s own vision of religion took in agnosticism and atheism. Universally respected and recipient of innumerable prizes and awards, the work of Viktor E. Frankl is unique and relevant in that it is a mirror of his vital experience. He was above all a survivor, and his life is closely linked to his therapeutic legacy.

Frankl was born in Vienna in 1905, a city to which he would return at the end of the war, unlike so many of his compatriots. During his student days he was in contact with Freud and was a student of Adler’s, none of which impeded him from creating logotherapy, also known as the Third Viennese School and following on from the psychoanalysis of Freud and the individual psychology of Adler.

In 1924, at the age of nineteen, he published his first work on the advice of Freud, with whom he was then maintaining an intense correspondence. However, those years saw him move away from psychoanalysis towards the individual psychology of Adler. His disagreements with Adler would then lead to his exclusion from the Association of Individual Psychology. By the 1930′s Frankl’s conciliatory vision started to go beyond both psychoanalysis and Adler’s theories and focused on individual responsibility. Frankl argued for the need to discover meaning (logos), in other words: those values that guide a person’s life and form his vision of the world. Frankl described modern man as Man in Pain, the title of one of his works.

Between 1930 and 1937 he began work as a psychotherapist at the Vienna’s Psychiatric Clinic. In 1939 he was named head of the department of neurology at the Rotschild Hospital in the same city, where he specialised in the treatment of patients who had attempted suicide a common event in those times of Nazi persecution.

In 1942 he and his family were deported to Theresienstad. There he met the nurse Tilly Grossner, who he would marry. His brother Walter had already been sent to Auschwitz with his wife by then. Tilly Grossner died in Bergen-Belsen in 1945. Frankl also lost his parents and his brothers, but he himself survived Theresienstad, Auschwitz and
Dachau-Türkheim. It was precisely in the concentration camps that he conceived his theory that life has a greater meaning beyond pain and suffering.

Between1946 and 1970 he was head of medicine at the department of neurology of the Viennese Policlinic. In 1946 he published the book Man in Search of Meaning. The following year he married the nurse Eleonore Schwindt, with whom he had a daughter, Gabriele. In 1948 he was made professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at the University of Vienna. He was also professor of Logotherapy at the universities of Harvard, Stanford, San Diego, Cambridge and other illustrious places of study. He was president of Austria’s Medical Society of Psychotherapy until his death on the 2nd of September, 1997. He gave conferences and seminars at a total of 209 universities, 29 of which made him Doctor Honoris Causa. His books have been translated into 26 languages.

“Man is only in a position to realize his true self when he realizes his true meaning”

MAN IN SEARCH OF MEANING

Frankl wrote the book that would gain him universal recognition in1946. Translated into 21 languages, subject to 149 editions and with sales that go into the millions. Its original title A Psychologist in a Concentration Camp would become in 1959 From the Extermination Camp to Existentialism and in 1962 finally became Man in Search of Meaning. In this book Frankl recounts the experiences that led him to discover psychotherapy. A prisoner for several years of concentration camps, he felt in his own soul the nakedness of existence. It was precisely in the Theresienstadt camp, where he and his family were interned, that he came upon his theory of man in search of meaning in his life. In his psychotherapy Frankl would ask his patients: “Why don’t you commit suicide?”. It was often from their replies that he gained insights into the direction the therapy should follow: one man was bound to life by his love for his children, another by a neglected talent, another might hang on to life for the sake of the few precious memories worth saving from oblivion. Sowing these broken and frayed threads into a coherent and meaningful whole is the aim of logotherapy. The words of Doctor Frankl take on a refreshingly hopeful tone on the subject of the human capacity to overcome adversity and discover a convenient and guiding truth.

Category: Poetry & Literature, Psychology, Religion & Thoughts