The impact of Viktor Frankl's work

Frankl was born in Vienna, 1905, the second of three children in an upper middle-class family. There were difficult experiences during World War 1, with the Frankl children having to beg farmers for food. Obviously a brilliant student in high school, he attended psychology lectures, corresponded with Freud, published an article (In the International Journal of Psychoanalysis) and gave a public lecture at the age of 15, with a title foreshadowing his later achievements: On the meaning of life. A leading young socialist, he was also attracted to the Adlerian movement. He studied medicine, had a continuing interest in social reform, and continued to publish and lecture on meaning, introducing the term Logotherapy. His daunting highly cerebral profile is tempered by his strong interest in mountain climbing and, decades later, in flying. He organised youth counselling services in Vienna, and the consequent drop in youth suicide attracted international attention. He practised psychiatry in in the 1930s, and then suffered from the increasing Nazification of medical practice following the German annexation of Austria, risking his life to prevent the euthanasia of psychiatric patients.

Frankl opted to stay with his parents rather than emigrate to safety in the USA, continuing to develop existential analysis and logotherapy. He married, and was then deported with his wife and parents to Theresienstad, then to Auschwitz. Only he survived. In Auschwitz he helped to organised psychological support for new inmates, countering the suicide which was the widespread response of new inmates to the terrifying cruelties and deprivations of the camp.

Despite his despair following post-war survival, he married again, and continued with his writing, lecturing and psychiatric practice. His books and lectures became enormously popular, he held many prominent academic positions, and was widely invited to lecture internationally, using his main theme of developing meaning and purpose in life despite adversity. Existential therapy/logotherapy continues to develop, and among the over 30 books authored by Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (1946)is a leading exposition, holding the extraordinary record (for a psychology book) of being claimed as one of the world’s 10 best-selling books – according to Amazon, 16 million sold.

Kate Loewenthal: A brief personal background.

I am a lifelong UK resident, married to Naftali Loewenthal. We have a large family, and are closely affiliated with Chabad. Completing my PhD in 1967, I followed a full-time academic career in Psychology, mainly at Royal Holloway, University of London, retiring in 2007. My teaching interests included psychodynamic theory and practice, and my research interests were in social and clinical psychology, with a strong interest in religion and mental health, including investigation of this issue in minority groups, especially the Jewish community. While retired, I have continued with academic work, and recently have done training and begun practice in trauma therapy (EMDR: Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing).

I first heard of Frankl about 50 years ago, from a young social worker staying for Shabbat. He had visited the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who recommended Frankl’s work. Over the ensuing years I read Frankl’s work and introduced this work into my teaching of psychodynamic theory and practice. I will mention my favourite story, told by Frankl. Let’s call it “Rolling in the dirt”, or to use a much grander term, paradoxical intentionality. A client suffering from OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) was terrified of dirt and spent hours on his cleaning rituals. Frankl told the client to show him (the doctor) how dirty he could get: he should roll on the ground, rubbing dirt into his hands, face, everywhere. Momentarily taken aback, the client shortly began to smile, realising that now for the first time confronting his fear, he was no longer afraid, the fear had lost its power.

I made efforts to locate others with academic and clinical interests in Frankl. My enquiry in the journal of the British Psychological Society produced ONE response – Windy Dryden – whose office had been next to mine for several years! Windy had become an eminent therapist, and had incorporated Frankl’s ideas into his practice. But knowledge of Frankl’s work in the UK is not as widespread as it deserves to be.

I felt – and still feel – the importance of the existential approach and the need for existential therapy. In my small clinical practice I find a significant proportion of clients whose main problems are existential, lack of purpose and meaning in life.

Dr Shimon Cowen
I first met Dr Cowen some years ago, and was delighted to know him and his wife better when our son married our daughter-in-law from Melbourne (over 20 years ago). There has been some welcome travel back and forth between Australia and the UK, including an important event in Oxford featuring Dr Cowen.

Dr Cowen has done much invaluable work, improving awareness and knowledge of Frankl’s work by translating, publishing, writing and speaking, alongside his own prolific output in philosophy and psychology (e.g. Cohen, 1998, 2000).

He has helped to improve – without dogmatism - awareness of the complexity and variability of religious and spiritual feelings and ideas. This has been done by speaking and writing on his own behalf in many books and articles, and in his expositions and discussions of Frankl.

His latest book (The Rediscovery of the Human, 2020), launched today, contains previously untranslated writings by Frankl, with powerful examples from Frankl’s horrific concentration camp experiences, describing some of Frankl’s work in developing meaning and purpose in life despite adversity. In particular he has helped to communicate the importance of considering religious and spiritual issues in psychotherapeutic and psychiatric work.

Looking at Cowen’s recent book on Frankl, we can see the possibility that Frankl’s later work and writing show evidence of dissociating clinical practice from religious and spiritual issues, compared with his earlier work. He has continued to advocate the role of hope in fostering meaning and purpose in life. And we see persistent and strong preoccupation with the interplay between clinical and spiritual/religious issues. We will return to this shortly.

My personal experience in trauma therapy: Religious/spiritual identity and faith change following therapy

When I trained in trauma therapy, spiritual and religious issues were not mentioned, and I began to practice the EMDR techniques initiated by Francine Shapiro (2001), without a spiritual or religious thought in my head. To my amazement, my clients began to speak of the effects of this trauma therapy on their faith, and I began to investigate these effects more closely.

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a method of trauma therapy with very strong empirical support (eg. Logie, 2014) and now widely recommended as a/the leading treatment for PTSD, in the British National Health Service and indeed in most or all countries with a functioning health service.

Almost all those with some religious background reported an improvement in religious faith following EMDR trauma therapy (Loewenthal, 2019, 2022). Why and how do these changes occur? Are they part of a wider-ranging post-traumatic growth? These are topics of current and future investigation.

Concluding comments

In Cowen’s collection, Frankl writes that he believes that it is NOT true that all or most camp inmates lost their faith. I conclude with some powerful and provocative quotes illuminating features of Frankl’s conclusions about trauma and faith:

(p141) “I have no statistics, but my own impression…that in Auchwitz more people recovered their belief…”

“Anyone who has ever stood in a concentration camp in a ditch with a pick and shovel, and prayed there, has spoken TO G-d….”

(P144) “…just before her death, in the filthy straw, (she) recite(d) the Shema Israel…in the midst of a deep psychotic illness. That is what I mean by G-d slipping into the most wretched person”.