Viktor Frankl

Viktor Frankl (1905–1997) was an Austrian psychiatrist and thinker, best known as the founder of logotherapy. A survivor of Nazi concentration camps, he developed a view of the human being centered on the search for meaning as the primary motivation of life. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl argues that even under the most extreme conditions, human beings retain an inner freedom: the ability to give meaning to suffering. His thought emphasizes personal responsibility, self-transcendence, and commitment to values, offering an anthropology in which human dignity is grounded not in pleasure or power, but in the capacity to respond to life’s call for meaning.