EXCERPTS FROM VIKTOR FRANKL OBITUARY
(appearing in several dozen U.S. newspapers)


Reknown Psychiatrist Frankl Dies
copyright 1997 by Roland Prinz
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, September 3, 1997; 11:00 a.m. EDT

VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Viktor E. Frankl, author of the landmark `Man's Search for Meaning' and one of the last great psychotherapists of this century, has died of heart failure. He was 92.

Frankl survived the Holocaust, even though he was in four Nazi death camps including Auschwitz from 1942-45, but his parents and other members of his family died in the concentration camps.

During -- and partly because of -- his suffering in concentration camps, Frankl developed a revolutionary approach to psychotherapy known as logotherapy.

At the core of his theory is the belief that humanity's primary motivational force is the search for meaning, and the work of the logotherapist centers on helping the patient find personal meaning in life, however dismal the circumstances may be.

Frankl wrote that one can discover the meaning in life in three ways: "by creating a work or doing a deed; by experiencing something or encountering someone; and by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering."

Frankl's 32 books on existential analysis and logotherapy have been translated into 26 languages. He held 29 honorary doctorates from universities around the globe.

Viktor Emil Frankl was born in Vienna on March 26, 1905. His father worked his way up from a parliamentary stenographer to director at the Social Affairs Ministry. As a high school student involved in Socialist youth organizations, Frankl became interested in psychology.

In 1930, he earned a doctorate in medicine and then was in charge of a ward for the treatment of female suicide candidates. When the Nazis took power in 1938, Frankl was put in charge of the neurological department of the Rothschild Hospital, the only Jewish hospital in the early Nazi years.

But in 1942, he and his parents were deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp near Prague.

Frankl returned to Vienna in 1945, where he became head physician of the neurological department of the Vienna Polyclinic Hospital, a position he held for 25 years. He was a professor of both neurology and psychiatry.

Starting in 1961, Dr. Frankl took five professorships in the United States -- at Harvard and Stanford universities as well as at universities in Dallas, Pittsburgh and San Diego.

During a recent visit to Vienna, Hillary Rodham Clinton met Frankl at the presidential office. Austrian President Thomas Klestil recalled her telling Frankl: ``You don't realize what this hour of meeting with you means for me.''

He leaves his wife, Eleonore, and his daughter, Dr. Gabriele Frankl-Vesely.