In our ongoing study in how governments have used psychiatrists as agents of social control (and how psychiatrists resisted these pressures), let’s learn about Viktor Frankl.
Viktor Frankl was an Austrian man who was Jewish. He worked as psychiatrist and is best known for his book, Man’s Search for Meaning. (It’s a slim book and worth a read.) In it he describes his experiences in Nazi concentration camps and the development of logotherapy.
Before the Nazis deported Frankl, he worked in the Neurological Department of the Rothschild Hospital in Vienna. His title was apparently “Jewish Specialist”; it was one of the last places Jews could work.
The Viktor Frankl Institute notes that, in 1940,
In spite of the danger to his own life he sabotages Nazi procedures by making false diagnoses to prevent the euthanasia of mentally ill patients.
though I am unable to find other evidence to support this.
There is more evidence that Frankl worked with people who had tried to kill themselves. Most of his Jewish patients attempted suicide because they had received deportation orders. Certain death was already awaiting them.
Frankl does not discuss in Man’s Search for Meaning how he tried to save these patients from suicide. Others do. Mikic writes:
Frankl tried to bring the suicidal patients back by injecting them with amphetamines, but it didn’t work.
And so, Frankl bored holes in the skulls of his Jewish patients, who had taken overdoses of pills in the hope of escaping their Nazi tormentors, and jolted their brains with Pervitin, an amphetamine popular in the Third Reich.
Pytell also comments:
… in the circumstances of Nazi oppression suicide was often considered a viable option if not a form of resistance, and [Frankl] was therefore undermining the choice of people who made such a difficult decision.
Frankl tried to protect the lives of Jewish people. The Nazis did not like this (or maybe they did?); they also did not like him.
In the preface to the 1992 edition of Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl shares:
The reader may ask me why I did not try to escape what was in store for me after Hitler had occupied Austria. … Shortly before the United States entered World War II, I received an invitation to come to the American Consulate in Vienna to pick up my immigration visa. My old parents were overjoyed because they expected that I would soon be allowed to leave Austria. I suddenly hesitated, however. The question beset me: could I really afford to leave my parents alone to face their fate, to be sent, sooner or later, to a concentration camp, or even to a so-called extermination camp? Where did my responsibility lie?
Frankl writes that “this was the type of dilemma that made one wish for ‘a hint from Heaven’.” He describes the following as a sign:
… I noticed a piece of marble lying on a table at home. When I asked my father about it, he explained that he had found it on the site where the National Socialists had burned down the largest Viennese synagogue. He had taken the piece home because it was a part of the tablets on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed. One gilded Hebrew letter was engraved on the piece; my father explained that this letter stood for one of the Commandments. Eagerly, I asked, “Which one is it?” He answered, “Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the land.” At that moment I decided to stay with my father and my mother upon the land, and to let the American visa lapse.
Ultimately, his father, mother, and wife all perished. The Nazis killed them all in concentration camps.
From this, it seems that Viktor Frankl held fast to a set of values. We can never fully know all the intentions people hold in their hearts, but we can make educated guesses from their behaviors. He had an internal compass.
From his behaviors we can surmise the points of his internal compass:
Frankl valued the lives of his fellow Jewish people. If it is true that he made false diagnoses to prevent euthanasia, he used the power that he had to protect those who had less. One can argue that Frankl abandoned his professional duties by making diagnoses meaningless. However, the purpose of diagnosis is to guide treatment. If a government uses diagnosis to assign death, then the purpose of diagnosis has already been perverted.
Frankl had a clear vision of what medicine he should practice. If suicidal behavior was the enemy, Frankl used all the tools he had—including cranial surgery and stimulants!—to combat this. I don’t know what amount of amphetamines (or skull boring) can stop people from killing themselves. But if a government is going to execute you anyway for who you are, it seems like no amount will be enough.
Frankl valued his parents. He, his wife, and his parents, all Jewish, knew what the Nazis were doing. He could have escaped. He chose not to. It’s hard for any of us to understand what it means to die. Even if he only understood genocide as an abstraction, it was a consequence he was willing to accept. Being with his parents was a priority to him.
Perhaps the lesson we can learn from Viktor Frankl is to know what your values are. Understand what your priorities are and why. Once you have clarity on your values, then you will be less susceptible to corruption.
Those who live by cunning and duplicity may comment that integrity doesn’t matter if you are dead. Sure, but do you really want the alternative of an exhausting, joyless, and meaningless life?
Maria Yang, MD 