Meaning and love in Viktor Frankl's writing: reports from the Holocaust
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1Department of Counselor and Human Services Education, University of Toledo.
Psychological Reports
|December 1, 1994
Abstract:
Viktor Frankl has written that people can survive in the most adverse of situations. He emphasized that the will to meaning has actual survival value. Frankl said people who were oriented toward the future or who had loved ones to see again were most likely to have survived the Holocaust. But is this belief valid? Does love have survival value? Six survivors of the Holocaust were interviewed to assess whether they experienced thoughts and feelings as those described by Frankl. Analysis of results from these interviews showed that love was important but so were other factors.