After years of hospital work in general medicine, psychiatry and in an outpatient department of social psychiatry, he started a private practice in psychotherapy, general medicine and clinical psychology in Vienna in 1982.

During that same year he came into close collaboration with Viktor Frankl (1983-1991). He assisted Frankl’s lectures at the university and worked with him in many relevant fields of Logotherapy.

Längle is the founder and president of the International Society for Logotherapy and Existential Analysis (Vienna). Viktor Frankl was the society’s honorary president until 1990, at which time he resigned because of Längle’s new developments in the field of existential analysis (methods, implication of existential self-experience in the training seminars, rejecting the exclusive use of the meaning paradigm in psychotherapy by implementing also the biographical access).

Längle is a constant lecturer at the Universities of Vienna (since 1984), Innsbruck (1994), Graz (1995), Moscow and Buenos Aires (2000). He also founded the training school of Existential-Analytical Psychotherapy, which is stately approved in Austria, Switzerland, Tchek Republic and Rumania.

In 2000 Längle got a honorary doctor’s degree in recognition of his developments in the field of existential analysis from the medical faculty of the university of Temesvar.

Längle was also editor and co-editor of the Journal Existenzanalyse.

Publications:

• (2000) Sinnspuren. Dem Leben antworten. St.Pölten: NP-Verlag
• (2000) Praxis der Personalen Existenzanalyse. Wien: Facultas (Ed.)
• (2000) Ich kann nicht… Behinderung als menschliches Phänomen. Wien: Facultas (Ed. with K. Rühl)
• (1999) Existenzskala. (Together with Orgler Ch., Kundi M.) Göttingen: Hogrefe
• (1988) Entscheidung zum Sein. München: Piper. (Ed.)
• (1998) Viktor Frankl. Ein Porträt. München: Piper. (also in spanish translation 2000)
• (1997) Süchtig sein. Entstehung, Formen und Behandlung von Abhängigkeiten. Wien: Facultas. (Ed. with Ch. Probst)
• (1985) Wege zum Sinn. München: Piper. (Ed.)

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In 1973, she began work in counseling centres, later becoming the director of a counseling center in Munich, a position she held for nine years. In 1996, she founded he South German Institute of Logotherapy; she has remained the Director of the Institute since its inception.

She has written 22 books (which have been translated into 11 languages) about the application and further development of logotherapy, and has taught at 50 universities in several countries. In 1991 she was honoured by Santa Clara University for “Outstanding Contributions in Counseling Psychology to the World Community.” Dr. Lukas is seen as “the leading protégée of Viktor E. Frankl.”

Publications

• ‘Meaning in Suffering: Comfort in Crisis Through Logotherapy’
• ‘De la vida fugaz’
• ‘Auch dein Leben hat Sinn: logotherapeutische Wege zur Gesundung’
• ‘Von der Trotzmacht des Geistes: Menschenbild und Methoden der Logotherapie’
• ‘Meaningful Living: Logotherapeutic Guide to Health’
• ‘Meaningful Living: A Logotherapy Book’

The post Elisabeth Lukas appeared first on International Network on Personal Meaning.

Obituary
© Paul T. P. Wong, August 3, 1999

Joe Fabry was a storyteller at heart. In his youthful years, he gave up a career in law in order to do creative writing. To the surprise of his parents, he was able to make a living by selling his stories. His sharp mind and his ability to write well remained with him until his last days.

Not too long ago, someone in the logotherapy group said to me: “Viktor Frankl was a prophet, but Joe Fabry was only a scribe.” But Joe was much more than a scribe. He was a visionary storyteller with a prophetic voice; he was a dreamer and a builder—which would qualify him as a “minor” prophet.

My association with Joe over the past few years has been most enjoyable and memorable. While on my sabbatical leave at the University of British Columbia in 1994-95, I articulated for the first time my integrative model of meaning-centered counseling. Logotherapy is at the centre of this model, but it also incorporates cognitive-behavioural principles. Therefore, it may be called spiritual-existential-cognitive-behavioral therapy.

I presented my paper at a colloquium of the Counselling Psychology Department of UBC in March 1995. My presentation was well received by both professors and graduate students. But I was still not too sure whether I was on the right track with respect to logotherapy. So I decided to send a copy to Joe Fabry for his comments. I had read most of his writings, and thought that, next to Frankl, he was probably most qualified to evaluate my extension of logotherapy.

I was delighted by his speedy and extremely positive response. He said, “You have developed what I had hoped for a long time—the extension of Dr. Frankl’s ideas into a wider practical methods of application, combining them with other methods into a comprehensive model.”1 He wanted to publish my long paper in instalments. A few weeks later, I received a letter from Dr. Hutzell stating that “Joe Fabry has a copy of your paper and he speaks extremely highly of it.”2 Dr. Hutzell also asked me to submit the paper to The International Forum for Logotherapy in instalments.

After this initial exchange of correspondence, each year Joe sent me the Fabry Gazette with a personal letter. “How are you getting along with the articles for the Forum?” he would ask. And he would gently remind me of my promise to send him articles on meaning-centered counseling. His letters always made me feel guilty for my tardiness. At long last, I sent him the first instalment.3 In a letter dated February 11, 1997, he wrote:

I was delighted to get your article and I am sending it on to Dr. Hutzell for processing into the Spring Forum. I welcome your developing logotherapy into “neologotherapy.” I am not sure how Frankl will feel about it, but I think you have kept his basic ideas and expanded them.4

The publication of this first instalment resulted in numerous positive responses from all over the world, including those who were involved with logotherapy from the very beginning. Joe was delighted that his confidence in my neologotherapy was validated. He continued to press me for additional instalments, but I did not send him another article until a year later.5

I deeply regret that Joe did not live to see the remaining instalments. I have been busy building up a new graduate program in counselling and I blame myself for allowing many other projects to delay my neologotherapy project. However, I will honour my commitment to Joe to complete this series of articles without further delay.

Joe believed that Viktor Frankl’s story needs to be retold to new generations in a new language without changing the basic concepts. Joe’s willingness to embrace and promote my extension of Dr. Frankl’s logotherapy was a breath of fresh air within the logotherapy circle.

During my last visit with Joe and Judith in August 1998, we took a long walk and then returned to his house for more talk on logotherapy. He was delighted with the publication of The Human Quest for Meaning,5 to which he had contributed a chapter. He suggested that Dr. Robert Leslie write a book review for the Forum.

Throughout our conversation, he only reminisced briefly about the heady days of launching logotherapy in the US; his focus was on the future. He was especially excited about my proposal to organise an international conference on Searching for Meaning in the New Millennium in Vancouver, July 13-16, 2000.6 He was most pleased to learn that this conference was inspired by his earlier idea of organizing a Festival of Meaning. He promised that he would come to the Vancouver conference if his health allowed. After my visit, he even took the trouble to write to Dr. Robert Barnes urging him to co-operate with me:

An international Congress in Vancouver would attract much attention, and he has connections beyond our own, in fact, beyond logotherapy, to related meaning-oriented movements. . . . I share Dr. Wong’s concern about the “fragmentation” in the logotherapy movement, and don’t want to contribute to it. But Dr. Wong is a co-fighter, friend, and supporter, and sees the Vancouver Congress as a boost to the movement.7

He was pleased with the prospect of introducing Dr. Frankl’s ideas to a new generation at the Vancouver conference. He also expressed the opinion that the International Congress on Logotherapy be held in different parts of the world. His ecumenical, progressive spirit stands in stark contrast to the fundamentalist “bunker” mentality of many logotherapists I have met.

Those who cling to the past and resist change will be relegated to the dustbin of history. But those who dare to pursue a new vision will make history. Indeed Joe has made history in establishing the Viktor Frankl Institute of Logotherapy and The International Forum for Logotherapy. Even in his advanced age, he remained a courageous, prophetic visionary and storyteller, exploring new ways of expanding Dr. Frankl’s ideas.

From all my interactions with him, I have the distinct impression that he would want to see logotherapy move forward rather than backward; and that he would want to recruit more visionary storytellers like himself to advance logotherapy into the new millennium. I sincerely hope that Joe’s generous, visionary spirit will continue to live in those entrusted with the responsibility of the Viktor Frankl Institute of Logotherapy.

References

1. Fabry, Joseph (personal communication, July 26, 1995).
2. Hutzell, Robert (personal communication, August 17, 1995)
3. Wong, P. T. P. (1997). Meaning-centered counseling: A cognitive-behavioral approach to logotherapy. The International Forum for Logotherapy, 20, 85-94.
4. Fabry, Joseph (personal communication, February 11, 1997).
5. Wong, P. T. P., & Fry, P. S. (1998). The human quest for meaning: A handbook of psychological research and clinical applications.
6. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers.
7. Fabry, Joseph (personal comunication, August 1998).

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Paul T. P. Wong’s Homepage, Trinity Western University.

Read many of Dr. Wong’s publications right here on meaning.ca, in our Current Writing, and our Archives section.

The post Paul T. P. Wong appeared first on International Network on Personal Meaning.

Links

• Viktor Frankl Institute, Vienna
• Viktor E. Frankl Biography
• Obituary By ROLAND PRINZ The Associated Press

Books

• Man’s Search For Meaning
  by Viktor E. Frankl
  Paperback: 224 pages
  Publisher: Pocket (December 1, 1997)
  ISBN: 0671023373
• Man’s Search for Ultimate Meaning
  by Viktor E. Frankl
  Paperback: 208 pages
  Publisher: Perseus Publishing (July, 2000)
  ISBN: 0738203548
• Viktor Frankl Recollections: An Autobiography
  by Viktor E. Frankl, et al
  Hardcover: 143 pages
  Publisher: Plenum Pr (May 1, 1997)
  ISBN: 0306454106
• The Doctor and the Soul : From Psychotherapy to Logotherapy
  by Viktor E. Frankl
  Paperback: 352 pages
  Publisher: Vintage (October 12, 1986)
  ISBN: 0394743172
• The Will to Meaning: Foundations and Applications of Logotherapy
  by Victor E. Frankl
  Paperback: 208 pages
  Publisher: Plume (September 1, 1988)
  ISBN: 0452010349

Quotes

The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose ones attitude in any given circumstance.

When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves.

Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality.

The last of human freedoms – the ability to chose one’s attitude in a given set of circumstances.

Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how.’

Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.

What is to give light must endure burning.

Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated, thus, everyone’s task is unique as his specific opportunity.

Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives.

Only to the extent that someone is living out this self transcendence of human existence, is he truly human or does he become his true self. He becomes so, not by concerning himself with his self’s actualization, but by forgetting himself and giving himself, overlooking himself and focusing outward.

Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it [is] he who is asked.

For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment.

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

A human being is a deciding being.

Each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.

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