The Doctor and the Soul: An Introduction to Logotherapy.

FRANKL, Viktor E.

Item Number: 102478

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1955.

First edition of Frankl’s classic work which explores topics on the meaning of life in general as well as the meaning of specific areas of one’s life, such as work and personal relationships. Octavo, original cloth. Boldly signed by Viktor Frankl on the title page. Fine in a near fine dust jacket. Typography, binding and jacket design by Herbert Bayer. Translated from the German by Richard and Clara Winston. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box.

Frankl wrote the book initially during Nazi occupation of Austria. However, he was not able to publish at that time. Instead, he was forced to hide his manuscript and take it with him to the concentration camps. Soon after arriving at the concentration camp, Frankl was forced to discard his work. A few years later, while still incarcerated, Frankl began reconstructing the manuscript from memory on scraps of paper. Sometime after his release, after the war had ended, Frankl published both Man's Search for Meaning as well as The Doctor and the Soul. Frankl attributed his survival during the war years to his awareness of the topics written in The Doctor and the Soul. He countered the image of him as portrayed in the American media, that he discovered these ideas in the concentration camps. Instead, said Frankl, discovering this ideas prior to his arrest and detainment helped him overcome the existential crises of losing everything dear to him. "One of the outstanding contributions to psychological thought in the last fifty years" (Professor Carl Rogers).