The 10th of Nissan is the birthday of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, the Lubavitcher Rebbe. In connection with this auspicious occasion, we present an analysis of his special regard for world-famous psychologist Viktor Frankl, a holocaust survivor whose work inspired our main articles in recent weeks.
Throughout his years of psychiatric studies, Victor Frankl was a young colleague of Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler. Frankl took a different and opposite approach from theirs: instead of the pursuit of pleasure or status, he argued that man is primarily motivated by a “will for meaning.” The uniqueness of man lies in his ability to transcend himself, with the dominant part of the soul being its higher part, not the lower.
These ideas gradually developed in Frankl’s mind even before the Holocaust, and became more prominent during his time in the Nazi death camps. He saw that even within the hell and horror, certain prisoners managed to overcome evil by maintaining a positive approach to life and devoting themselves to a purpose and sense of mission that pulsed within them.
After the war, Dr. Frankl found himself standing alone with his unique ideas rejected by the psychological establishment in Vienna. He was surrounded on all sides by loyal disciples of Freud, who denounced him and avoided his lectures. As the years passed, the pressure intensified until he reached a state of emotional despair, seeing his life's work going to waste. He decided to give up spreading his ideas, to move to Australia and join his sister who had survived the Holocaust and immigrated there.
During this period, a Viennese-born woman named Margaret Hayas came to the Lubavitcher Rebbe for a private audience. At the end of the meeting, the Rebbe asked her for a personal favor. He requested that upon her return to Vienna, "Please convey my regards to Dr. Frankl and tell him in my name that he should be strong and continue his work with complete determination. He must not give up, no matter what. If he continues to act with strength and commitment, his success is guaranteed."
When she arrived in Vienna and inquired at the hospital where Dr. Frankl served as head of the neurology department, she was told that the professor had been absent for two weeks. After some effort, she managed to find Dr. Frankl's home address and reach him.
Dr. Frankl, who was in the midst of drafting his immigration documents to Australia, was in an irritable mood and showed little interest in the visitor. Margaret fulfilled her mission and addressed Dr. Frankl: "I was asked to convey regards to you from Rabbi Schneersohn of Brooklyn, New York. Rabbi Schneersohn, known as the Lubavitcher Rebbe, sent you the following message: Be strong! Continue your work with complete determination. Don't give up. You will ultimately succeed."
Dr. Frankl’s eyes filled with tears. After a few moments, he thanked the woman and told her that he had indeed been thinking of abandoning his efforts to fight for his doctrine and philosophy, and was actually considering leaving Vienna, but now he would reconsider the matter. Indeed, he returned to his work as a psychiatrist and lecturer.
A few years later, in 5719 (1959), Frankl's book Man's Search for Meaning was translated into English. It became a bestseller, selling tens of millions of copies, and established Dr. Frankl's status as the father of logotherapy and a pioneer of all the modern method of Positive Psychology. His approach became a legitimate and central stream in psychology.
[From an interview with Rabbi Biederman, the chief Chabad emissary in Vienna, who verified the story with those involved]
In addition to the Rebbe's revelation of ru’ach hakodesh (Divine inspiration), Viktor Frankl recounted two other manifestations of Divine Providence that guided his life.
The first revelation:
Shortly before the United States entered World War II (and a few years after the Anschluss—Austria’s annexation to Nazi Germany), Frankl received an immigration visa to the U.S. At that time, Frankl lived with his elderly parents in Vienna, which presented him with a dilemma: Should he escape, thereby removing the protection he provided to his elderly parents by virtue of being the chief neurologist at the Jewish hospital in Vienna, or should he stay and put himself in grave danger? His parents naturally assumed he would emigrate, but he didn't know what to do and longed for a sign from heaven.
One day, upon returning home, Frankl found his father holding a piece of stone taken from the desecrated synagogue's Ark.
"What's this?" he asked. His father replied that it was part of the Ten Commandments that had adorned the Ark.
There was a letter visible on the stone, indicating that this stone had been part of the Ten Commandments on the Ark. "Which commandment?" he asked, and his father answered: "Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long upon the land"... The sign was clear, and Viktor Frankl abandoned the idea of emigration.
As a result, he lost his family and the first manuscript of his book and also suffered for three years in concentration camps. But all the growth that followed the trauma, and the good that his method brought to the world, were influenced by that moment.
The second revelation:
In the pocket of his coat, which he was forced to give up upon arriving at the concentration camp, was the nearly completed manuscript of his first book, The Doctor and the Soul. Years later, he recounted that on the same day his manuscript was taken from him, he found in the coat he received at the camp a torn page from a prayer book, with the words Shema Yisrael (Hear o’ Israel) on it. He saw this as a sign that now it was his turn not only to formulate lofty ideas but also, and perhaps primarily, to live by them.
These instances illustrate how much God watches over all our actions and cares for us. Divine Providence is revealed in every detail of creation, but especially in an individual whom God views as a tzaddik, i.e., one who finds righteousness in others. The Rebbe, who also watched over Frankl and his method, fulfilled the commandment of, “And you shall walk in His ways.” The Rebbe watches from afar and intervenes precisely when the situation seems hopeless. In essence, this is the deepest sense of the concept of "meaning," which Frankl placed at the center of his method. Meaning is a message from a person's super-conscious, from the part
