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 from 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 directly connected to God. This is why, in addition to meaning, Frankl identified faith as the supreme foundation of the soul.
The Rebbe About Frankl
To understand the importance the Rebbe saw in Frankl's method, we will present three letters in which the Rebbe mentions logotherapy and delve into them a bit:
In a letter about a mental health patient, the Rebbe refers to Frankl as "a professor who found courage in his soul" and writes:
And to note in connection with your writing that the aforementioned [individual] is under treatment with a doctor dealing with mental health: Although it is not entirely clear to which doctor you are referring, for (due to our iniquities), there is a certain type of these doctors [psychologists] that begin treatment by speaking [negatively] about God, about the honor of Heaven, and about honoring parents, etc. [meaning, they claim that pursing these causes the patient a great deal of harm], and [they even claim that there might not be any importance to these aforementioned values]. It requires great scrutiny to determine whether these methods are profitable in the end, even if he [the doctor] is well-known and important, and whether or not, in the end more is lost than gained. [However,] clearly several of these doctors [i.e., psychologists] have brought benefit and healed in honest ways. This is especially true since one professor found the courage in his soul to declare and announce that (contrary to the method of the founder of this type of treatment—the known one [i.e., Freud]) faith in God, religious inclination in general that brings content to life, etc., etc., is one of the most effective ways for healing.
It is interesting to see that one of the important points the Rebbe highlights in Frankl's innovation is his regard for “the honor of Heaven and honoring one’s parents.” This connects especially to how Divine Providence guided Frankl and his method through his commitment to the Fifth Commandment—the commandment that connects honoring Heaven with honoring one’s parents. The Midrash tells that when God spoke the Ten Commandments, the first commandments elicited a suspicious reaction from the nations who claimed that, “God is seeking His own honor.” But when the fifth commandments—honoring one’s parents was heard—the nations acknowledged the first four commandments as well.
In a letter to a neurologist, the Rebbe says that
The state of [a certain patient’s] health proves (if proof is deemed necessary for this) the power that faith has, especially when connected to and expressed in actual deed, public activity, fulfillment of mitzvot, etc., for stabilizing a person's mental tranquility…. Despite the approach that because faith and religion demand that a person accept the yoke of Heaven—and therefore restrain and suppress their instincts and urges—they are undesirable,… I found particular interest in Dr. Frankl's (Vienna) articles on this. But to my dismay, it seems that his method has not spread, nor has it been adopted as would have been appropriate.
In the third letter, the Rebbe refers to those who diverged from Freud's method, and to Frankl in particular, as evidence that Freud's method is not an absolute truth as the recipient believes:
It is particularly interesting that Dr. Viktor Frankl, a professor at the University of Vienna, makes purpose in life the cornerstone of his psychoanalytic method."
Submission, Separation, and Sweetening in Frankl’s Pivotal Moments
The points the Rebbe emphasizes—faith, purpose, and the practical expression of both—are well reflected in the three moments of Divine Providence that accompanied Frankl's life. When we contemplate these moments of Providence and the order of their occurrence, a structure is revealed that pertains to each of us in fulfilling our mission in the world:
The first moment of Divine Providence, of honoring parents, exemplifies submission and the tenet that, “derech eretz (proper conduct) precedes Torah.” Although honoring parents is a commandment, it is one of the commandments that our common sense also dictates. It is no coincidence that the Talmud employs the story of a non-Jew, Dama ben Netina, to exemplify the way to honor one’s parents.
The second moment of Divine Providence, the story with the Shema Yisrael, corresponds to separation, or strengthening one’s Divine soul by identifying with the Torah and the commandments. The general principle of the Torah’s commandments is self-sacrifice for the sanctification of God’s Name—the essence of Shema Yisrael (as explained in chapter 25 of Tanya). Commandments are also instruments for binding us to God—the declaration we make when saying that “God is one.”
The third moment, when he received the Rebbe’s prediction of his success, corresponds to a transition from the Divine service of birur (clarification—separating the negative from the good) to the Divine service of yichudim (unifications). Yichudim are performed specifically when engaging in actions that are not mandatory but are still done for the sake of Heaven, following the dictum that, “In all your ways [actions], you should know Him.” When we remember that, “it is God who gives you the power to succeed,” by virtue of derech eretz and Torah, we have discovered the secret of success.
