The renowned psychotherapist Viktor Frankl dedicated his life to learning why some people can survive the unknowable while others succumb to what can only be seen as the mundane.

Years in Theresienstadt and Kaufering, followed by release at last from Auschwitz, granted Dr. Frankl a unique perspective on life and the psychology of its meaning. From his experiences, Dr. Frankl formulated a radical psychotherapy, a form of existential analysis he defined as the will to meaning, in which he sought explanation for why some find purpose and responsibility in their lives and others do not.

Beyond this psychological theorem, however, Dr. Frankl’s enduring contribution to the world of ideas resides in his assertion of what he believed is the core of human freedom, the basic block upon which we build our lives and our psyches.

Behind the camp wire, Dr. Frankl lost everything that gave purpose and meaning to his life: from the material to the sublime...his home and career, his humanity and sense of self. Of an extended family that spanned generations as much as geography, only a sister emerged with him to reclaim the fragments of their lives.

But in that shadowland between death and the grave Dr. Frankl learned that all can be taken from a man but one thing: the first and last of the human freedoms — the ability to choose our attitude in any situation, the possibility to choose our own way. It is this spiritual freedom — which even the Nazis in their death factories could not deny — that helps give life its meaning and imparts to it purpose.