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Freud – Adler – Frankl: De drie Weense denkers
Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, Viktor Frankl: drie markante figuren uit het Weense intellectuele leven. Er zijn al veel boeken van en over deze drie grootheden geschreven, maar zelden wordt hun leven en werken in één boek beschreven. De auteurs van dit boek, drie Weense historici, richten zich hierop. De verschillen en overeenkomsten in hun leven en denken. Belangrijk hierin is de nadruk op hun sociale milieus en achtergrond. De omgeving waarin hun richtinggevende scholen van psychotherapie ontstonden en internationale erkenning vonden. Freud, Adler en Frankl zijn gezamenlijk verantwoordelijk voor 150 jaar ontwikkeling van de psychologie en psychotherapie. De moeizame betrekkingen tussen de grondleggers van de psychoanalyse van Freud, de individuele psychologie van Adler en de logotherapie van Frankl komen uitgebreid ter sprake. De auteurs vertellen een boeiend verhaal van deze cultuur- en wetenschapsgeschiedenis en werpen ook licht op de ingewikkelde relaties tussen deze drie denkers. De intellectuele bloeiperiode van de Weense ‘Fin de siècle’ en ook het Joodse aandeel daarin komen uitgebreid ter sprake. Met de politieke radicalisering in Europa op de achtergrond, het groeiende antisemitisme en de verschrikkingen van de oorlogen zoeken Freud, Adler en Frankl naar de oorsprong van het menselijk handelen. Freud - Adler - DeFrankl is een uniek meesterwerk en biedt nieuwe inzichten.
- GenresPsychology
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2022
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August 24, 2025Maybe this is a strange book. A strange, intetesting book, with an attractive cover.
It is written by three people, none of whom are experts or specialists about the three people that they write about.
The three people, Freud, Adler, and Frankl, were all Viennese and Jewish (by background at least, my impression is that Freud was an athetist, Adler converted to Protestantism early in his life -but seems to have dropped out of it in later middle age, Frankl seems to have been deeply religious, though I am not sure that you would have often found him in a synagogue, if at all).
Having said that, we are not given a sense of why Vienna became a major centre for developing psychological theories- indeed quite the opposite, we are told that the Viennese medical establishment was conservative in its attitudes to mental health and the private life of the mind in comparison to Paris. Nor are we given insight into the significance of their shared Jewish background (networks of supporters for instance).
Looking through the endnotes, my impression is that the authors relied chiefly on secondaty sources for writing about Freud and Adler, but drew a fair bit on Frankl's own writings to discuss him. Well, I don't think that I would have sat down at the moment to read through either fat, bulging biographies of Freud, Adler, or Frankl, let alone their ouvre of published works. So this fairly brief, high level, life, times, and thoughts overview of the three men worked well for me. I thought it was a Goldilocks book, substantial enough, but not highly technical, neither was it idealised, nor over simplified. With Freud and Adler I got a sense of each man's thinking as work in progress. Frankl's logotherapy came across rather like Athena born out of Zeus' head - fully- formed and complete from the beginning. That is probably an over simplification, but it was the impression that I was left with.
Chapters two and three were like watching a relay race. There is the central character holding the baton - Freud and Adler respectively, but one can see the people who influenced them falling away and those who will be influenced by them speeding up and getting ready to reach for the baton.
I particularly liked the extended and repeated discussion of the Oedipus complex as central to Freud's relationship with his own father linked back to the incident when the father's cap was knocked off his head and he was instructed to get off the pavement back in Moravia, and in turn Freud's relationships with his ersatz sons, like Jung and Adler, crown princes who have to become (figaratively) deadly enemies; the Oedipus complex as central to Freud's personal history and psychology (and I am whispering now) that maybe he projected as a universal psychological constant in the male psyche. Interestingly, I thought, the authors saw the Oedipus conplex as inevitably leading to its own overthrow, touchingly implied in Freud's significant sucessors being, not an ersatz son, but Anna Freud and Melanie Klein. I loved the sense of Freud's thought as always in flux and never settled. It was hard for me suddenly not to think of him as a man limited and constrained by the anti-semitism of his society.
Adler was very interesting to read about. Freud seemed to operate mostly in very tight homosocial groups, you agreed completely with him or you were out. Adler came across as a rather expansive and socialable fellow. Hugely popular in his day. On his final, fatal lecture tour he was giving two talks a day in several of the places he stopped, matinee and evening performances! Adler gave us inferiority and superiority complexes, as well as over compensating. Yet I can't consciously remember seeing a book of his on any library or bookshop shelf.
Adler, and this strikes me as extremely Viennese , had strong Ukrainian-Jewish connections. Adler was a social-democrat, his wife was a communist and a friend of Lev Trotsky, among Adler's supporters were Manes Sperber and Wilhelm Reich all Jews from Ukraine.
By the 1920s it seems policy makers in Vienna had beome aware of Frank Wedekind's Spring Awakening and their was a huge concern about child suicide and mental health issues. Adler was actively involved in therapeutic drop-centres established to support children and those providing care to children. With the establishment of Austrofacism these were slowly closed down.
After reading this book, it is possibly unwise for me to say anything much about Frankl who it is hard to seperate from the holocaust. The authors take issue with Pytell's citical evaluation of Frankl, yet I felt that what they had to say largely bore out his criticisms. I am not a religious person. Frankl clearly was. He was the holocaust survivor, I wasn't. If he viewed the holocaust as an opportunity for personal growth and refused to view the perpetrators as collectively responsible, it is probably best for me to keep my trap shut . Frankl grew up living opposite Adler , started as a reader of Freud. He worked in the Steinhof hospital, built at the beginning of the twentieth century and at that time the largest psychiatric hospital on Europe - if you are on Vienna you might visit it to see the Otto Wagner church built as part of the hospital. As the Fascist period went on he had to leave and worked instead in the Rothschild hospital before being deported to a series of four concentration camps. After the war he returned to Vienna and went on to have great sucess as a lecturer and public speaker. Unlike Freud or Adler there was no sense of a context of fellow thinkers and Psychiatric colleagues. Instead the emphasis in his chapter is more about the controversies of his career such as could he be considered a collaborator. I found it uncomfortable reading, then again this was my first introduction to the man and his thinking in writing.
And that is a strength of this book, it lays out three contrasting lives of three men operating in quite distinct social contexts in the same city within less than a century. Freud was active in the great age of professional political anti-Semitism of Karl Luger a ground-breaking mayor of Vienna; Adker by contrast benefited from the post WWI politics of Red Vienna which facilitated his work, while Frankl's life and career were shaped by fascism in Austria. It is also to joy to read if you have visited Vuenna and to recognise the street names and visualise whete the events of the book took place. More culrural history than anything else, a decent overview.
It is written by three people, none of whom are experts or specialists about the three people that they write about.
The three people, Freud, Adler, and Frankl, were all Viennese and Jewish (by background at least, my impression is that Freud was an athetist, Adler converted to Protestantism early in his life -but seems to have dropped out of it in later middle age, Frankl seems to have been deeply religious, though I am not sure that you would have often found him in a synagogue, if at all).
Having said that, we are not given a sense of why Vienna became a major centre for developing psychological theories- indeed quite the opposite, we are told that the Viennese medical establishment was conservative in its attitudes to mental health and the private life of the mind in comparison to Paris. Nor are we given insight into the significance of their shared Jewish background (networks of supporters for instance).
Looking through the endnotes, my impression is that the authors relied chiefly on secondaty sources for writing about Freud and Adler, but drew a fair bit on Frankl's own writings to discuss him. Well, I don't think that I would have sat down at the moment to read through either fat, bulging biographies of Freud, Adler, or Frankl, let alone their ouvre of published works. So this fairly brief, high level, life, times, and thoughts overview of the three men worked well for me. I thought it was a Goldilocks book, substantial enough, but not highly technical, neither was it idealised, nor over simplified. With Freud and Adler I got a sense of each man's thinking as work in progress. Frankl's logotherapy came across rather like Athena born out of Zeus' head - fully- formed and complete from the beginning. That is probably an over simplification, but it was the impression that I was left with.
Chapters two and three were like watching a relay race. There is the central character holding the baton - Freud and Adler respectively, but one can see the people who influenced them falling away and those who will be influenced by them speeding up and getting ready to reach for the baton.
I particularly liked the extended and repeated discussion of the Oedipus complex as central to Freud's relationship with his own father linked back to the incident when the father's cap was knocked off his head and he was instructed to get off the pavement back in Moravia, and in turn Freud's relationships with his ersatz sons, like Jung and Adler, crown princes who have to become (figaratively) deadly enemies; the Oedipus complex as central to Freud's personal history and psychology (and I am whispering now) that maybe he projected as a universal psychological constant in the male psyche. Interestingly, I thought, the authors saw the Oedipus conplex as inevitably leading to its own overthrow, touchingly implied in Freud's significant sucessors being, not an ersatz son, but Anna Freud and Melanie Klein. I loved the sense of Freud's thought as always in flux and never settled. It was hard for me suddenly not to think of him as a man limited and constrained by the anti-semitism of his society.
Adler was very interesting to read about. Freud seemed to operate mostly in very tight homosocial groups, you agreed completely with him or you were out. Adler came across as a rather expansive and socialable fellow. Hugely popular in his day. On his final, fatal lecture tour he was giving two talks a day in several of the places he stopped, matinee and evening performances! Adler gave us inferiority and superiority complexes, as well as over compensating. Yet I can't consciously remember seeing a book of his on any library or bookshop shelf.
Adler, and this strikes me as extremely Viennese , had strong Ukrainian-Jewish connections. Adler was a social-democrat, his wife was a communist and a friend of Lev Trotsky, among Adler's supporters were Manes Sperber and Wilhelm Reich all Jews from Ukraine.
By the 1920s it seems policy makers in Vienna had beome aware of Frank Wedekind's Spring Awakening and their was a huge concern about child suicide and mental health issues. Adler was actively involved in therapeutic drop-centres established to support children and those providing care to children. With the establishment of Austrofacism these were slowly closed down.
After reading this book, it is possibly unwise for me to say anything much about Frankl who it is hard to seperate from the holocaust. The authors take issue with Pytell's citical evaluation of Frankl, yet I felt that what they had to say largely bore out his criticisms. I am not a religious person. Frankl clearly was. He was the holocaust survivor, I wasn't. If he viewed the holocaust as an opportunity for personal growth and refused to view the perpetrators as collectively responsible, it is probably best for me to keep my trap shut . Frankl grew up living opposite Adler , started as a reader of Freud. He worked in the Steinhof hospital, built at the beginning of the twentieth century and at that time the largest psychiatric hospital on Europe - if you are on Vienna you might visit it to see the Otto Wagner church built as part of the hospital. As the Fascist period went on he had to leave and worked instead in the Rothschild hospital before being deported to a series of four concentration camps. After the war he returned to Vienna and went on to have great sucess as a lecturer and public speaker. Unlike Freud or Adler there was no sense of a context of fellow thinkers and Psychiatric colleagues. Instead the emphasis in his chapter is more about the controversies of his career such as could he be considered a collaborator. I found it uncomfortable reading, then again this was my first introduction to the man and his thinking in writing.
And that is a strength of this book, it lays out three contrasting lives of three men operating in quite distinct social contexts in the same city within less than a century. Freud was active in the great age of professional political anti-Semitism of Karl Luger a ground-breaking mayor of Vienna; Adker by contrast benefited from the post WWI politics of Red Vienna which facilitated his work, while Frankl's life and career were shaped by fascism in Austria. It is also to joy to read if you have visited Vuenna and to recognise the street names and visualise whete the events of the book took place. More culrural history than anything else, a decent overview.
December 30, 2024
Ik heb het boek in het nederlands gelezen. 1. Een vreselijk slechte vertaling 2. Alleen het deel over Frankl is helder en leuk om te lezen.
May 23, 2025
Toll aufgebaut und spannender Einblick in die Welten der drei „Seelenforscher“!
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