Viktor E. Frankl - Gesammelte Werke, Band 4 - Ärztliche Seelsorge

The fourth volume of Viktor Frankl`s Collected Works, Ärztliche Seelsorge (English title: The Doctor and the Soul), is, in several regards, outstanding. On the one hand, Ärztliche Seelsorge, has seen eleven editions and has been in print since 1945. It is one of the more famous books of Frankl, and he himself regarded it as his main scientific (life) work. At the same time, the proposed volume is of special historical relevance, since in it, for the first time, all three versions of Ärztliche Seelsorge, are published next to each other and are critical commented. Special emphasis is to be put on the first version of Ärztliche Seelsorge, which was written by Frankl shortly before his deportation to Theresienstadt. It exists only in typoscript form, and is the only surviving copy of three (one copy was taken from Frankl in Auschwitz, one was given to his friend Hubert Gsur who was sentenced to death by the Nazis in 1943, and one was hidden by his friend Paul Polak - it is this exemplar which Frankl received a while after his liberation from the concentration camp and which will be made public for the first time in the proposed volume). The fourth volume consists of five main parts: I Preliminary Remarks and Introduction II Frankl`s Early Articles on Meaning-Oriented Psychotherapy III First Version of Ärztliche Seelsorge 1942 IV Second Version of Ärztliche Seelsorge 1945 V Last Edition of Ärztliche Seelsorge 2005 VI Appendix Part I, Preliminary Remarks and Introduction describes the work history and the historical conditions and circumstances of the Ärztliche Seelsorge. In this introductory part, we will also provide a text critique of the three versions of Ärztliche Seelsorge. In this way, a hermeneutic analysis to these three books will be provided. Part II, Frankl`s Early Articles on Meaning-Oriented Psychotherapy consists of four articles Frankl wrote between 1925 and 1939 - with the help of these early papers, Frankl`s own development towards the founding of logotherapy as a value- and meaning-oriented psychotherapy can be traced to its roots. Part III, First Version of Ärztliche Seelsorge 1942, consists of the (hitherto unpublished) original first Version of Ärztliche Seelsorge. In a number of footnotes, commentary is provided, alongside cross references to the first and last edition of Ärztliche Seelsorge. Part IV, Second Version of Ärztliche Seelsorge 1945 consists of the first (again, hitherto unpublished) reconstruction of Ärztliche Seelsorge, written in 1945, alongside facsimile sample pages of these reconstruction which in the end served to write the final version of Ärztliche Seelsorge (Part V). In the appendix, the table of contents of the three versions are compared, and it is documented which paragraphs were left more or less unchanged, and which paragraphs and chapters (and the respective content) was changed under impression of Frankl`s three year stay in four concentration camps. A biobliography, a person and subject index and a glossary concludes this volume.