Viktor Frankl Symposium: "Why Frankl Matters Today: Rediscovering Meaning in an Age of Disorientation" with Alexander Batthyány, PhD

Man’s Search for Meaning: A Symposium on Viktor Frankl 

"Why Frankl Matters Today: Rediscovering Meaning in an Age of Disorientation" with Alexander Batthyány, PhD

This symposium will explore the life, ideas, and continued relevance of the oft-overlooked Jewish intellectual and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl. Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, borne out of his experience of the Holocaust, has had a profound yet underappreciated influence on a wide variety of disciplines and on generations of readers.  The symposium, in the spirit of the Jesuit ideal of cura personalis, encourages the Fairfield community to reflect upon their search for meaning in a disorienting time of rapid technological, societal and political change. Through lectures, performance, and conversation, this symposium will bring scholars, medical practitioners, religious leaders, artists and others together through interdisciplinary and interfaith dialogue.  

Keynote Address “Why Frankl Matters Today: Rediscovering Meaning in an Age of Disorientation by Professor Alexander Batthyány, Director of the Viktor Frankl Institute, Vienna.

Abstract: Many of today’s students and young professionals find themselves asking not only how to feel good, but how to be good for something—how to lead a life that is both inwardly whole and outwardly meaningful. Viktor Frankl’s work speaks directly to this search. It offers an empirically grounded and existentially rigorous framework for understanding and cultivating meaning in human life, while also addressing some psychological and existential paradoxes of our time: such as that we are impoverished not only by what we fail to receive, but also by what we withhold from giving. This lecture explores Frankl’s Logotherapy as both theory and practice—a psychological toolbox to engaging our emotions, confronting inner and outer obstacles, and rediscovering purpose and direction in a fragmented age.

Prof. Alexander Batthyány, PhD, holds the Chair of the Research Institute for Theoretical Psychology and Personalist Studies at Pázmány Péter Catholic University in Budapest, Hungary. Since 2012, Batthyány is Visiting Professor for Existential Psychotherapy at the Moscow University Institute of Psychoanalysis, Russia. He is Director of the Viktor Frankl Institute and first editor of the 14-volume edition of the Collected Works of Viktor Frankl. Batthyány has published over fifteen books which have been translated into eleven languages. He lectures widely on philosophical and existential psychology and the quest for a meaningful life, theory of cognitive science, and the psychology of death and dying. Batthyány divides his time between Vienna, Budapest, and the Hungarian countryside, where he and his wife and daughters are developing an alternative intentional community.

Hosted by the Humanities Institute, Bennett Center for Judaic Studies, Kanarek Center for Palliative Care and Nursing Education, and the Dean of Meditz College of Arts and Sciences. The organizers are grateful to Robin Bennett Kanarek for her generous support.