Timothy Pytell - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Timothy Pytell
Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 2006
The Legacy of Primo Levi, 2005
Two of the most widely read testimonies on surviving Auschwitz are Primo Levi’s Survival in Ausch... more Two of the most widely read testimonies on surviving Auschwitz are Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz and Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. But when read together we get two very different renditions of the experience. Levi’s meditation is at once profoundly moving and disturbing. His description of the dehumanizing horror of the camp moves us, but also forces us to confront the disturbing insight that language fails to fully convey the experience. In addition, for Levi the categories that are easily placed in opposition in everyday life; good/evil; moral/immoral; innocent victim/guilty perpetrator, and so forth were eroded in the inverted world of Auschwitz. Levi sustained and developed his analysis of the moral ambiguity of Auschwitz in his final work The Drowned and the Saved, especially with his reflection on the “Gray Zone.” Frankl’s version offers a striking contrast to Levi’s. For Frankl the reality of Auschwitz required no radical revision of moral categories. In the words of the renowned Harvard psychologist Gordon Allport, Frankl rendered “hunger, humiliation, fear and deep anger at injustice … tolerable by closely guarded images of beloved persons, by religion, by a grim sense of humor, and even by glimpses of the healing beauties of nature.” Allport was also moved by Frankl’s ability to make “larger sense out of his apparently senseless suffering” by facing “fully the ubiquity of suffering and the forces of evil,” and thus deriving “a surprisingly hopeful view of man’s capacity to transcend his predicament and discover an adequate guiding truth.”1
New German Critique, 2012
Journal of Analytical Psychology, 2006
... and moving through the works of Barbara Hannah, Paul Stern, Vincent Brome, Gerhard Wehr, Gene... more ... and moving through the works of Barbara Hannah, Paul Stern, Vincent Brome, Gerhard Wehr, Gene Nameche and RD Laing, Frank McLynn, and ... can be made is difficult to determine at this point, but one would hope that the recently established Philemon Foundation, which ...
American Journal of Psychiatry, 2008
Writing biographies (life stories) for a long time had been a male hegemonic project-writing the ... more Writing biographies (life stories) for a long time had been a male hegemonic project-writing the lives of great (white) men. Ever since Plutarch and Sueton composed their vitae of the greats of classical antiquity, to the medieval obsession with the hagiographies of holy men (and a few women) and saints, Vasari's lives of great Renaissance artists, down to the French encyclopedists, Dr. Johnson and Lytton Strachey, as well as Ranke and Droysen the genre of biographical writing (“the representation of self ” or “the reconstruction of a human life”) has become increasingly more refined. In the twentieth century male predominance has become contested and the (collective) lives of women, minorities and ordinary people are now the focus of biographical writing. This volume of Contemporary Austrian Studies offers a cross section of Austrian lives and biographical approaches to recent Austrian history. Here are what may be called traditional biographies of leading political figures thr...
To be a Jewish citizen of Austria puts one in danger of being impaled on one horn of a dilemma or... more To be a Jewish citizen of Austria puts one in danger of being impaled on one horn of a dilemma or the other. Viktor Frankl had a fascinating “all-too-Austrian life.” He was born in Leopoldstadt the Jewish section of Vienna on March 26, 1905. He died of heart failure in Vienna on September 2, 1997 at the age of 93. His parents were both assimilated Jews and his father was a member of the civil service with socialist political leanings. From these humble beginnings Frankl eventually developed a..
Answering AuschwitzPrimo Levi's Science and Humanism after the Fall, 2011
Suicide brings on many changes. A life ends abruptly and the suicide is interpreted differently d... more Suicide brings on many changes. A life ends abruptly and the suicide is interpreted differently depending on circumstances and opinion. Sometimes it is seen as profoundly irrational, absurd and tragic, other times, as a heroic last act of an individual taking action to determine their fate. Often we aestheticize another’s suicide with heroism or capitulations. But no matter how we view suicide, a person’s death necessarily becomes the capstone that ‘‘backshadows’’ the entire existence of the deceased. It comes as no surprise that suicide among Holocaust survivors is high. A few of the most recognizable figures are Bruno Bettelheim, Paul Celan, Jerzy Kosinski, Jean Amery, Tadeusz Borowski, and apparently Primo Levi. Since so many survivors choose suicide, it is almost considered a truism that their camp experience led them to make the choice. However, a closer look at the ‘‘deaths’’ of Primo Levi and Jean Amery unveils a great deal of ambiguity.1 Although a consensus seems to have emerged that Levi committed suicide, the uncertainty surrounding his death has left the issue open to doubt. For example, Diego Gambetta has investigated Levi’s death and provides us with a very clear picture of Levi’s ‘‘Last Moments’’:
The Psychoanalytic Review, 2001
Psychoanalytic Psychology, 2007
Psychoanalytic Psychology, 2006
In this article the author describes the relationship of Viktor Frankl, the famous Holocaust surv... more In this article the author describes the relationship of Viktor Frankl, the famous Holocaust survivor and founder of logotherapy, with the Big 3 (Rollo May, Carl Rogers, and Abraham Maslow) of the American humanistic psychology movement. From the perspective of his quasi-religious meaning-centered logotherapy, Frankl criticized the humanistic psychology movement for overlooking the transcendent nature of human experience. The author
Journal of Contemporary History, 2000
Viktor Frankl gained international recognition based upon his heroic survival of Auschwitz and hi... more Viktor Frankl gained international recognition based upon his heroic survival of Auschwitz and his subsequent claim to have founded the third Viennese school of psychotherapy — logotherapy. This article revises this traditional view of Frankl by examining how logotherapy was actually developed under the auspices of the nazi-sponsored Goering Institute in the 1930s. In addition, his survival of Auschwitz is problematized by the questionable medical experimentation he performed in 1940–42 on Jews who had committed suicide in order to avoid deportation, and his limited (three-day) experience in Auschwitz. This new contextualization explains the mass appeal of Viktor Frankl as both a peculiar case of the Austrian burial of the ‘ambiguous past’ and the longing amongst Americans for an uplifting version of the Holocaust.
Journal of Contemporary History, 2002
Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 2003
Viktor Frankl's Auschwitz memoir has been criticized for misrepresenting the cultural signifi... more Viktor Frankl's Auschwitz memoir has been criticized for misrepresenting the cultural significance of the Holocaust. “The real hero of Man's Search for Meaning,” Lawrence Langer once remarked, was “not man but Viktor Frankl.” Incorporating little-known biographical details and an analysis of how Frankl “worked through” his experiences in earlier writings, this article illuminates how Frankl arrived at his particular version of survival. It reinforces Langer's contention that Frankl distorted the reality of Auschwitz in an attempt to prove his own psychological and philosophical theories.
Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 2006
Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 2006
The Legacy of Primo Levi, 2005
Two of the most widely read testimonies on surviving Auschwitz are Primo Levi’s Survival in Ausch... more Two of the most widely read testimonies on surviving Auschwitz are Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz and Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. But when read together we get two very different renditions of the experience. Levi’s meditation is at once profoundly moving and disturbing. His description of the dehumanizing horror of the camp moves us, but also forces us to confront the disturbing insight that language fails to fully convey the experience. In addition, for Levi the categories that are easily placed in opposition in everyday life; good/evil; moral/immoral; innocent victim/guilty perpetrator, and so forth were eroded in the inverted world of Auschwitz. Levi sustained and developed his analysis of the moral ambiguity of Auschwitz in his final work The Drowned and the Saved, especially with his reflection on the “Gray Zone.” Frankl’s version offers a striking contrast to Levi’s. For Frankl the reality of Auschwitz required no radical revision of moral categories. In the words of the renowned Harvard psychologist Gordon Allport, Frankl rendered “hunger, humiliation, fear and deep anger at injustice … tolerable by closely guarded images of beloved persons, by religion, by a grim sense of humor, and even by glimpses of the healing beauties of nature.” Allport was also moved by Frankl’s ability to make “larger sense out of his apparently senseless suffering” by facing “fully the ubiquity of suffering and the forces of evil,” and thus deriving “a surprisingly hopeful view of man’s capacity to transcend his predicament and discover an adequate guiding truth.”1
New German Critique, 2012
Journal of Analytical Psychology, 2006
... and moving through the works of Barbara Hannah, Paul Stern, Vincent Brome, Gerhard Wehr, Gene... more ... and moving through the works of Barbara Hannah, Paul Stern, Vincent Brome, Gerhard Wehr, Gene Nameche and RD Laing, Frank McLynn, and ... can be made is difficult to determine at this point, but one would hope that the recently established Philemon Foundation, which ...
American Journal of Psychiatry, 2008
Writing biographies (life stories) for a long time had been a male hegemonic project-writing the ... more Writing biographies (life stories) for a long time had been a male hegemonic project-writing the lives of great (white) men. Ever since Plutarch and Sueton composed their vitae of the greats of classical antiquity, to the medieval obsession with the hagiographies of holy men (and a few women) and saints, Vasari's lives of great Renaissance artists, down to the French encyclopedists, Dr. Johnson and Lytton Strachey, as well as Ranke and Droysen the genre of biographical writing (“the representation of self ” or “the reconstruction of a human life”) has become increasingly more refined. In the twentieth century male predominance has become contested and the (collective) lives of women, minorities and ordinary people are now the focus of biographical writing. This volume of Contemporary Austrian Studies offers a cross section of Austrian lives and biographical approaches to recent Austrian history. Here are what may be called traditional biographies of leading political figures thr...
To be a Jewish citizen of Austria puts one in danger of being impaled on one horn of a dilemma or... more To be a Jewish citizen of Austria puts one in danger of being impaled on one horn of a dilemma or the other. Viktor Frankl had a fascinating “all-too-Austrian life.” He was born in Leopoldstadt the Jewish section of Vienna on March 26, 1905. He died of heart failure in Vienna on September 2, 1997 at the age of 93. His parents were both assimilated Jews and his father was a member of the civil service with socialist political leanings. From these humble beginnings Frankl eventually developed a..
Answering AuschwitzPrimo Levi's Science and Humanism after the Fall, 2011
Suicide brings on many changes. A life ends abruptly and the suicide is interpreted differently d... more Suicide brings on many changes. A life ends abruptly and the suicide is interpreted differently depending on circumstances and opinion. Sometimes it is seen as profoundly irrational, absurd and tragic, other times, as a heroic last act of an individual taking action to determine their fate. Often we aestheticize another’s suicide with heroism or capitulations. But no matter how we view suicide, a person’s death necessarily becomes the capstone that ‘‘backshadows’’ the entire existence of the deceased. It comes as no surprise that suicide among Holocaust survivors is high. A few of the most recognizable figures are Bruno Bettelheim, Paul Celan, Jerzy Kosinski, Jean Amery, Tadeusz Borowski, and apparently Primo Levi. Since so many survivors choose suicide, it is almost considered a truism that their camp experience led them to make the choice. However, a closer look at the ‘‘deaths’’ of Primo Levi and Jean Amery unveils a great deal of ambiguity.1 Although a consensus seems to have emerged that Levi committed suicide, the uncertainty surrounding his death has left the issue open to doubt. For example, Diego Gambetta has investigated Levi’s death and provides us with a very clear picture of Levi’s ‘‘Last Moments’’:
The Psychoanalytic Review, 2001
Psychoanalytic Psychology, 2007
Psychoanalytic Psychology, 2006
In this article the author describes the relationship of Viktor Frankl, the famous Holocaust surv... more In this article the author describes the relationship of Viktor Frankl, the famous Holocaust survivor and founder of logotherapy, with the Big 3 (Rollo May, Carl Rogers, and Abraham Maslow) of the American humanistic psychology movement. From the perspective of his quasi-religious meaning-centered logotherapy, Frankl criticized the humanistic psychology movement for overlooking the transcendent nature of human experience. The author
Journal of Contemporary History, 2000
Viktor Frankl gained international recognition based upon his heroic survival of Auschwitz and hi... more Viktor Frankl gained international recognition based upon his heroic survival of Auschwitz and his subsequent claim to have founded the third Viennese school of psychotherapy — logotherapy. This article revises this traditional view of Frankl by examining how logotherapy was actually developed under the auspices of the nazi-sponsored Goering Institute in the 1930s. In addition, his survival of Auschwitz is problematized by the questionable medical experimentation he performed in 1940–42 on Jews who had committed suicide in order to avoid deportation, and his limited (three-day) experience in Auschwitz. This new contextualization explains the mass appeal of Viktor Frankl as both a peculiar case of the Austrian burial of the ‘ambiguous past’ and the longing amongst Americans for an uplifting version of the Holocaust.
Journal of Contemporary History, 2002
Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 2003
Viktor Frankl's Auschwitz memoir has been criticized for misrepresenting the cultural signifi... more Viktor Frankl's Auschwitz memoir has been criticized for misrepresenting the cultural significance of the Holocaust. “The real hero of Man's Search for Meaning,” Lawrence Langer once remarked, was “not man but Viktor Frankl.” Incorporating little-known biographical details and an analysis of how Frankl “worked through” his experiences in earlier writings, this article illuminates how Frankl arrived at his particular version of survival. It reinforces Langer's contention that Frankl distorted the reality of Auschwitz in an attempt to prove his own psychological and philosophical theories.
Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 2006