Viktor Frankl probably needs little introduction to readers. He is,
of course, the originator of the so-called third school of Viennese psychiatry,
logotherapy. He is also well known as a concentration camp survivor and a
psychiatrist who saw people as essentially meaning-seeking beings. Rubin
Battino has attempted to bring this complex and dynamic character to life on the
stage in a play that is sometimes conducted like a Frankl seminar. We see him
as himself interrogating his own past and this leads me to consider what it is
about this medium that can access or reveal different truths. This is not a
straightforward biography, it is not particularly linear, and is not inclusive.
It is a sketch, an impression, a glimpse. It plays with time, place, person and
location. It is emblematic rather than conclusive.

As a onetime
playwright myself, with my wife, Twilla, I should add, I have come to know that
the dramatic form is both a concentrated essence and an abstract fiction. This
seems to me to be the value of Battino’s work. I have not seen the play
produced, but reading the script it is possible to imagine the scenes. I know
what Frankl looked like although I have never seen film of him and do not know
what he sounded like or whether he had any mannerisms, but I am able to animate
the photographic image I have of him and see him bounding across a stage,
interacting furiously and energetically with his interlocutors, showing
gestures of tenderness and empathy, and it is in my imagination that the play
comes alive.

The play
demonstrates clearly and memorably what psychiatry can be when living out the
best of its nature. I would imagine that to see it in the theatre would
rejuvenate many a jaded mental health worker. We see someone so involved with
the human condition that he cannot help himself. He boils and bubbles with
ideas. I have again to interject my own imagination, but I think he must have
spoken very quickly, it is just how I see him.

Battino should be
congratulated for this work. There are certain elements that might be a little
stiff to a dramaturg, but to an audience who would willing suspend disbelief it
could be a completely engaging experience. I would hope that many more of us
might be inspired to explore drama as a means of knowing that can illuminate
what it is to be human. Frankl, after all, was concerned with exactly that, and
he would probably approve of the emotive and cognitive impact of the play. He
might even find meaning in it.

© 2003 Mark Welch

Dr Mark Welch is
currently a Senior Lecturer and Postgraduate Coordinator in The School of Nursing
at the University of Canberra, Australia. His PhD investigated the
representation of madness in popular film, and his other research interests
include the mental health of refugees and victims of torture, and the history
of psychiatric epistemology.

Categories: Memoirs, Psychology