The Vienna Theorists
Summer 2003
An Austrian Experience
By Sara Swift Tharpe, Class of 2004

I stood in the empty, hollow room. A rickety bed frame sat in silence as my gaze traveled down the long wooden planks that still brought order to this space. The planks supported four weary walls, old and worn from bearing witness to the atrocities that took place here. The dilapidated roof had once provided little else than a sign to closing eyes of another day survived. Stale air lingered. Dust had gathered. The room was bare, naked, stripped of its purpose and its reason for being. Its only hope was to catch a passerby and suck them in for a moment – a moment that brought life and breath to this room – life and breath that did not exist here before. This room caught my eyes and engulfed my senses. I could only stand in the doorway and imagine.

Like this old bunkhouse at Mauthausen, Austria’s sole concentration camp, Vienna engulfed my senses. An invigorating city abounding with history and culture, Vienna is the ideal location in which to gain a greater understanding on the “Greats” - Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, Victor Frankl and Jacob Moreno. If “summer” and “study” must meet (and they do in the WFU Counseling Department!), there is not a more exciting place for them to converge. And thus, ten students and two professors from the Wake Forest Counseling Department made the annual journey to Vienna, Austria this past summer. And what a journey it was! According to Jeffrey Kottler, the author of a book we read for our class, Travel That Can Change Your Life, “If the journey is successful, you return a changed person.” Indeed, our travels proved an amazing source of insight and truly a time to gain perspective on one’s life.

Vienna was a very invigorating city, very warm and accepting and full of life. An orderly environment, including a well-structured transportation system, coupled with friendly people put me very much at ease. At the same time, the abundance of history and culture continued to stimulate my mind. Museums of all kinds, as well as institutes of learning and historical sites lined each street. Even the undiscovered or mis-marked alleys and side streets claimed interesting sites. For example, the Mozart Museum was hidden down a small side street in an unmarked building. Had we missed it, we would have missed a very valuable experience listening to sonatas and concertos Mozart composed in that very apartment. Being immersed in the Viennese culture it is easy to understand how so many great minds and ideas were birthed in this area. Although Vienna was probably a different city during World War II, I believe it would have been hard to stifle the insights of Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, Jay Moreno, and Viktor Frankl. Not only did they have each others’ ideas to challenge them but the experience of war itself.

It was not until I arrived in Vienna that I was able to grasp what a truly valuable experience this was for me as a counseling student. I knew that I would learn something from my travels but I expected to benefit more from the exposure to a new city and the travel itself than from what there was to be learned about the Vienna theorists. But my time in Vienna has given me a richer knowledge of Freud, Adler, Moreno and Frankl – far richer than anything I could have ever read in a book. The student presentations were a good refresher and then the outside experts and our field trips really made each theorist and his theory come alive. Our visit with Elly Frankl, Victor Frankl’s widow, was particularly inspiring. This wonderful woman welcomed us into her home and shared her life and Viktor’s with us. Evidence of his life’s accomplishments was both displayed in their home and visible in Elly. She exuded admiration and respect for her late husband and her love for him and his work seemed both pure and unconditional. I can only imagine the life and the love they shared.

I could only stand in the doorway and imagine. My mind drifted for a moment causing my eyes to shift their gaze to a far window of the room. Beyond the dark, dank walls of this room, orange-flamed blossoms and sunlit daffodils bore the gentle mist lingering in the air. Green, luscious sprigs of new grass covered the earth like a velvet carpet leading to a thick row of trees in the distance. The crawling fingers of fog caressed these young signs of life and protected them from the more violent clouds above. Meaning, purpose, life, when we look beyond our walls.