The Viktor E. Frankl association, a Valencian organisation whose main focus is on understanding the meaning of our lives, as well as finding ways to confront adversity during difficult times, has organised a charity dinner with the objective of raising funds to help people who are struggling with adversity. The dinner was held in the restaurant ‘La Ferradura’ and organised by the president of the organisation, José Luis Guinot, and Paz Monfort. The event was attended by more than a hundred friends, such as Tania de la Torre, Emilio Gascó, Pilar Ríos, Paloma del Moral, Juan Maldonado, Maria José Esparza, Lourdes Herrero, Fernando Alonso, Carmen Lasso de la Vega, Samantha Hawkins, Alfonso Pascual, Cristina Maldonado, Tatiana Monsonís, Sesé de Nalda and Ricardo Tabernero, brother of the founder of the organization in Valencia, Sebastián Tabernero Capella. Many of them were the lucky ones who won amazing prizes in the raffle. For whoever is interested in supporting the organisation, or in buying lottery tickets, you can do it at CAIXABANK (ES48)  2100  0727  8702 0026 9823.

The Viktor E. Frankl association was born in 2001 and it is composed of experts in different fields (doctors, psychologists, nurses, lawyers, pedagogists…), that help giving meaning to the lives of those people that struggle with powerful suffering, a serious disease or the mourning of the loss of a loved one. For this purpose, the association features a free Guidance Service and, more recently, it has created a Hospital Volunteering.

Moreover, it organises training activities and has created the “Observatorio del Duelo” (The Mourning Observatory), with the objective of promoting research work. The prevention, sensibilization and dissemination are the other fields where the association works intensively in order to anticipate existential emptiness and its manifestations: depression, aggressiveness and addictions.

The association takes the name of a psychiatrist from Vienna, who survived four concentration camps, author of “Man’s Search for Meaning” (considered as one of the ten more influential books in the United States). Frankl was the founder of Speech Therapy: a branch of psychotherapy focused on the search for meaning which gives great importance to the spiritual dimension of the human being and to the values and tasks that they can carry out. However, Speech Therapy is “more than therapy”: it is an “education in responsibility” that helps women and men from today answer in a significant way to any circumstance that life sets out for them, which results in individual, family and social health.

Report by Carlos Catalán

Article copyright ‘24/7 Valencia’