Stephen J. Costello, Ph.D. is the founder and director of the Viktor Frankl Institute of Ireland, about whom Dr. Viktor Frankl’s grandson said that he gives ‘the authentic interpretation of my grandfather’s thought’. He has been described by fellow philosopher Richard Kearney as ‘one of the most important philosophers working in Ireland today’. Dr. Costello is a philosopher, corporate consultant, logotherapist/ existential analyst, and a best-selling author.
Education
Formerly a lecturer in philosophy and psychology, with over twenty-five years experience, in University College Dublin, Trinity College, and the Dublin Business School, Dr Costello was educated in St. Gerard’s School, Castleknock College, and University College Dublin, where he read Philosophy and Spanish Language and Literature, gaining BA, MA, and PhD degrees in Philosophy, before training as a psychoanalyst, graduating with a Diploma in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy at the Irish Institute of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (now an MSc in St. James’ Hospital), and later as a logotherapist/existential analyst. He also spent a short period of time at the Honourable Society of King’s Inns. He was a student counsellor and member of the sub-finance committee of the Association of College Societies while at university. Dr. Costello’s doctorate was on psychoanalysis and hermeneutics, in which he specialized in the thought of Paul Ricoeur, the famous French philosopher, whom he met on several occasions.
