Fundamentals of Frankl's theory of personality. Semantic theory of personality by V. Frankl. Thus, the key concepts of existentialist philosophy are "existence", "existence" and "transcendence". The main ideas of philosophy are grouped around them.

Theory of personal Frankl includes three main. components: the doctrine of the pursuit of meaning, the meaning of life and free will. Main the thesis of the doctrine of the pursuit of meaning says: a person strives to find meaning and feels existential frustration or vacuum if his attempts remain unrealized. The desire for meaning Frankl considers as an innate motivational tendency inherent in all people and is the main. driving force of behavior and personality development. Lack of meaning gives rise to people. a state of existential vacuum, which is the cause of noogenic neuroses. The latter are rooted not in the psychic, but in the spiritual sphere of human existence.

Ch. the thesis of the doctrine of the meaning of life - the life of people. cannot lose its meaning under any circumstances; the meaning of life can always be found. With t.z. Frankl, meaning is not subjective, man. does not invent it, but finds it in the world, in the surrounding reality. Franchi offers ways by which people. can make his life meaningful: 1) with the help of what we give to life (in the sense of our creative work); 2) with the help of what we take from the world (in the sense of experiencing values); 3) through the position that we take in relation to the fate that we are not able to change. Accordingly, three groups of values, creativity, feelings and attitudes are distinguished. Values, in turn, are semantic universals crystallized as a result of generalization typical situations with which mankind had to face in history. In finding meanings, conscience helps a person, which is an intuitive ability to find the only meaning of a situation.

Main the thesis of the doctrine of free will says that people. is free to find and realize the meaning of life, even if his freedom is limited by objective circumstances. It's about about the freedom of in relation to their drives, heredity, factors and circumstances external. environment. According to Frankl, pers. free because it has two foundations, psychol. characteristics: the ability for self-transcendence and self-detachment, that is, the ability to go beyond oneself, rise above the situation, look at oneself from the outside. Freedom, from t.z. Frankl, is closely connected with responsibility, primarily for the correct finding and realization of the meaning of one's life.

Psychotherapeutic. aspect of L. is to help the client find the lost meaning of life and thereby get rid of noogenic neuroses.

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The existential approach to counseling is not internally homogeneous. There is no consensus among existentialists on how to formulate a theory to unify their ideas about helping others. Existentialism is represented in the work of some prominent American theorists, including Sydney Jorard, Abraham Maslow, Irvin Yalom, Rollo May, Clemmon Vontress, and Clara Moustakas. One of the famous existential counseling theorists is Viktor Frankl (Frankl, 1962).

Viktor Frankl was born in 1905 in Vienna, Austria. In 1930 he received a medical degree, in 1949 he received a Ph.D. from the University of Vienna. Frankl founded the Youth Counseling Centers in Vienna and directed them from 1928 to 1938.

Although Frankl was a student of Freud, under the influence of philosophers such as Heidegger, Scheler and Legan, he became interested in existentialism in the 1930s. As early as 1938, he began to formulate his ideas for an existential approach to counseling, using the term logotherapy (Greek word logo implies a search for meaning).

According to Frankl, the pursuit of meaning is the central motive human existence. People shape their lives by the choices they make. Even in themselves bad situations it is possible to make important decisions regarding life and death, such as decisions to fight for survival. Existentialism considers a person as the author of his life: a person's life is limited exactly to the extent that each person limits it. People are responsible for the choices they make. Thus, people who highly value creativity, service to others, friendship, personal growth very emotionally feel complete unity with the entire universe. On the other hand, those who prefer to indulge their weaknesses may feel abnormal and worthless. They may experience what Frankl (1959) called an existential vacuum (the feeling that life has lost all meaning). In extreme cases, these people can develop a disorder called noogenic neurosis by Frankl (manifested in a sense of the futility of existence).

Frankl believed that each time has its own neurosis and each time should have its own psychotherapy. The modern neurotic patient suffers from neurotic frustration, which arises from the experience of a person, a sense of the meaninglessness of his own existence. The will to meaning is a basic human need, and the impossibility of satisfying this need leads to "neogenic" (spiritual) neurosis. Consequently, the task of logotherapy - therapy of the spirit - is to address specific human phenomena, to its "noetic", spiritual principle. Psychotherapy should not be directed to the symptoms, but to the personality of the patient, to his attitudes, to the development of higher spiritual values ​​that will make him free and natural, able to make his own decisions. The realization of the highest spiritual values ​​will save a person from the "existential vacuum", will allow him to comprehend the true meaning of his own existence.

Thus, the patient acquires a new experience that promotes personal integration through communication with other people, with a psychotherapist and a psychotherapeutic group. realizing own feelings and the finiteness of human existence, a person becomes able to make those choices and make those decisions that increase his life opportunities and are the most “healthy”.

According to Frankl, "the meaning of life is constantly changing, but it never disappears" meaning goes beyond self-actualization and exists on three levels:

• a) the highest meaning (at the level of the universe);
• b) the meaning of the moment;
• c) common everyday meaning. We can discover the meaning of life in three ways:
  • By committing an act - that is, achieving a goal;
  • By experiencing value (admiring the creations of nature, culture and love;
  • · By way of suffering - that is, by searching for one's own adequate attitude to fatal inevitability.

The desire for a person to search for and realize the meaning of his life is an innate motivational tendency inherent in all people and is the main engine of behavior and personality development.

The existential approach has at its disposal less methods than other counseling models. However, this allows existential consultants to borrow ideas as well as to use a wide range of personal and professional skills. “To treat people only as an object of application of methods necessarily implies manipulation of them,” and manipulation is contrary to what the existentialists proclaim. The relationship with the client is the most effective and powerful method. Ideally, the consultant leaves his own needs aside and focuses on the client. In counseling, the counselor is open and self-disclosing in an attempt to help the client become more accessible to personal feelings and experiences. The emphasis in relationships is on authenticity, honesty and spontaneity. In addition, the method of confrontation is used - the client is faced with the need to accept the idea of ​​personal responsibility of everyone for their own lives. The method of paradoxical intention is the activation of humor. By this method, based on the restoration of the basic belief in being, an existential reorientation is achieved. Existential counselors borrow techniques from other models, such as thought experiments, awareness exercises, and goal-setting activities. Through this process, the client is able to more clearly understand the meaning of life, understanding what choices he makes in this moment.

The areas of application of logotherapy are divided into specific and non-specific. Psychotherapy of various kinds of diseases is a non-specific field of application. Specific - noogenic neuroses, generated by the loss of the meaning of life. In these cases, the method of Sokat's dialogue is used, which makes it possible to push the patient to discover for himself an adequate meaning of life. Logotherapy aims to expand the ability to see the full range of potential meanings that any situation can contain. The key question is how a person finds the meaning of his life. Possible positive meanings: values ​​are semantic universals that are the result of a generalization of typical results in the history of society.

• Values ​​of creativity (the main way of realization is labor),
• Values ​​of experience (... love),
• Attitude values ​​(people finding the meaning of their existence in situations that seem hopeless).

Logotherapy highlights the key problem - the problem of responsibility: having found the meaning, a person is responsible for the implementation of this unique meaning. Freedom rises above any necessity. Man is free in relation to his drives, heredity and factors external environment. He is free to realize the meaning of life.

The theory of logotherapy and existential analysis created by V. Frankl is complex system philosophical, psychological and medical views on human nature, mechanisms of personality development in normal and pathological conditions, ways and means of correcting anomalies in personality development. Frankl's theory includes three main parts: the doctrine of the pursuit of meaning, the doctrine of the meaning of life, and the doctrine of free will.

Frankl considers the desire for meaning and realization by a person of the meaning of his life as an innate motivational tendency inherent in all people and being the main engine of behavior and personality development. From life observations, clinical practice, and empirical data, Frankl concludes that in order to live and actively act, a person must believe in the meaning that his actions have. The absence of meaning gives rise to a state in a person, which Frankl calls an existential vacuum. It is the existential vacuum, according to Frankl's observations, according to Frankl's clinical observations, that is the cause that gives rise to a specific "noogenic neurosis". A necessary condition for mental health is a certain level of tension that arises between a person, on the one hand, and localized in outside world objective meaning that he has to realize, on the other. “People devoid of tension tend to create it, and this can take either healthy or unhealthy forms.” It is possible to formulate the main thesis of the doctrine of the desire for meaning: a person strives to gain meaning and feels a vacuum if this desire remains unfulfilled.

The meaning cannot be pleasure, because it is only an internal state of a person, according to the same logic, a person cannot strive for happiness, he can only look for reasons for happiness. "From an existential-analytical point of view - in contrast to the psychoanalytic - it does not strive for pleasure, but for values." Frankl introduces ideas about values ​​that crystallized as a result of generalization of typical situations that mankind had to face in history. This allows us to generalize possible ways through which a person can make his life meaningful: firstly, with the help of what we give to life (in the sense of our creative work), secondly, with the help of what we take from the world (in the sense of experiencing values), and thirdly, through the position that we take in relation to fate, which we are not able to change. Accordingly, three groups of values ​​are distinguished:

• 1) values ​​of creativity,
• 2) values ​​of experience,
• 3) relationship values.
• 1) The main way of realization of creativity is labor. The meaning of human labor lies primarily in what a person does beyond his prescribed official duties, what he brings as a person to his work.
• 2) Among the values ​​of experience, Frankl dwells in detail on love, which has a huge value potential. Love is a relationship at the level of a spiritual, semantic dimension, the experience of another person in his originality and uniqueness, the knowledge of his depth of essence. However, love is not necessary condition or the best option meaningfulness of life. An individual who has never loved and never been loved can nevertheless shape his life in a very meaningful way. 3) A person has to resort to the values ​​of attitude when he is at the mercy of circumstances that he is not able to change. But under any circumstances, a person is free to take a meaningful position in relation to them and give his suffering a deep life meaning.

Teaching about the meaning of life. In his works, Frankl emphasizes that what is important is not the question of the meaning of life in general, but the question of the specific meaning of the life of a given person at a given moment. The question of how a person finds his meaning is central to the practice of logotherapy. Meanings are not given to us, we cannot choose meanings for ourselves, we can only choose a vocation in which we will find meaning. However, finding meaning is half the battle; it still needs to be implemented. Man is responsible for realizing the unique meaning of his life.

So, the main thesis of Frankl's teaching is that a person's life cannot lose its meaning under any circumstances; the meaning of life can always be found.

The main thesis of Frankl's third doctrine - the doctrine of free will - states that a person is free to find and realize the meaning of life, even if his freedom is noticeably limited by objective circumstances. Frankl speaks of man's freedom in relation to his instincts, to heredity and the circumstances of the external environment.

Freedom in relation to drives manifests itself in the ability to say "no", to accept or reject them. important question The doctrine of free will is the question for which a person has freedom - it is the freedom to take responsibility for one's own destiny, the freedom to listen to one's conscience and decide one's own destiny.

After a brief interest in psychoanalysis in his youth, Viktor Frankl began his career in the late 1930s. work on your own concept. Its final design took place in the extreme conditions of the fascist concentration camps, whose prisoner Frankl was in 1942-1945. Thus, his theoretical and psychotherapeutic views and technologies have been seriously tested both by his own experience and the experience of his patients, the psychological and philosophical views of his colleagues and students.

Frankl's theory of personality has been expounded in several books, perhaps the most famous of which is Man's Search for Meaning, published in the late 1950s. and reprinted many times around the world. This theory consists of three parts - the doctrine of the pursuit of meaning, the doctrine of the meaning of life and the doctrine of free will. At the same time, he considers the desire to understand the meaning of life to be innate, and it is this motive that is the leading force in the development of the individual. Meanings are not universal, they are unique for each person at every moment of his life. The meaning of life is always associated with the realization of a person's capabilities and in this regard is close to Maslow's concept of self-actualization. However, Frankl's essential difference is the idea that the acquisition and realization of meaning is always connected with the external world, with the creative activity of a person in it and his productive achievements. At the same time, he, like other existentialists, emphasized that the lack of meaning in life or the impossibility of realizing it leads to neurosis, giving rise to states of existential vacuum and existential frustration in a person.

Frankl's theory of personality centers its position on the doctrine of values, i.e. concepts that carry the generalized experience of mankind about the meaning of typical situations. He identifies three classes of values ​​that make it possible to make a person's life meaningful: the values ​​of creativity (for example, work), the values ​​of experience (for example, love) and the values ​​of an attitude consciously accepted in relation to those critical life circumstances that we are not able to change.

The meaning of life can be found in any of these values ​​and the actions generated by them. It follows from this that there are no such circumstances and situations in which human life would lose its meaning. Finding meaning in a particular situation Frankl calls "awareness of the possibilities of action in relation to a given situation." It is on this awareness that logotherapy is directed, which helps a person to see the whole range of potential meanings contained in a situation, and choose the one that is consistent with his conscience. At the same time, the meaning must not only be found, but also realized, since its realization is connected with the realization of the person himself.

In this realization of meaning, human activity must be absolutely free. Disagreeing with the idea of ​​universal determinism, Frankl, like other psychologists and philosophers (Heidegger, Sartre, Maslow) who share his position, seeks to remove a person from the biological laws that postulate this determinism. In such attempts, scientists turned to the mind of man, and to his morality, creativity, etc. Frankl also introduces the concept of "noetic level" of human existence.

Recognizing that heredity and external circumstances set certain boundaries for the possibilities of behavior, he emphasizes the existence of three levels of human existence: biological, psychological and poetic, or spiritual, level. It is in the spiritual existence that those meanings and values ​​are found that play a decisive role in relation to the lower levels. Thus, he formulates the idea of ​​the possibility of self-determination, which is associated with the existence of a person in spiritual world. In this regard, Frankl's concept of "noetic level" can be seen as broader in relation to those that associate free will with any one kind of spiritual life.

Viktor Frankl (born 1905) is another prominent personologist and psychotherapist of our time. He entered psychology as the founder of the third Vienna School of Psychotherapy. The first Viennese school was the psychoanalysis of Z. Freud, the second school of "individual psychology" was created by A. Adler. V. Frankl - a Viennese clinician, was engaged in psychotherapeutic practice, by the end of the 30s. notes that it is not the problems of the repressed that are more likely to concern his clients sexual desires, as in the days of Z. Freud, but the loss of the meaning of life, life values, loneliness, etc. He formulates the position that each time has its own psychological problems and neurosis, and by the beginning of the Second World War, he was finishing the manuscript of his first book, “Medicine of the Soul,” where he developed the main ideas new concept personality. At the center of it is the doctrine of the innate tendency to search for the meaning of life.

But the war brings terrible trials to the scientist: for four years he becomes a prisoner of fascist concentration camps. The experience of human suffering and the "stubbornness of the spirit" that helped to survive in the death camps highlights in a new way the main ideas of his teaching.

V. Frankl builds the building of personality psychology in a different way. In his theory of existential analysis, several components can be distinguished: about the spiritual essence of man and free will; meaning of life and values; about logotherapy. Let's consider them in more detail.

The doctrine of the spiritual essence of man is the main core of the creative heritage of V. Frankl, around which he builds his other theoretical concepts: "Man is more than a psyche: man is a spirit." Each of us feels, realizes the spiritual principle in ourselves. But traditionally the phenomenon of spirituality was comprehended in theology, philosophy, literature, art. V. Frankl, following K. Jung and K. Rogers, introduces the concept of spirituality into the categorical structure of modern psychology and highlights its most significant manifestations and characteristics. Spirituality is considered by him as a spiritual principle, which, like a spark of God, is embedded in the soul of every person and unites all people. It is the co-presence of being to everything that is.

In the sphere of human spirituality, the author identifies layers of conscious and subconscious spirituality. The layer of subconscious spirituality contains the sources and roots of everything conscious. "The spirit rests on the unconscious." V. Frankl analyzes the leading manifestations of the unconscious spiritual. Among them, he refers primarily to conscience, or moral intuition. Conscience discovers something that does not yet exist, but only should exist. This is spiritual anticipation, anticipation. God is in the human soul, he prompts "what is needed." “However, what is needed is always only one.”

Further, the spiritual unconscious, according to V. Frankl, manifests itself in cognitive and artistic intuition. “Inspiration is rooted in the realm of unconscious spirituality. The artist creates by inspiration, and therefore the sources of his creativity are and remain in darkness, which consciousness is not able to fully illuminate.

Another sphere of manifestation of the unconscious spirituality of a person is love. V. Frankl notes that complete spiritual co-presence or an event is possible only between beings equal to each other. He calls the complete surrender of himself to another without a trace love. This is the ability to understand a person in his essence, uniqueness and in his potentialities. Love, with its spiritual gaze, anticipates the unrealized prospects of personal and spiritual development man, reveals in him what can only be.

Intentionality, or the original individual openness to the world. “The essence of a person includes his focus on something or someone, on a deed or on a person, on an idea or on a person! And only insofar as we are intentional, insofar as we are existential... A person is not here to observe or reflect himself, he is here to represent himself, to sacrifice himself, to give himself knowing and loving.

The desire for self-transcendence, or a person’s going beyond himself, in his direction to realize himself in his values, meanings, actions;

The desire for self-reflection, or self-regulation.

The internal source of these impulses is free will. V. Frankl's doctrine of spirituality and free will are interconnected. Spirituality, freedom and responsibility are considered by him as the main existentials of human existence. The spirituality of a person is realized through his inner freedom. “Necessity and freedom are not localized on the same level: freedom rises, is built on top of any necessity. Caused chains are always and everywhere closed and at the same time open in a higher dimension, open to higher “causation”. Only divine providence rises above free will.

V. Frankl characterizes the freedom of a person in relation to inclinations, heredity and circumstances of the external environment. In interaction with all these factors, a person can develop his attitude, position, say “yes” or “no” to them. But freedom is not limited to these three categories, they are understood more broadly. It is the freedom to take responsibility for one's destiny, the freedom to change, to be like this, to become different. A person decides for himself, and a decision for himself is the formation of himself.

The theory of existential analysis recognizes a person as free, but only conditionally. It is often limited by subjective circumstances. Realizing his freedom, he makes choices and takes responsibility for their implementation. Freedom devoid of responsibility degenerates into arbitrariness. A person is responsible for the authenticity of his being, for finding and realizing the meaning of his life, for his life.

Another direction in the theory of existential analysis is the doctrine of the meaning of life and values. Summarizing his life and clinical observations, the author formulates the thesis that a person strives to find the meaning of life, and feels a vacuum, or frustration, if this desire remains unfulfilled. This primordial spiritual aspiration is inherent in all people, it is the main engine of behavior and personality development, but it is far from being always sufficiently clearly realized. The meaning of life for a person always exists, even under special, most difficult and hopeless circumstances. If a mental patient has a close emotional connection with any person, his life is already justified. For a person, the meaning of his being is not subjective, he does not invent it, but finds it in the world, in objective reality, but this meaning is unique and inimitable for everyone.

V. Frankl speaks about the specific meaning of the life of a given person in a given situation. Any period life path individual, each situation carries its own meaning, different for different people, but for a person it is the only true one. Conscience, i.e. moral intuition, as well as intuition - cognitive and artistic - help in finding meanings. V. Frankl introduces the concept of super-sense, i.e. the meaning of the Universe, the meaning of being, the meaning of history. This category is transcendent to human existence, therefore we cannot know about it, we can only assume that it is realized through history, the destinies of nations, individual people.

The meaning of life can always be found for each person. But finding your unique meaning in specific circumstances is only half the battle. We still need to implement it. For this, free will is given to find and realize it, even if freedom is noticeably limited by objective circumstances. Man is responsible for realizing the unique meaning of his life.

V. Frankl considers the most generalized meanings of life as life values. He distinguishes three groups: the values ​​of creativity, the values ​​of experiences and the values ​​of relationships. This series reflects the three main ways in which you can find the meaning of life. The first is what he gives to the world in his creations, the second is what he takes from the world in his encounters and experiences; the third is the position he takes in relation to the other or situations.

Among these groups of values, priority belongs to the values ​​of creativity, which are realized through labor. The values ​​of creativity are associated with the original spiritual impulse of a person to transcendence, the desire to go beyond oneself and realize oneself in deeds, creations, and service to people. In accordance with this, self-actualization, according to V. Frankl, is not an end in itself, but one of the results creative activity. The value of experiences is another way of gaining meaning in life. In this regard, V. Frankl reveals the value potential of love and the potential of suffering, which act as sources of emotional and spiritual saturation. At the same time, both love and suffering are not a necessary condition for meaningful life. An individual who has never loved and never been loved can nevertheless organize his life in a very meaningful way.

The third group is the value of attitude, which V. Frankl attaches to highest value. A person, he writes, is far from always able to change circumstances, but it is in his power to change his attitude towards them. Under any circumstances, he is free to take a meaningful position towards circumstances, to raise or minimize their significance for himself.

Once we add relational values ​​to other categories of values, it becomes clear that human existence can never be intrinsically meaningless. Human life retains its meaning until the end - until the last minute.

And, finally, one more direction in the creative heritage of V. Frankl - proposed by him new method psychotherapy - logotherapy. Logotherapy (from the ancient Greek "logos" - meaning) aims to help a person in his search for the meaning of life. According to logotherapy, the struggle for the meaning of life is the main driving force of man. The absence of meaning gives rise to a state in a person, which V. Frankl called "existential frustration". Subjectively, it is experienced as a sensation inner emptiness, meaninglessness of existence. This state can deepen and give rise to specific "puffed neuroses" (from the Greek "pus", meaning spirit, meaning). Empowered neuroses are causally rooted in a special spiritual sphere of the personality, in which meanings are localized. V. Frankl called it the "poetic dimension" of a person.

Logotherapy aims to help a person find his one and only meaning in a given situation. And he must do it himself. Logotherapy aims to empower clients to see the full range of potential meanings that a given situation may contain. It uses the method of spiritually-oriented dialogue, which allows you to push the client to discover adequate meaning for himself. V. Frankl showed that the greatest practical achievements of logotherapy are associated with the values ​​of relationships, with people finding the meaning of their existence in situations that seem extremely difficult or hopeless.

The author describes cases when a psychotherapist helps a client find meaning in suffering, change their attitude towards them. “I once had an elderly medical practitioner consult with me about his severe depression. He could not survive the loss of his wife, who died two years ago and whom he loved more than anything in the world ... I put the question to him: “What would happen, doctor, if you died first, and your wife would have survived ? “Oh,” he said, “it would be terrible for her, how she would suffer ...”. He didn't say a word, just shook my hand and silently left. Suffering somehow ceases to be suffering the moment its meaning is revealed, such as the meaning of sacrifice.

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The theory of logotherapy and existential analysis created by Frankl is a complex system of philosophical, psychological and medical views on the nature and essence of a person, the mechanisms of personality development in normal and pathological conditions and on the ways and means of correcting anomalies in personality development. In his theoretical building, Frankl distinguishes three main parts: the doctrine of the pursuit of meaning, the doctrine of the meaning of life, and the doctrine of free will.

Frankl considers the desire to find and realize the meaning of one's life by a person as an innate motivational tendency inherent in all people and being the main engine of behavior and personality development. In order to live and act actively, a person must believe in the meaning that his actions have. "Even a suicide believes in the meaning - if not of life, then of death." Otherwise, he would not be able to lift a finger in order to realize his plan.

The absence of meaning gives rise to a state in a person, which Frankl calls an existential vacuum. It is the existential vacuum, according to Frankl's observations, supported by numerous clinical studies, that is the reason that generates in on a large scale specific "noogenic neuroses" that spread in the post-war period in the countries of Western and of Eastern Europe and on an even larger scale in the USA, although some varieties of such neuroses (for example, "unemployment neurosis") have been described even earlier. A necessary condition for mental health is a certain level of tension that arises between a person, on the one hand, and the objective meaning localized in the outside world, which he has to realize, on the other hand: “Today people are freed from tension. They owe this, first of all, to the loss of meaning, which I describe as an existential vacuum, or the frustration of striving for meaning.

“People devoid of tension tend to create it, and this can take either healthy or unhealthy forms. As far as healthy forms are concerned, the function of sports is exactly what I see as allowing people to fulfill their need for tension by voluntarily making demands on themselves that they are deprived of in an undemanding society. Moreover, sport, it seems to me, includes a certain amount of asceticism. As far as unhealthy forms of creating tension, in particular by young people, one can refer to the type of people who are called beatniks and hooligans. These people are risking their lives in the same way as those who are addicted to surfing and for this purpose leave school and skip classes.

The foregoing allows us to formulate the main thesis of the doctrine of the desire for meaning: a person strives to gain meaning and feels frustration or vacuum if this desire remains unfulfilled.

The doctrine of the meaning of life teaches that the meaning is "in principle available to any person, regardless of gender, age, intelligence, education, character, environment and religious beliefs." However, finding meaning is not a matter of knowledge, but of calling. It is not a person who raises the question about the meaning of his life - life puts this question before him, and a person has to answer it daily and hourly - not with words, but with actions. Meaning is not subjective, a person does not invent it, but finds it in the world, in objective reality, which is why it acts for a person as an imperative that requires its implementation. In the psychological structure of personality, Frankl singles out a special, “poetic dimension”, in which meanings are localized. This dimension, as is clear from Frankl's extremely visual "dimensional ontology", is not reducible to the dimensions of the biological and psychological existence of man; accordingly, the semantic reality cannot be explained through psychological and even more biological mechanisms and cannot be studied by traditional psychological methods.

“It is pointless to look for the unity of the human way of being, overcoming the diversity various forms being, as well as the resolution of such contradictions as the antinomy of the soul and the body, in those planes on which we project a person. It can only be found in a higher dimension, in the dimension of specifically human manifestations. “A person at the biological level is displayed as a closed system of physiological reflexes, and at the psychological level - as a closed system of psychological reactions. This projection again contains a contradiction. After all, the essence of man is also characterized by the fact that he is open, that he is “open to the world” (Scheler, Gehlen and Portman). To be human means to go beyond oneself. I would say that the essence of human existence lies in its self-transcendence. To be human means to always be directed towards something or someone, to give oneself to the cause to which a person has dedicated himself, to the person he loves, or to the god he serves. Frankl gives the following example: “Suppose I project not just a three-dimensional image onto a two-dimensional plane, but figures such as Fyodor Dostoyevsky or Bernadette Soubirous into the plane of psychiatric consideration. Then for me, as a psychiatrist, Dostoevsky is nothing more than an epileptic, like any other epileptic, and Bernadette is nothing more than a hysterical woman with visual hallucinations. What they are beyond that is not reflected in the psychiatric plane. After all, both the artistic achievements of one and the religious conversion of the other lie outside this plane. At the psychiatric level of consideration, everything remains ambiguous until something else becomes visible through it, which is behind it or above it.

While asserting the uniqueness and originality of the meaning of life for each person, Frankl nevertheless rejects some of the "philosophies of life." So, the meaning of life cannot be pleasure, because it is the inner state of the subject. According to the same logic, a person cannot strive for happiness, he can only look for reasons for happiness. The struggle for existence and the desire to procreate are also justified only insofar as life itself already has some kind of meaning independent of this.

The provision on the uniqueness of meaning does not prevent Frankl from also giving a substantive description of possible positive meanings. To do this, he introduces the concept of values ​​- semantic universals, crystallized as a result of generalization of typical situations that society or humanity had to face in history. This allows us to summarize the possible ways in which a person can make his life meaningful: first, with the help of what we give to life (in the sense of our creative work); secondly, through what we take from the world (in the sense of experiencing values), and thirdly, through the position we take in relation to a destiny that we are not able to change. According to this division, three groups of values ​​are distinguished: the values ​​of creativity, the values ​​of experience and the values ​​of attitude. “Every time life provides a person with the opportunity to realize the values ​​of one group or another. Either it requires us to realize creative values, or we feel the need to turn to the category of values ​​of experience. At certain moments, life calls us to enrich the world with our own actions, at other times we enrich ourselves with experiences. To fulfill his destiny, a person must either act, or indulge in the charm of what he experiences. Feeling joy can also be a "duty" of a person. In this sense, one can accuse of neglecting one’s duties a person who, sitting in a tram, has the opportunity to contemplate the splendor of the sunset or inhale the fragrance of flowering acacias, but instead continues to read the newspaper without stopping. “The concept of the value of an attitude does not derive from moral or ethical precepts, but from an empirical and factual description of what happens in a person when he evaluates his own behavior or the behavior of another. Logotherapy is based on statements about values ​​as facts, not on judgments of facts as values. “In a sense, the concept of relational values ​​is broader than the meaning that can be found in suffering. Suffering is just one aspect of what I call the "tragic triad" of human existence. This triad consists of pain, guilt and death. No man can say that he has not failed, that he has not suffered, and that he will not die.”