Odkrywanie sensu drogą powrotu do rzeczywistości. Pedagogiczne znaczenie pozytywnego rozwiązania frustracji egzystencjalnej

The article takes inspiration from Victor Emil Frankl’s thought in the pursuit of solutions to fundamental contemporary dilemmas of human existence. The neurologist, psychiatrist and psychotherapist from Vienna was a prisoner of three concentration camps during World War II, and a Holocaust survivor. The experience in the horrifying psycho-lab of camp life enabled him to validate the logotherapy theory that had been formulated before the war. The author presents a diagnosis of our time referring to the overwhelming sense of emptiness and the lack of meaning in life and followed by constant boredom. According to the author it is the existential frustration and ensuing noogenic neurosis that lie at the core of these phenomena. Man in the mental state escapes from reality into the world of virtual impressions or searches for the success through “the will to power” that replaces “the will to meaning”. The panacea to such a state cannot be directing oneself toward the search for happiness and success but the discovery and making sense of concrete, experienced life events. This can be done in three ways: by creative work, by experiencing something or encountering other human being, and by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering. Thus the way to happy, fulfilled life leads back to reality, and is deeply rooted in the reality and transforming it by work.