Crisis of meaning in connection with mental distress of a modern man

Abstract

In contrast with the contemporary spirit, which directs a person towards their own needs, satisfactions, and desires, logotherapy views the person and its life as an assignment. Man is not an individual "for himself" (according to Freud, the main internal motivational force is "the will of pleasure" and "the will of power" according to Adler), but a being of sense or a being for someone or something. According to Frankl, the purpose is defined as tasks, which life sets us in a precise moment and in a precise situation. These are tasks requiring a responsible reaction and a specific realisation of values. Each of them is unique. Each individual is responsible for a task, and only he can respond to it in a responsible man-ner. In this sense, life can be seen as a chain, whose links are the tasks themselves. Each in-dividual is unique, with a unique goal in life, which consists of individual, equally unique tasks. The centre of logotherapy is future - tasks and meanings. The founder of logotherapy is Viktor E. Frankl, who was a doctor of medicine and doctor of philosophy, and a professor of neurology and psychiatry at the University of Vienna. The third psychotherapeutic school in Vienna - logotherapy - is based on a holistic approach to an individual, which means that it analyses a person on a physical, mental, and spiritual level. Spiritual dimension is, among others, a place of realisation of responsibility and freedom or space of realisation of actual possibilities and tasks. Existential crisis, exis-tential vacuum, and noogenic neuroses are issues and mental problems, which originate from the spiritual dimension. This means failing to perceive and failing in life as an assignment. The empirical part of the research, which is based on the psychometric instrument LOGO-test, performed on two hundred re-spondents, gave us the results that even 24 percent of respondents are in various mental distresses and seriously existentially endangered. The paper highlights the most problematic areas and causes for such mental distress. The COVID-19 pandemic only deepened and revealed this crisis of meaning.