Base of logotherapy Logotherapy
sense of meaninglessness, emptiness, lost of the purpose in life, bored feeling, and apathy. This condition is termed as the existential vacuum that is caused by a
frustration of the will to meaning the existential frustration. The frustration is a result of the condition when people cannot find the meaning of life; even they
have no will to meaning. Nowadays, the existential frustration and existential vacuum have become
a widespread phenomenon. There are people who have experienced a loss of the feeling that life is meaningful. It is caused by many factors, such as the missing of
traditions and values. According to Frankl 168, a failure of finding the meaning of life or the
existential frustration is often directed to compensations. There are many kinds of compensations that people do, which almost all of the compensations are negative.
The compensation can be some overly actions of the will to power, the will to pleasure, the will to sex, the will to work, and the will to money. On other words,
in those overly actions, there is usually implied the meaningless life experience. Frankl 159-160 insists that the existential vacuum does not belong to
pathology or sickness, but spiritual distress. Spiritual in logotherapy does not deal with theology character but anthropologist character. Different from religious
aspect that look at the spiritual as the phenomenon of this world and the next, logotherapy look at the spiritual from medical aspect. It means that the spiritual
dimension is the source of health that has never been sick even the person has physical and mental sickness.
Although a full life experience without the meaning does not belong to a sickness, the intensive condition of its experiences can result noogenic neurosis,
total character, and conformist character. The noogenic neurosis is a mood disorder that can inhibit one’s self-adaptation and achievement. The disorder is
marked by boredom, emptiness, hopeless, lost of interest and initiative, even the meaningless life.