Freud e Frankl: o ser humano entre o princípio do prazer e a vontade de sentido

Abstract

This study presents two distinct ways of understanding the human being, which are extremely significant and influencing the way they are conceived in contemporary times. In one parameter, we have the libidinal driving force of the human being according to Freud’s psychoanalysis, and in the other, the will for meaning in the perspective of Frankl’s existential analysis and logotherapy. This qualitative study with an interpretive approach aims to demonstrate, through Frankl’s criticism of Freud’s conception of the human being, that the human being is not reduced to physical or psychological processes; since in its interior there is a power of being, an integral being, which acts and has the power to decide and to constitute its world, giving reasons that contain meaning. So, regarding psychic structures as part of the subjective structure, Freud’s discovery of the unconscious as a non-physical space in which psychic contents are stored is great. However, Frankl believes that the unconscious can delineate, shape, but not determine subjectivity. The freedom of the human being gives him the ability to take a stand in situations, not reducing himself to any psychic category, as Frankl explains in the dimensional ontology, comprising the open man, imbued with the spiritual dimension which cannot be denied, leading the subject to self-determination.