Symbol, Meaning, and the Sacred: A Study on Contemporary Malaise from the Perspective of Logotherapy and Analytical Psychology

Abstract

Abstract This theoretical essay investigates the relationship between contemporary psychological malaise and the impoverishment of the symbol, of meaning, and of the sacred. It sets out from the question of how the weakening of these three dimensions reverberates in human experience and in mental health. By means of interpretive reading and the critical articulation of classical and contemporary literature, foundational works of Logotherapy and Existential Analysis, of Analytical Psychology, and of the anthropology and phenomenology of religion, chiefly Frankl, Jung, Eliade, Campbell, and Diel, are placed in dialogue with recent scientific evidence on spirituality, religiousness, meaning in life, and mental health. The essay argues that the symbol constitutes a fundamental anthropological mediation between the immanent and the transcendent, and that its erosion deprives the individual of the narrative structures, myths, fables, and traditions historically responsible for the elaboration of the meaning of existence. The lack of meaning manifests clinically in existential frustration and in noogenic neurosis, with collective symptoms such as fatalism, provisional existence, collectivism, and fanaticism, whereas the weakening of the relationship with the sacred withdraws from the human being a resource whose positive association with mental health finds empirical support, albeit with modest effects conditioned by the way religiousness is lived. It concludes that the recovery of meaning, of values, and of contact with the sacred represents a relevant path for confronting contemporary malaise, requiring of the psychologist the integration of philosophical, spiritual, and anthropological dimensions into clinical practice.