Problems of the Logotherapeutic Terminological System Formation (A Linguistic Aspect)

Abstract

This article considers the formation and arrangement of the logotherapeutic terminological system. The latter developed after Viktor Frankl had introduced his logotherapy, a psychotherapeutic approach that revolves around the search for meaning; however, since that time, the advance of psychology and logotherapy has been accompanied by the emergence of many new terms and the growing need for clarification of some of the already established concepts. Now, it is getting increasingly important to create a more complete system of logotherapeutic terms that would be in line with the modern logotherapeutic idea of a human, as well as with the phenomena defining our personality from multiple angles and the world in general. Here, based on two logotherapeutic glossaries (one in Russian from A.I. Averyanov’s “Logotherapy and Existential Analysis: A Theory of Personality”, the other in English from M.H. Lewis’ “Logotherapy and Existential Analysis: A Glossary of English Terms”), the above need was justified. It was concluded that such a system should be structured as a glossary with regard to certain aspects (the presence of closed lexical groups, high-frequency words, and consistency of descriptions in all entries). Some problems and difficulties that arise at the macrostructural (including or ignoring items in the glossary without a clear reason, violating the alphabetical order, and spelling errors) and microstructural (in relation to defining the components of an entry) levels of the future glossary of logotherapeutic terms were identified and analyzed.