Pedagogia de las Alturas. Logoterapia y educación

The famous psychiater Viktor Frankl, the founder of Logotherapy and Existential Analysis, believed that there is no true comprehension of human being without exploration of his deepest abysses and his highest peaks of dignity and responsibility. His intent to pass from deep psychology to “high psychology” is full of educational implications. Since his youth, Frankl oriented his work in a pedagogical perspective, and along his intense existence he never gave up to dedicate his attention to young people, their frustrations and suffering and their spiritual resources, to family and school context, and to the fundamental strive for meaning of people of every status and condition. This book represents a milestone in our cultural and educational horizon of our times, because it examines with exceptional perspicacity and methodological harshness the critical and depressive nuances of existential vacuum, that regard expecially the new generations, and the spiritual strength that people can use coping with them. The reader will find pleasant and involving the course of ten chapters that compose the book, will appreciate its rich and up-to-date bibliography and will discover relationships between Frankl’s legacy and that of Bettelheim, Binswanger, Maslow and other humanistic psychologists. Above all, he will recognize the proper pedagogical vocation of logotherapy, where it assumes the conscience as the core of education, the principle of responsibility as a preminent value and aim, the role of educator as a guide and a “pacemaker” , the importance of socratic dialogue as a therapeutic and pedagogic method. No prescription or magic formulas, but a slow pondering reading that can provide a great amount of insights and ideas for the renovation of education and help.